3-17 SS Troy 2

3-17 SS Troy 2

 Everybody welcome to Sportsman’s Spotlight, I’m David Sparks. Yesterday we learned from experienced cougar hunter Troy McClain that the toughest but probably most important part of hunting cougar is tracking. We pick up with Troy continuing his dialogue. I get out there and start stomping a track out and when you find a fresh cougar track they’re usually not fresh-fresh. You usually have to freshen them, up is what they say, and so you have to walk them out a little bit, you follow it. When you freshen the track you might find a track which is a day old or maybe a couple of hours old, so that cooler has traveled long day within our or maybe two hours, and so you don’t want to let your dogs loose right away on that because it’s too hard on the dogs.  So the man gets out and when I say freshen it up, it means that he just follows it To see if it’s done a U-turn, to see if it’s done a switch back and maybe to see if the cougar has bedded down or laid down so you try and get that track to where it’s a couple of hours old. Then you set your dogs loose. When you’re following these tracks keep in mind the cougar doesn’t abide by the road rules, so he goes wherever he wants to go. So you’re  following a cat track and your human sold your underbrush over brush it’s always in the dead of winter because the best time to hunt is December through March, so you are always in 3 to 4 feet of snow, and you’re walking these tracks out it tends to be a little spooky sometimes. I’ve been doing it for years and I tend to get a little worried. I’m out there by myself and I hear every branch break and every twig snap.” Or you hear nothing at all and that’s what happened to Troy, will find out about that tomorrow.

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