Jones On Cougars

: The Last Of The Plainsmen

The mountain lion, or cougar, of our Rocky Mountain region, is nothing

more nor less than the panther. He is a little different in shape,

color and size, which vary according to his environment. The panther of

the Rockies is usually light, taking the grayish hue of the rocks. He

is stockier and heavier of build, and stronger of limb than the Eastern

species, which difference comes from climbing mountains and springing

own the cliffs after his prey.



In regions accessible to man, or where man is encountered even rarely,

the cougar is exceedingly shy, seldom or never venturing from cover

during the day. He spends the hours of daylight high on the most rugged

cliffs, sleeping and basking in the sunshine, and watching with

wonderfully keen sight the valleys below. His hearing equals his sight,

and if danger threatens, he always hears it in time to skulk away

unseen. At night he steals down the mountain side toward deer or elk he

has located during the day. Keeping to the lowest ravines and thickets,

he creeps upon his prey. His cunning and ferocity are keener and more

savage in proportion to the length of time he has been without food. As

he grows hungrier and thinner, his skill and fierce strategy

correspondingly increase. A well-fed cougar will creep upon and secure

only about one in seven of the deer, elk, antelope or mountain sheep

that he stalks. But a starving cougar is another animal. He creeps like

a snake, is as sure on the scent as a vulture, makes no more noise than

a shadow, and he hides behind a stone or bush that would scarcely

conceal a rabbit. Then he springs with terrific force, and intensity of

purpose, and seldom fails to reach his victim, and once the claws of a

starved lion touch flesh, they never let go.



A cougar seldom pursues his quarry after he has leaped and missed,

either from disgust or failure, or knowledge that a second attempt

would be futile. The animal making the easiest prey for the cougar is

the elk. About every other elk attacked falls a victim. Deer are more

fortunate, the ratio being one dead to five leaped at. The antelope,

living on the lowlands or upland meadows, escapes nine times out of

ten; and the mountain sheep, or bighorn, seldom falls to the onslaught

of his enemy.



Once the lion gets a hold with the great forepaw, every movement of the

struggling prey sinks the sharp, hooked claws deeper. Then as quickly

as is possible, the lion fastens his teeth in the throat of his prey

and grips till it is dead. In this way elk have carried lions for many

rods. The lion seldom tears the skin of the neck, and never, as is

generally supposed, sucks the blood of its victim; but he cuts into the

side, just behind the foreshoulder, and eats the liver first. He rolls

the skin back as neatly and tightly as a person could do it. When he

has gorged himself, he drags the carcass into a ravine or dense

thicket, and rakes leaves, sticks or dirt over it to hide it from other

animals. Usually he returns to his cache on the second night, and after

that the frequency of his visits depends on the supply of fresh prey.

In remote regions, unfrequented by man, the lion will guard his cache

from coyote and buzzards.



In sex there are about five female lions to one male. This is caused by

the jealous and vicious disposition of the male. It is a fact that the

old Toms kill every young lion they can catch. Both male and female of

the litter suffer alike until after weaning time, and then only the

males. In this matter wise animal logic is displayed by the Toms. The

domestic cat, to some extent, possesses the same trait. If the litter

is destroyed, the mating time is sure to come about regardless of the

season. Thus this savage trait of the lions prevents overproduction,

and breeds a hardy and intrepid race. If by chance or that cardinal

feature of animal life--the survival of the fittest--a young male lion

escapes to the weaning time, even after that he is persecuted. Young

male lions have been killed and found to have had their flesh beaten

until it was a mass of bruises and undoubtedly it had been the work of

an old Tom. Moreover, old males and females have been killed, and found

to be in the same bruised condition. A feature, and a conclusive one,

is the fact that invariably the female is suckling her young at this

period, and sustains the bruises in desperately defending her litter.



It is astonishing how cunning, wise and faithful an old lioness is. She

seldom leaves her kittens. From the time they are six weeks old she

takes them out to train them for the battles of life, and the struggle

continues from birth to death. A lion hardly ever dies naturally. As

soon as night descends, the lioness stealthily stalks forth, and

because of her little ones, takes very short steps. The cubs follow,

stepping in their mother's tracks. When she crouches for game, each

little lion crouches also, and each one remains perfectly still until

she springs, or signals them to come. If she secures the prey, they all

gorge themselves. After the feast the mother takes her back trail,

stepping in the tracks she made coming down the mountain. And the cubs

are very careful to follow suit, and not to leave marks of their trail

in the soft snow. No doubt this habit is practiced to keep their deadly

enemies in ignorance of their existence. The old Toms and white hunters

are their only foes. Indians never kill a lion. This trick of the lions

has fooled many a hunter, concerning not only the direction, but

particularly the number.



The only successful way to hunt lions is with trained dogs. A good

hound can trail them for several hours after the tracks have been made,

and on a cloudy or wet day can hold the scent much longer. In snow the

hound can trail for three or four days after the track has been made.



When Jones was game warden of the Yellowstone National Park, he had

unexampled opportunities to hunt cougars and learn their habits. All

the cougars in that region of the Rockies made a rendezvous of the game

preserve. Jones soon procured a pack of hounds, but as they had been

trained to run deer, foxes and coyotes he had great trouble. They would

break on the trail of these animals, and also on elk and antelope just

when this was farthest from his wish. He soon realized that to train

the hounds was a sore task. When they refused to come back at his call,

he stung them with fine shot, and in this manner taught obedience. But

obedience was not enough; the hounds must know how to follow and tree a

lion. With this in mind, Jones decided to catch a lion alive and give

his dogs practical lessons.



A few days after reaching this decision, he discovered the tracks of

two lions in the neighborhood of Mt. Everett. The hounds were put on

the trail and followed it into an abandoned coal shaft. Jones

recognized this as his opportunity, and taking his lasso and an extra

rope, he crawled into the hole. Not fifteen feet from the opening sat

one of the cougars, snarling and spitting. Jones promptly lassoed it,

passed his end of the lasso round a side prop of the shaft, and out to

the soldiers who had followed him. Instructing them not to pull till he

called, he cautiously began to crawl by the cougar, with the intention

of getting farther back and roping its hind leg, so as to prevent

disaster when the soldiers pulled it out. He accomplished this, not

without some uneasiness in regard to the second lion, and giving the

word to his companions, soon had his captive hauled from the shaft and

tied so tightly it could not move.



Jones took the cougar and his hounds to an open place in the park,

where there were trees, and prepared for a chase. Loosing the lion, he

held his hounds back a moment, then let them go. Within one hundred

yards the cougar climbed a tree, and the dogs saw the performance.

Taking a forked stick, Jones mounted up to the cougar, caught it under

the jaw with the stick, and pushed it out. There was a fight, a

scramble, and the cougar dashed off to run up another tree. In this

manner, he soon trained his hounds to the pink of perfection.



Jones discovered, while in the park, that the cougar is king of all the

beasts of North America. Even a grizzly dashed away in great haste when

a cougar made his appearance. At the road camp, near Mt. Washburn,

during the fall of 1904, the bears, grizzlies and others, were always

hanging round the cook tent. There were cougars also, and almost every

evening, about dusk, a big fellow would come parading past the tent.

The bears would grunt furiously and scamper in every direction. It was

easy to tell when a cougar was in the neighborhood, by the peculiar

grunts and snorts of the bears, and the sharp, distinct, alarmed yelps

of coyotes. A lion would just as lief kill a coyote as any other animal

and he would devour it, too. As to the fighting of cougars and

grizzlies, that was a mooted question, with the credit on the side of

the former.



The story of the doings of cougars, as told in the snow, was intensely

fascinating and tragic! How they stalked deer and elk, crept to within

springing distance, then crouched flat to leap, was as easy to read as

if it had been told in print. The leaps and bounds were beyond belief.

The longest leap on a level measured eighteen and one-half feet. Jones

trailed a half-grown cougar, which in turn was trailing a big elk. He

found where the cougar had struck his game, had clung for many rods, to

be dashed off by the low limb of a spruce tree. The imprint of the body

of the cougar was a foot deep in the snow; blood and tufts of hair

covered the place. But there was no sign of the cougar renewing the

chase.



In rare cases cougars would refuse to run, or take to trees. One day

Jones followed the hounds, eight in number, to come on a huge Tom

holding the whole pack at bay. He walked to and fro, lashing his tail

from side to side, and when Jones dashed up, he coolly climbed a tree.

Jones shot the cougar, which, in falling, struck one of the hounds,

crippling him. This hound would never approach a tree after this

incident, believing probably that the cougar had sprung upon him.



Usually the hounds chased their quarry into a tree long before Jones

rode up. It was always desirable to kill the animal with the first

shot. If the cougar was wounded, and fell or jumped among the dogs,

there was sure to be a terrible fight, and the best dogs always

received serious injuries, if they were not killed outright. The lion

would seize a hound, pull him close, and bite him in the brain.



Jones asserted that a cougar would usually run from a hunter, but that

this feature was not to be relied upon. And a wounded cougar was as

dangerous as a tiger. In his hunts Jones carried a shotgun, and shells

loaded with ball for the cougar, and others loaded with fine shot for

the hounds. One day, about ten miles from the camp, the hounds took a

trail and ran rapidly, as there were only a few inches of snow. Jones

found a large lion had taken refuge in a tree that had fallen against

another, and aiming at the shoulder of the beast, he fired both

barrels. The cougar made no sign he had been hit. Jones reloaded and

fired at the head. The old fellow growled fiercely, turned in the tree

and walked down head first, something he would not have been able to do

had the tree been upright. The hounds were ready for him, but wisely

attacked in the rear. Realizing he had been shooting fine shot at the

animal, Jones began a hurried search for a shell loaded with ball. The

lion made for him, compelling him to dodge behind trees. Even though

the hounds kept nipping the cougar, the persistent fellow still pursued

the hunter. At last Jones found the right shell, just as the cougar

reached for him. Major, the leader of the hounds, darted bravely in,

and grasped the leg of the beast just in the nick of time. This enabled

Jones to take aim and fire at close range, which ended the fight. Upon

examination, it was discovered the cougar had been half-blinded by the

fine shot, which accounted for the ineffectual attempts he had made to

catch Jones.



The mountain lion rarely attacks a human being for the purpose of

eating. When hungry he will often follow the tracks of people, and

under favorable circumstances may ambush them. In the park where game

is plentiful, no one has ever known a cougar to follow the trail of a

person; but outside the park lions have been known to follow hunters,

and particularly stalk little children. The Davis family, living a few

miles north of the park, have had children pursued to the very doors of

their cabin. And other families relate similar experiences. Jones heard

of only one fatality, but he believes that if the children were left

alone in the woods, the cougars would creep closer and closer, and when

assured there was no danger, would spring to kill.



Jones never heard the cry of a cougar in the National Park, which

strange circumstance, considering the great number of the animals

there, he believed to be on account of the abundance of game. But he

had heard it when a boy in Illinois, and when a man all over the West,

and the cry was always the same, weird and wild, like the scream of a

terrified woman. He did not understand the significance of the cry,

unless it meant hunger, or the wailing mourn of a lioness for her

murdered cubs.



The destructiveness of this savage species was murderous. Jones came

upon one old Tom's den, where there was a pile of nineteen elk, mostly

yearlings. Only five or six had been eaten. Jones hunted this old

fellow for months, and found that the lion killed on the average three

animals a week. The hounds got him up at length, and chased him to the

Yellowstone River, which he swam at a point impassable for man or

horse. One of the dogs, a giant bloodhound named Jack, swam the swift

channel, kept on after the lion, but never returned. All cougars have

their peculiar traits and habits, the same as other creatures, and all

old Toms have strongly marked characteristics, but this one was the

most destructive cougar Jones ever knew.



During Jones's short sojourn as warden in the park, he captured

numerous cougars alive, and killed seventy-two.



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