About a 120 pound cat. My hunting bud got one about 140 pounds.

There was a much bigger one 750 yards down a very steep canyon. Could have made it down but would likely still be trying to get out of there!!!

Utah is a beautiful scenic state and they love hunters.

Tom Flynn

Nice cat Tom. All nice and snuggly. If I didn't know better he likes you too, lol.

Nice cat!! What firearm did you use?

Pap

Tom
very nice. We have a lot of very deep steep canyons here. If you ever have a chance to hunt in the Book Cliffs, you won't be disappointed in the scenery

Peter

Same gun I have hunted with for over 40 years a Colt Sauer 30-06 with a S & B 3-12 scope.

Tom Flynn

What a beautiful catamount Tom, I'd love to hear you give the replay of the entire hunt.....sitting around a fire at hunting camp. Including, of course, side trip stories about the country and the 30-06. Thanks for showing us your picture.

Duke,

The Cats are nocturnal so you spend most mornings driving roads looking for tracks with spot lights. We started most mornings at 5 a.m. with sunrise at 7:30+/-. Fresh snow helps alot. The guides are expert at spotting the tracks on dry ground as well.

Many private land areas after driving all of the roads and looking for tracks, they send out another vehicle which will drag trees behind them to smooth out the dirt. This is so the next morning when you search for tracks you start with a clean slate so to speak.

Once they get a track they search up and down that road to see if it reentered/crossed the road. If not they will let the dogs loose to track the cat. Various varieties from all type of hounds to Blue Tick, etc. Once the dogs are on a track we would drive to a high vantage point over the canyons and watch the dogs work. They all have GPS collars and the trail the cat can be tracked can be 500 yards or as much as 5 miles.

The amount of wildlife we passed was significant-6x6 & 5x5 Elk, really nice Mule Deers 150-175" range, Bobcat, Rabbits. Utah has some great hunting along with beautiful scenery.

Never saw Sagebrush as high as we saw in 9 Mile Canyon; some 5-6' height! Amazing rock formations.

Definitely a different hunt than I am used to; you feel like a spectator at times rather than a participant. But what a show to watch those dogs work. Without dogs the likelihood of getting a cat would be drastically reduced. Some states have banned the use of dogs to hunt Mountain Lion. However, their populations are exploding as a result of this change.

All of my hunting guns are Colt Sauer's-458 Win Mag, 375 H & H Magnum, 300 Weatherby Magnum and my 30-06. The barrels and actions were made by JP Sauer & Sohn in West Germany. All have walnut stocks and were sold through Colt Firearms. My longest shot with the 300 Weatherby was 1,027 yards(fixed target). Shot a Mule Deer with my 30-06 at 440 yards. Shot a Kudu at 280 yard with my 375 H & H. Schmidt & Bender scopes on all of them and I reload my own ammo.

Next year is Sea Ducks in Maryland and then later in the year Alaska for Mountain Goat and Coastal Black Bear with a possible Halibut fishing trip while there.

Tom Flynn

Another nice day for an outing, still very dry here, but a dusting of snow at the higher elevations. This area is very popular with rock climbers who climb up the various spires here. We on the other hand started on the trail and headed into a really nice non-technical canyon.

Peter

Again, thanks so much Peter. The background/subject matter that you live in and have the opportunity to photograph is just so breathtakingly beautiful that it's difficult to find adjectives to use to describe it. I will fairly often hand my iPad to my wife & ask her to "look at this" when on this Forum. This thread is the only one that we're looking at when she seems to keep it forever & I have to beg to get it back. I do hope that you keep a brief journal of your forays into nature. Please keep 'em coming "Moab Man".

I thought I remembered something about that name:

The Moab Man (also called "Malachite man") is a find of several human skeletons found after bulldozing in a mine whose rock dated to the Early Cretaceous period, about 140 million years ago. The original discovery of two individuals was made in 1971 by Lin Ottinger in the Keystone Azurite Mine near Moab, Utah and has been used by creationists as an argument for humans coexisting with dinosaurs. John Marwitt, an archaeologist and the field director for the Utah Archaeological Survey, examined the fossils and concluded that the fossils were probably only hundreds of years old, the result of burials of Native Americans.[1]