Calling all Lions-no dogs or electronics
cougar
Has anyone intentionally called in a mountain lion? No gut/bait piles or electronic calls or dogs...just manually calling. If so, I'd like to hear about the set-up and scenario whether or not that you harvested the animal.
It can be done, just takes time.
—Bill
So just last week I was three or four days in to getting my ass kicked on a dry ground, unseasonably hot, mountain lion hound dog hunt in Arizona. I’m sitting at a bar in town having dinner and a couple cold ones. I overhear a kid next to me with a crowd staring at his phone. Turns out, earlier that day he and a buddy had been set up calling coyotes. Five minutes into their set, a big tom lion comes running out and they whack it. Talk about salt in the wounds! It can be done I suppose.
I put the same title with a few stories in the Colorado region if you're interested
No experience here, but I have thought about it; it is sort of a hunting goal to take a cat by calling. First step is cutting a fresh track, and then doing a calling setup on it to see what it brings in. I'd be doing it with an electronic caller though so my location isn't pinpointed and stalked!
Have a family member who called one in while coyotes hunting. I know other guys who have tracked them Down on foot.
Was coming home from a Payson AZ community concert Monday night and as I rounded a curve 1/4 from my house the headlights lit up a lion. The wife insisted I get a lion tag and start going out and try to call one in. She doesn't want them to get another one of the girls. (resident deer herd) We had a lion killed deer this spring in a neighbors back yard.
Terry
Coyote, are you going to try and call him?
When I was a teenager, I was trying to learn how to bowhunt by myself. I read one of Chuck Adam's books where he described making a fawn bleat using two popsicle sticks and a rubber band. He said it could call in deer.
So I convinced my Dad, who knows nothing about hunting, let alone bow hunting, to take me to Camp Pendleton where they had an either-sex archery tag. This was my first time big game hunting ever. I went the my assigned hunting area, and found a spot by an oak to sit and wait for deer to pass down the trail. My Dad was going to wait a few hundred yards away.
I got bored and started playing with the fawn bleat call I had made. About 20 minutes later, I had a weird feeling, the kind that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Like I was being watched. My back was to the trunk of the tree, so I slowly turned and looked around the tree, in time to see a mountain lion turn and bound away! That was scary!
Needless to say half an hour later a deer came by but it was a Spike! In case you aren't from CA, spikes are/were illegal to shoot in California. I haven't tried calling a Lion in since, though I have seen a few (a lot in CA since they banned lion hunting) while hunting other things.
I watched a friend call one the other day. He spotted it laying on a ridge top in Arizona. He circled around and got to about a 100 yds and started calling. First like a wounded rabbit etc., no response, then he shifted to javelina calls. The cat responded and began to stalk him. I was watching from afar. He closed the distance to my friend but I lost him when he was about 75 yard from him. My friend could see him coming as well but also lost site of him. We figured he must have winded him eventually. It was cool to watch.
Not intentionally, but I've done it twice. Once when elk calling about 15 years ago, and once when turkey calling a couple years back. Both times I was using a diaphragm, and calling aggressively.
First one stalked in on me to about 15 feet. The second was about 8 feet, and I managed to get some pics of him. No tags in either case...so no harvest!
So I as I mentioned I did it. Called this lion into under 6 yards. I was set up in an area I knew had an active cat. I actually started up higher in the cliffs and canyons. Called for an hour with no luck. Went back to the truck took a bathroom break and decided to call and area about a mile from truck closer to the river. I sat up looking into a small but deep canyon. Called for about 15 minutes then every got really quiet. In the middle of a call set I catch movement to my left. I had my back to a small juniper tree about 3' tall. at around 4 yards over my my left sholder was a small 2-3 pinon tree that was bushy but short. I caught a little lficker of movement from behind this tree. I raised my 223 and as I did so I could see the lion lift each of its front paws and roll its wrist, like it was warming up/stretching. When I got the gun up, I hissed at the lion. It was crouched all the way down behind the tree. At the hiss it barely stuck its head and part of its neck out. I fired and the last thing I saw was the lion 8 to 10 feet above me in the air. I ran like hell back to my truck and honestly was in complete shock. Luckily on my stop back at the truck earlier I had found a nice stump and took care of business before making the stand.. When I went back to the location in the snow I could see that the lion had landed only 3 feet from me when it had jumped up. Luckily when it hit the ground it was dead and slid about 15 yards down the steep hill like a toboggan.
She was a 71/2 year old female that was just over 130 pounds. I have tried since but have not had any luck... At least that i know of... Also it took me almost 4 weeks to try calling again an almost year to get back into the trees and not call the wide open sage.
This happened to me many years ago and before I started taking photos.
I was sitting in a tree stand on a shelf hunting mule deer one morning. I had notice this old platform stand a day or two earlier and thought I want to go over and sit it. So early one morning I went to it, climbed up and sat on a 5 gallon buck. It was very thick, but had a lot of sign there so I thought it would be a good morning hunt, and it ended being great for what happened.
As I sat there, about 9 in the morning I looked up to see two mountain lions coming off a trail and onto the shelf where I sat. I thought, wow that is neat, as it was only the 4th and 5th lion I had ever seen in the wild. About 5 minutes later, I looked up and here they came again, on the same trail, going the same way.
Then my mind clicked and told me you can call those. So I reached over and pulled a predator call out of my pack and started calling. I called loud for about 5 minutes and nothing happened, so I put the call away and went back to hunting deer. As I sat there, I noticed a movement in my perifial vision. I looked down to see a lion, sitting down, looking right up at me. Instantly I noticed other movement and looked over to see another lion, then more movement and notice 4 loins around my tree. It was a mom with three 2/3 grown kittens. As I started to move to get my camera that was in my fanny pack, they slithered away, making about as much noise, in the thick brush and undergrowth as a shadow makes.
Its a morning I will never forget. All in all I have seen 8 loins in my lifetime in the wilds, but four of those 8 were that morning.
Have a great bowhunt. BB
Another way to do it in snow country is find a fresh track just as on a dog hunt and start trailing! There is a guy in Wyoming that has killed a couple that way.
And I always wonder how many I didn't see that responded to my calls
Blade, I am going out tomorrow AM and see what comes. I have an electronic call, so I will set it up and move. That way it won't be stalking me, but the call.
Terry
We live right on a creek here in SW Montana with thick cover and lots of whitetails. Years ago I was building a deck on the house in June. I heard what sounded like little kids squalling just down the creek, but I knew it wasn't. I walked about 100 yards down the treeline and cut right down to the creek. I then started doing a dying rabbit call using my mouth. After about half a minute, here came a lion charging through the brush right to me across the stream. It got to about 15 yards away and, even though I was still, it saw me. I could see it in its eyes the instant it recognized its mistake and slammed on the brakes. That lion reversed right through it's own asshole and tore off in an instant and was gone. The whole thing happened in only a few seconds, but it is burned in my memory. I don't think it was a mature cat, it wasn't real big. What a rush when we locked eyes. The only thing like it was the time I squeaked a coyote into six feet away while elk hunting. I saw the same look it its eyes. "Ohhh, sheeet!"
I remember years ago Barry Wensel was elk hunting and using a cow call. He turned to see a Mtn Lion approaching very quietly...right at him. Barry shot the lion in the chest a few yards away.
Like this Colorado bear I call in and then arrowed. I intentionally called in a mt lion the same way with a Fawn In Distress call, but in the winter. The cat was 20 yards away and saw me draw the arrow and was gone in a second, never to be see again. In both cases, I called more often than not, and both cases both showed up a half hour later from the start of calling. Being the Prey, is an interesting situation to be in, so watch your back.
