The pursuit of desert lions on horseback is one of the most exciting and dangerous hunts in North America-and not for the reasons you'd expect.
What's the most dangerous animal?" the university student asked as he eyed the photos of slain polar bears, grizzlies Cape buffalo, and an African lion adorning my campus office. He was really there to talk me into a passing grade, but he'd momentarily forgotten.
I've fielded that question in one form or another from hunters who'd read my books, from Scout troops touring the hundred-plus trophies in my house, and from old ladies in sneakers. My answer invariably disappoints them. "Horses and mules," I tell them.
That answer surprises experienced hunters, too, because extended wilderness packtrips are largely a fond memory of old-timers. ATVs, snowmobiles, pickups, power boats, and bush planes have replaced horses and mules on most North American hunting trips. That's why I enjoy dry-ground mountain lion hunting in the deserts of the Southwest and Mexico, where saddle animals are still a crucial part of the hunt. Aside from polar bear hunting by dogsled on the ice pack, few hunting experiences are more dangerous than galloping along sheer rimrock cliffs or through spear-sharp branches stout enough to skewer the heaviest hunter. But when you're chasing hounds that are baying lions, that's what you do, as I learned early in life from my friend Sarge.
Sarge was a former cavalry trooper who lived in a rock house at the base of the Huachuca Mountains in the borderlands of southern Arizona. Sarge had helped the famous Lee brothers chase and film desert lions and had seen the biggest lion they had ever killed-a 212-- pounder. Eventually, he gathered his own nondescript mongrel pack, and he taught me to ride and hunt lions when I was in my early adolescence.
I first hunted lions in the Chiricauhua Mountains of southern Arizona with Sarge and a couple of "slicks," as he called greenhorn clients, from Dallas. The first day we'd run a lion into an overgrown valley and over a divide leading to Mexico before we lost him in a tangle of boulders.
On the third day the hounds hit a hot track and let us know about it with no uncertainty. We couldn't keep up, and within the hour we could only follow their progress by looking for upturned pine needle duff and tracks in sand. When we topped out, we heard distant baying and whipped the horses down the ridge before the cat could jump from the tree. As we galloped through slide rock, one of the slicks banged his knee against a sandstone outcrop and catapulted off the downhill side of the horse. He fetched up against a pinion pine, bellowing like a treed bear.
Sarge shook his head and clicked his tongue and looked wistfully toward the distant baying hounds. We got the slick to the hospital in Douglas after midnight-he'd shattered a kneecap-and drove back to the horses we'd left in a pine-pole corral. We hoped the lion was still treed. It was, and slick number two killed it.
On another hunt, Sarge's horse steered too close to a ponderosa pine, and Sarge took a lance-sharp branch as thick as a cue stick in the thigh. He reined in the horse, an evil-tempered but sure-footed Mexican cow caballo, yanked the bloody branch out of his leg, and continued the chase. That lion made it down a cliff and into a cave and lived to eat more vension.
"Damned Mex cayuse did that on purpose," Sarge said, then jammed a thumb into the nag's eye to give it something to think about while he mounted. For two months, splinters the size of pencils worked out of Sarge's leg. Sarge limped and cussed the whole sixty days.
A Lion on a Volcano
On another hunt with Mexican vaqueros Jesus Campa Miranda and Armando Vacame Andrade in the Bacanora region of Sonora's Sierra Madre, the ponies were blessedly even-tempered and tractable and as sure-footed as Himalayan ibex. If they hadn't been, I wouldn't be writing this.
By this time I'd been around saddle animals for three decades. Mexican cow ponies were easy to handle compared to most American saddle mounts, since vaqueros wore vicious spiked trowels and used aggressive bits. American horses, on the other hand, were, as Armando told me, too spoiled for anything but rodeos.
We rode the caballos out of the mesquite corral that dawn as cola blancas-Coues white-tailed deer-flushed into the foothills. Jesus and the outfitter, a city man too fat to be on a horse, skirted the peak and rode north with half the hounds. Armando and I continued straight up the volcanic peak, the white-and-tan Walkers moiling about the horses' legs. The slope got steeper, and I got concerned. Sure, I'd ridden horses on too many mountain hunts to count, but this was as steep as I'd ever sat a saddle. Rocks were just at the angle of repose, and it didn't take much disturbance to send them leaping down the slope and over a precipice and into space. We let the horses blow on a ledge, and Armando asked if I were willing to go on. He must have noticed my white knuckles. "Si," I shrugged, hoping he meant afoot. But he spurred his horse upward, and I swallowed my heart and followed.
Partway up, the hounds opened up, then raced around the shoulder of the volcano. We continued up, and once on top, glassed the country far below. From time to time, the bawl of a hound floated up in the warming air. Eventually I saw white flitting through the black-green of the oaks, 2,000 feet straight down. By careful glassing, I spotted the tawny cat on a horizontal branch and the hounds below. Armando swung onto his horse and turned it down the way we'd come up. If he could do it, so could I, I reasoned, but I wished he'd chosen to lead his horse so I could, too. Testosterone dementia has killed more than one horseman.
The skid down the volcano was more harrowing than the climb up. At least when climbing, a rider wasn't looking off a 200-foot drop. The boulders that we disturbed bounded off ledges and into silent free-fall, and we heard them hit so many moments later, it made something catch in my groin. The sure-footed horse was calm enough that he nipped off mesquite shoots as we skidded by. To Armando, this was just a day's work.
Midway down we met up with Jesus and the outfitter, Homero Canedo Carballo. Sweat dripped from Homero's fleshy jowls and stained his flashy new camos, despite the chill. "Thees ees berry bad," he said. Jesus winked at Armando and me and rolled his eyes. Homero grasped the saddle horn with both hands.
We followed Jesus around the shoulder of the peak until we heard hounds baying treed, then tied the horses to blackjack oaks and stalked on foot. We crept up to within 25 yards of the big male lion and, as he bunched his muscles to jump, I shot him with my .30-30.
In hunting treed game, the shot is anticlimactic. The danger is in the chase. The simpler the chase, the fewer mechanical and electronic gadgets, the more thrill. We had no cell phones, two-way radios, or ATVs. I packed a Winchester Model 1894, and Armando had a nondescript .22 six-shooter. Only Homero wore a watch.
Hunting desert lions is anything but sure. I've caught lions on fewer than half of my hunts. It's not nearly as sure as hunting lions in snow. It's a relatively simple thing to turn the dogs loose, then head off the chase with a snowmobile.
My wife, Cheri, and I recently made back-to-back dry-- ground lion hunts. We hunted first in southwestern New Mexico's Gila country, where that most famous of old lion hunters, Ben Lily, had hunted and guided the likes of Teddy Roosevelt. This was my first lion hunt on mules, and they impressed me. They weren't as flighty or temperamental as horses; they were more sure-footed and seldom kicked or bit. Still, Lou Probo, the outfitter, a transplanted Easterner, rode a horse.
We left the Bear Creek Outfit without a cat a week later, though we had good fun riding mules through pine and rimrock country.
"We tried," Probo said, "and now you see why no honest outfitter guarantees dry-ground lion hunts. Those that do are offering you a 'canned' hunt and menagerie cats."
We drove directly to another lion hunt with Jared Nichols's outfit in Arizona, and rode out on mules the next dawn, up through cliffs to the border of the San Carlos Apache Reservation. We didn't cut a track, although we covered 25 miles. Four days later, we still hadn't run a cat.
Jon Kibler, another Arizona guide and outfitter, was helping out. Jared ran his dogs one day, and Jon ran his the next while Jared's pack rested. We moved west to the mountains outside Phoenix. The first day we found three sets of tracks but none fresh enough to follow.
