I feel compelled to write this article not only to share my family’s wonderful recent experience hunting mountain lions in Western Colorado, but also to voice my opinion on the current proposition that will soon be on the Colorado ballot to outlaw the hunting/management of this animal.
As a personal backdrop, I have a friend who started a family tradition of taking their child on a senior trip, just father and child, to spend quality time before his child leaves the nest. It’s an opportunity to create one last great memory together that hopefully they both will remember and cherish forever. I always thought this was such a great idea, so I decided I would do the same.
My son, Tucker, is currently in the 12th grade, so last summer I asked him what he would most like to do with me as a senior trip. He said, “Let’s go out west hunting!” We looked at all the options for western big game hunting during his Christmas break, and a mountain lion hunt fit the bill perfectly. Being from Memphis, we had never had the opportunity to hunt mountain lion before, and it sounded like a great adventure. The hunt checked all the boxes for us. It was a tag that we could acquire over-the-counter after we took the educational exam that Colorado Game and Fish provides. We could take the trip between Christmas and New Year’s while most other hunting seasons were closed and he was out of school on break. It was a perfect opportunity to enjoy all the beauty and splendor that a great Colorado mountain hunt can deliver. We then
contacted one of the best in the business, James Zeldenthuis of Needle Rock Outfitters in Crawford, Colorado, to help make our dream come true.
A few discerning friends of mine had hunted with James before, so I was very confident that we were in great hands. I cherish spending time with my family, and every year, my father and
I travel on a western hunting trip together, so naturally we invited him to accompany us. Three generations – my father at 80 years old, myself at 50 years old, and my son at 18 – headed west together on a great adventure. We arrived the day after Christmas at Needle Rock Outfitters. Now James would never toot his own horn and I had never met James before this trip, but
let me tell you, he is the real deal.
James lives in a beautiful valley on the western side of the Rocky Mountains with his beautiful wife and three wonderful children. James’ kids were constantly riding horses and practicing their rodeo roping. It was an extremely unique peek into an authentic lifestyle that is much different than playing video games, like my children do way too much these days. Father fail on my part! You could quickly tell that this guiding business for James was his passion and truly his family’s livelihood. We were excited and ready to soak it all in.
The first morning of Tucker’s hunt, we left the lodge at 3:00 a.m. with a snowmobile and four-wheeler in tow. This is a hunt, at least in our situation, you can compartmentalize into three parts. The guide, first and foremost, must cut a lion’s track, then the dogs must bay the lion, and the hunter must climb the mountain to harvest the lion. What we quickly learned from this hunt was the importance of the guide cutting the track and then processing that information correctly. He must tell which direction the lion is traveling, how old the track is, and if it is a male or female.
Our first morning, between 4:00 and 6:00 a.m., James cut the tracks of two different sets of female lions with multiple kittens each at two totally separate locations. To me, that looks like the cat population is doing well. James then cut the track of a male lion that had a very busy night. James tracked this lion up onto a family’s back patio, then it walked in that family’s snowshoe tracks from the afternoon before to the neighboring horse corral. James said last year a cow elk was killed and partially buried in that very same horse corral by a lion, which blew my mind. This lion James was tracking then left the horse corral and went to another neighbor’s cabin and went under their patio. I was amazed how this big cat was so close to these houses, and the residents had no clue.
James knows this country like the back of his hand, so the next morning, we checked another snow-covered canyon where the lions like to hunt deer and elk. His friend, Levi, who is an awesome hunter in his own right, cut the track of another female with kittens and then later cut the track of a big, old male. Once we had the track cut, James and Levi got to work. They released the dogs, and the musical barking of those hounds echoed up and down that canyon. While we were standing there listening to the hounds, James’ 12-year-old son, Easton, looked down into the canyon bottom by the river and saw a freshly killed, very nice 5x5 bull elk. As it turned out, the 160 lb. lion my son was about to harvest had just killed this 800 lb. elk. The fact that a cat can take down such a big animal proves how powerful and dangerous these animals can be. Luckily for future elk lives, James’ hounds cut the track perfectly and treed the lion about 400 vertical feet up the mountain. James and my son ran up the mountain as quickly as the dogs did, but James’ son, Easton, had to push me up that mountain. Once we all reached the lion, James collected the dogs and my son cleanly harvested the lion.
Looking back on the hunt, there are so many wonderful facets that make up that great memory. Seeing this animal up close, the teeth, the claws, it was just truly awesome. The Zeldenthuis family, the breathtakingly beautiful scenery, and the fact that I was with my father and son made this a memory I will cherish my whole life forward. There are around 3,500 mountain lions in Colorado, and each adult kills on average 35 deer or elk a year. There are 52 weeks in a year, so by my math, if 3,500 lions kill 35 deer and elk a week multiplied by 52 weeks, that equals 122,500 deer and elk killed annually just in Colorado alone by lions! I know some of these lions are immature, so these numbers aren’t exact, but they are staggering. Colorado currently does a great job of controlling the population of these lions. The North American Conservation Model is working well here. Each unit has a quota that is monitored daily, and when the quota is reached, that unit is shut down. Approximately 500 mountain lions are harvested a year, which creates great memories for the nature-loving hunters, safety for the residence of Colorado, and an economic fortune for the state of Colorado. As an outsider looking in, Colorado is currently doing a great job managing these alpha predators and should continue on this same path.
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