Well we found this guys track yesterday and had to wait and see if the zone closed last night with all the moron retards that are killing young, small cats, but we lucked out and she didnt close so we spent from 730am - 1130am boxing it in and after running the dogs in 5km we ran this cat off a small mule deer buck kill and killed him a couple miles later. Was a really good run and the dogs didnt miss a beat.

This hunt was donated to the Alberta Wild Sheep Foundation (FNAWS) so all profits from this hunt went to a good cause. We had a great hunter and maybe he will post something up here about the hunt as I told him he should check this site out.

So here are a few pics of this big Tom...















SG

Awesome pics and sounds like a great chase. Congrats to the lucky hunter. Wish i could of been on this one!

cheers

gilly

Good job Sheepguide.  This really shows how many cats there are out there.  I am surprised they don't up the tags alloted out there especially with all of the predators killing off the herds of elk and deer. 

One thing working against the cat quotas are the weekenders and wanna be houndsmen that are going out and just killing any cat. They are aging every cat killed now and want to see that the population of cats killed are mature. But we have guys out there killing young females (some not far from having spots still) and closing seasons fast. And this down the road makes it look like there arent mature females and such to kill and may result in lower quotas down the road. But these guys just are trying to put cats on the ground and arent smart enough to see that they may be affecting things in the future.

Congrats on the cat and raising money for a good cause.  I have always been a huge fan of hunting mature animals, regardless of species.  It is even more important on animals that typically have smaller populations or population densities.  Not sure how to regulate but I certainly try to educate all my fellow hunters.  I believe it is safer too, making a hunter analyze an animal before pulling the trigger.  In Alberta we can have a plethora of tags in our pockets (basically almost all the species and sex for deer) that can lead to quick shots without having to analyze the animal and the shot.  At the same time I dont want everybody hunting the big guy that I am after. 

I'm glad to see all these cats hitting the ground. The sheep, elk, moose, and deer are too!

As far as taking females, from what I have read and been told, the female cougars are particularly hard on the sheep populations.

Keep after them!