PDA

View Full Version : My Brother's Cougar hunt.



klickitat
12-27-2010, 06:21 PM
While living in Idaho, my little brother came to stay with my family. The idea was to get him away from the environment that landed him in prison.

While living in Idaho we trapped, hunted and practiced living off the land as much as possible. I had my forge set up and we built knives, hawks and arrow heads for trading at local gun shows and black powder events. This was literally a part of our living along with the furs we trapped in the winter.

My brother one day bought a wrist rocket like the one he had as a kid. I will tell you he was good with that thing. Out to 30 yards he could kill a rabbit almost without thought.

Well about the time he was playing with his wrist rocket I was trying to build arrows in a sort of traditional manner. I would forge arrowheads on the forge and them attach them to a 6" cedar shaft that I carved. I would insert that shaft into a cat tail shaft. We then made veins with either crow feathers or from plastic pop bottles. I mostly shot these from my recurve bow that I hunted with now and then. This worked ok at best and I never hunted with those arrows, I just could not get them to shoot fast enough.

My brother made up some short arrows about 20" long from just the cedar and with plastic veins to shoot from his wrist rocket. He could actually shoot them quite well with a little practice. The problem was that he could only get about 3-4 inches of penetration in a hay bale at 20 yards. Still not bad if you are hunting rabbits, but that was about it.

Well one morning I was up in the barn feeding the goats and rabbits, milking and working on a new gate for a kid pen. My brother was suppose to come up and help with the new kid pen and be right up, but he never showed. After a while I was done with my chores and brought the milk down to the house. As I get to the house, my brother is hopping the fence across the road and heading back with his wrist rocket and a handful of arrows.

"What the heck are you doing?" My brother replies, "I was trying to kill that cougar that walked through the field." I stood there just shaking my head. " "You went after a full sized cougar with a wrist rocket and some home made arrows?"

Now you have to understand that although my brother and I grew up together we lived entirely different lives. I was always out hunting, fishing, trapping and just generally out in the woods any moment I could be. My brother had no interest in things like that and was sneaking into town as often as he could to chase girls and get high on one thing or another.

I had to explain to him how his was on the menu the moment he stepped in the brush with that cat. It would have been one thing if he was able to take a firearm with him (no no for a felon) but to go out after a full grown cat with his Micky Mouse set up was mind boggling.

I seen that cat a few more time over the year, but never had a shot at it. It was a huge cat and I figured it to be old. For being as long as it was, it always looked super skinny. The neighbors had it attack a horse in their barn and we had it come into barn. We lost a goat that night and a doe rabbit stomped her little.

beetlejuicex3
12-28-2010, 08:36 AM
Now is this and actual cougar or a woman over 40?

Wrist rocket + cougar = sabertooth-sized bite marks to the face.