Jan 17, 2006 - 02:00:06 CST
For Jeremy Duckwitz, this mountain lion outing was more about spending time outside and working his dogs than bagging a cat."You get a lot of pride from seeing your dogs do what they are trained to do," he explained Monday. "We were working and walking five to 10 miles a day whether we came across fresh tracks or not."
With his two mountain curs and a bluetick coonhound and treeing walker coonhound crossbreed for company, Duckwitz had his camp set up by "first light" Friday in the Badlands.
"I knew I had to get into the roughest area and get in the middle of it," he explained. With little or no snow on the ground, he also realized that he and his dogs would be walking until "the dogs cut a trail."
Duckwitz, of Carrington, saw tracks Friday and Saturday, but "nothing fresh." He even came across a deer kill that was a couple of days old.
He was well into this third morning of walking when he could hear his dogs barking. Two of his hounds are trained to run coyotes.
He didn't know if they were chasing a cat or a coyote. Then he saw what could only be a cougar.
"It was running on steep stuff that only a lion or bighorn travel," said Duckwitz, who works for USDA Wildlife Services.
His dogs, however, were on a different line than the cat he saw.
"I wasn't sure if they were backtracking it or on another (cat)," he said. "So I called the dogs off from what they were running and turned them on the one Isaw."
The dogs treed the mountain lion a short time later.
"They were baying away at the tree when I got there," Duckwitz said, who took photographs before making a one-shot kill with his .243.
He packed the lion about three hours back to his camp, often slipping and sliding in the wet clay soil.
Duckwitz had tied the lion to his back, and at one point in the walk back, one of the dogs grabbed at the cat.
"It pulled me right on my back," he said as he prepared to skin the lion in the North Dakota Game and Fish Department laboratory in Bismarck for a full-body mount.
The lion was a 4- to 6-month-old female, Dorothy Fecske, NDGFD furbearer biologist, said after examining it. It weighed 39 pounds and measured 62½ inches from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail.
"It probably still was traveling with its mother. That further confirms that we have resident breeding animals," Fecske said. "As far as how many, I can't estimate at this point."
A necropsy showed the cat to be in good nutritional condition with moderate to high fat reserves, as were all of the lions harvested in this experimental season. NDGFD closed the season Sunday as soon as the five-lion quota was met. The season, which opened Sept. 2, was scheduled to end March 12.
"The stomach was empty, but it recently had fed on a porcupine," Fecske said.
She also took muscle samples for genetic analysis, plus blood to test for disease. South Dakota is building a data base for genetic analysis of mountain lions.
"Hopefully through these additional samples, we can identify where these cats are coming from, or if the animals that we harvested are related," she explained. Results of the samples from all five cats are months away, however, she added.
Fecske believes at least three of the five lions harvested in North Dakota were resident animals.
"It's possible the others were too, although young males travel great distances and may have come from populations in adjacent states," she said.
In the next few months, Fecske plans to compile all of the lion data that's been collected in the state, including reported and confirmed sightings, information from the five harvested cats and a habitat map that NDGFD is putting together. She also will use information from the NDGFD big-game questionnaire that asked hunters if they had seen mountain lions.
Duckwitz said he didn't realize how young the lion was when he first saw it treed.
"All I knew was that a lion was up in the tree," he said, adding, "It's better that I got the kitten than the mother."
Lions are dependent on their mothers for the first year to year and a half of their lives, Fecske said.
"If they are less than 8 months, their chances of survival are slim (if their mothers are killed)," she explained.
North Dakota did not set an age limit on mountain lions this season, Fecske said.
"The season was set up as an experimental season. We wanted to know what we had out there, so any aged animal was legal," Fecske said. "Next year is a different story. Adjustments in the season could be made in light of the information collected this year."
NDGFD had no reports of another individual harvesting a mountain before hearing that the season had closed, Randy Kreil, NDGFD wildlife division chief, said Monday.
"People are well connected," he said.
Not only was the season experimental in terms of mountain lions but also how well the quota worked and how well the notification system worked, he added.
(Reach reporter Richard Hinton at 250-8256 or richard.hinton@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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