Back in the mid-winter of 2015 I made my first trip to Colorado to try for a Mountain Lion. The area for that hunt was on the "Front Range" part of the state, about an hour straight north of Denver. Although we tried hard, the weather and snow did not cooperate. Lions are hunted with hounds....pretty much impossible to hunt them any other way. But you need some good solid, un-blown snow cover to find a fresh enough track to turn the dogs loose on. After a few days and a lot of miles of trying that year, it was simply not to be.

Fast forward to last week. I'd set-up another hunt with a different outfitter in western Colorado. I hoped there would be more reliable snow cover to count on, in that part of the state. I arrived in Grand Junction on a Sunday evening and met the outfitter. After a few hours sleep that night, we were up at 2 AM on Monday morning, and headed into the hills with the outfitter and his hounds. With 6-8 inches of snow on the ground up high, we got pretty lucky and found a fresh track on that first morning before dawn. After waiting for legal hunting hours to turn out the dogs, followed by a couple hours of chasing, the lion treed. Fortunately he ended up being a good mature Tom. He weighed around 165 lbs, and that was with a mostly empty stomach, so he was a pretty good-sized one. It was a fun hunt while it lasted!