New Mexico Mountain Lion Hunt 2024
- Ryan Fritz
- Apr 10
- 4 min read
The day after Christmas my wife and I boarded a plane from Dulles International airport to El Paso. We got all our luggage, gear, rental and headed north to the little town of Capitan, New Mexico.
The next morning we met our guide, Joe Troyer (lil joe's big game hunting), in the parking lot of your motel. The dogs were in the back of the truck ready to go. Amy, Joe, and I headed out in the dark to find a mountain lion in the National Forest. When we got to our destination, Joe let the eight female dogs out in the dawn hours to find a cougar. The dogs worked the junipers while the sun came up from the east. It was breath-taking seeing the desert floor accompanied with southwest mountains glowing with the morning sunlight.
We spent most of the morning learning from Joe about the dogs and getting to know one another. He said his ladies do better with the cats and the males work best with the bears. After no luck we kept moving and following the dogs. Finally we worked around the mountain and Joe's dogs met up with his buddy Stewart and his dogs on the other side of the mountain. Both sets of dogs ended up tracking and chasing a black bear for a couple hours. We waited to see what happened. Eventually Stewart and the dogs made it to us. We could hear the dogs barking from below. Finally we could see the big bruin slowly walking in an opening up on top of the mountain. The dogs had him exhausted. Stewart called Joe and said the dogs pushed the bear in a cave if we wanted to come up and see, we should come. He needed help with all the dogs. So the three of us hiked up to Stewart, the dogs and the cave where the bear was.
As we got up to the commotion. Stewart was trying to keep the dogs from going under the big boulder where the bear was hiding. He said you can see the bear. So I started to creep over to where I could see. When we got about 5 feet from the opening a dog started to get real close. The bear didn't like that so he stomped and scared the sh*t out of us. We both ran for our lives thinking the bear was coming out of the hole. Nothing like a little excitement on the first day.
The second day in the Lincoln National Forest, we lucked out. It snowed a trace overnight, leaving a dusting of snow to assist in finding a kitty cat. As soon as we got on to public land we cut some cougar tracks. Joe let 4 dogs out to sniff. They went nuts and off then went. So he let out the rest of the pack. They quickly took off after the feline.
We used the GPS collars to track and to drive around to the other side of the mountain. When we got to the other canyon. We couldn't find the GPS on the dogs. So Joe decided to go up to the top of the mountain to get a better signal. Finally, after no signal and an hour or two we got a signal down in a canyon below us. We went down to a parking spot and we were about a half mile from where the dogs had a mountain lion treed.
So we geared up, I grabbed my bow and we hiked up the canyon. We didn't know if it was a tom or a female. As we were hiking we had a flock of turkeys flying off the roost. Shortly after we could see some elk watching us from above. A couple bulls and cows. Joe went up in front of us and found out that it was a tom. Amy and I climbed up the steep snowy terrain holding and grabbing onto trees to get up. As soon as I got up to the treed cat, I noticed that the cat was ten to fifteen feet away because of the angle of the mountain. "Holy crap right in your face." I thought, "is this thing gonna jump on me?" I pulled back my bow and as I am lining up on the puma. He runs down the tree and jumps away from the dogs and takes off. I was thinking "we get to do it all over again".
Luckily, the tom went a few hundred yards and treed up again below us. We got down to the dogs and cat. This time I walked around the tree to get a perfect shot. It was a lot closer than I practiced at home. I had a textbook quartering away so I took the shot. The two sounds I remember were "thwack" and Joe said "good shot". Then the 100+ pound predator jumped off the limb and ran down the steep mountain. We followed the crowd of K-9's and tom went down to the creek bottom. The cat was lying on a ponderosa pine limb maybe 30 feet up. I got my bow up with another arrow and broadhead. I was right about to shoot again and the cat free fell out of the tree. "Man the blood was pumping in my veins with a wee bit of adrenaline."
All of this transpired in 30-45 minutes. We did a typical photo shoot, then took the lion to get the game warden to check in the cat. I am very grateful for Joe, my guide and his dogs for making it happen. When I took the lion to the taxidermist, he said you are lucky to get one your first timeout. He said that he knows people that go 4-5 times before they get a tom.
We were able to visit Amy's cousin and stay at her cabin and grilled up the backstraps. We also got to see the Mescalero Reservation and we stayed one night at the casino. I had a 2nd lion tag and I went back the last day. I saw 25 bull elk driving on my way up to meet Joe. Another amazing adventure. Thanks be to GOD, He gets the glory.
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