Corey's Mountain Lions

My friend, Corey Jacobsen of Sitka Gear sent me this awesome story and photos-"Here are the pictures of our adventure last Saturday. My buddy Steve and I drove 45 miles of roads without finding any tracks to turn the dogs loose on, but I spotted some tracks across the canyon that looked like they might be cat tracks due to the fact that they were on a rock bluff. We pulled over and I looked them over in the binos and confirmed that they were in fact cougar tracks. I followed them about 10 yards with the binos, and the cougar was sitting right there looking our direction from the comfort of a cave at the bottom of the bluffs. There weren't many trees, so we figured our chances of treeing it were slim and we'd likely end up with torn up dogs, so Steve decided to climb down the bank and get a rest and shoot it with his rifle. We got set up and he fired, hitting the rocks just above the cougar. The cougar whirled and ran back into the cave, then emerged 10 seconds later. Steve shot again, but was unable to tell where he hit. The cougar came back out a thirdtime, and this time his shot was dead on and the cat dropped. We sat watching the cave for a few seconds, and noticed a second cougar to the right of where the first one was. We switched positions, and I shot the second cougar and watched it dive behind a large rock and not come out. We ended up driving back down the road over 2 miles to find a place to get across the river and started our hike into the rock bluffs. There was 24" of fresh powder, and after going 300 yards in the first 30 minutes, we realized it would be dark long before we got the the cougars. So we backed out and found a place where the river wasn't frozen over, formulating a plan to return the next morning. Steve called a buddy who had a raft and he agreed to go in and help get the cats out. After a long pack down the steep hillside, the cats were loaded onto the raft and packed across the river and up the steep hillside to the truck. Two cats and we didn't even have to turn the dogs loose!" Nice job Corey!!