On our recent elk safari, when we got the meat from my son's bull loaded in vehicles I started for town in my slower Zuki while the meat packers changed out of wet clothes. Two miles down the winding, brush walled logging road I noticed cougar tracks in the snow. They hadn’t been there 45 minutes earlier when I drove that road.
A pair of cougars, med large and medium, had been walking toward me on the road. Tracks showed that they had heard my vehicle coming, shuffled their feet a bit and stepped into brush off the road before I saw them. It was raining on snow, making tracks look old within minutes, and their tracks where they left the road looked as crisp and fresh as mine. Hmmm...
Steep down opposite where they left the road and steep up the way they went. I merged into a bush on the downhill edge of the road and called with a hand call. I watched across the narrow road uphill through gaps under the trees, especially a dark shadowed 30 foot long section of rock ledge above me. I was hoping to see a cougar face peering down at me. I decided that I would hand call till the others caught up with me, then give up. I have called cougars back to peek at me from the edge of the road in similar situations. No luck this time, or more likely, it was just too thick and brushy to see them when they sneaked back. They may have never left but been watching me the whole time from hiding.
My son and grandsons came along in 8-10 minutes. It was a good calling situation but the others were exhausted and I was tired. We headed for a rendezvous at a logging town hamburger joint 70 miles away.
