NorthwestJanuary 25, 1996

Stephan Galles listens intently for the sounds of the chase as his trio of hounds follow the trail of a mountain lion.

"That cat went straight up that ridge," Galles said as he caught a glimpse of his Walker hounds scrambling their way up through rock faces nearly a mile away across the canyon. "I hope he didn't keep going."

There have been many times during the more than 20 years that he's hunted mountain lions that the cats did.

Then the chase becomes a race to find the dogs as much as the cats.

The over-the-hill chases become a matter of endurance for the dogs and much the same for Galles, a hound hunter and guide.

On this outing, Galles, a Lewiston Fire Department captain, is on a busman's holiday. This hunt is for the joy of listening to the hounds and the suspense of whether they'll be able to convince a lion to climb a tree.

A past president of the Central Idaho Hound Hunter Association, Galles has been active in defending the sport.

In coming weeks, he'll guide hunters paying for the privilege of hunting lions on the LT&L River Mountain Ranch for outfitter Shannon Lindsay.

Minutes before the chase unfolded, Galles had eased his snowmobile to a stop along a rugged road scratched out along a tributary stream and pointed to fresh lion tracks, the clean pug marks pressed cleanly into the two-inch deep snow.

The trail indicates at least two lions have traveled the road in the past few hours. The sharp hooves of deer have punched through the white blanket, too. In some spots, the lion tracks press over top of the tracks of their prospective prey.

Galles lets his hounds, Sly, Abby and Jessie, slowly out of a sled-like dog box that he tows behind his snowmobile. Like a coach, he readies them for the hunt, then pumps them up. "Here's the kitty. Find the kitty."

The tracks look just like the housecat tracks on many porches and sidewalks except they're about 10 times the size.

The Walkers, which weigh in at maybe 35 or 40 pounds apiece, will chase a cat that can easily outweigh them all collectively.

The dogs bark as they catch the scent and move along the tracks letting their noses lead. Silences punctuate the sounds of the dogs as they work their way along the trail, concentrating on figuring out which way the lions went.

"It's colder than I thought," Galles says.

Moving farther along the road, Galles finds that the trail may be more complicated than cold. Another track, this a much larger one belonging to a big tom, crosses the others' trail.

Galles listens to the hounds and tries to decipher the tracks. In 15 minutes all of the dogs have crossed Getta Creek at the bottom of the canyon. The hounds appear occasionally, scrambling through timber and rocky bluffs, heading directly up a ridge toward the top of the canyon.

The sound of the chase comes and goes as the dogs move in and out of side canyons. When the dogs turn down the canyon and the sound fades, Galles moves to a new spot along the opposite side of the canyon to listen again.

"Things just got a lot hotter," Galles says as the cadence of the hounds' cries increases.

From another point, he spots a pair of dogs running across a bench.

They disappear into another fold. "They're treeing," Galles announces. He waits a few more minutes to pinpoint the sound, which appears to be coming from two distinct areas.

"We may have two trees going," Galles said. The sound is strongest from the base of a pair of tall firs nearly a half mile away across the canyon.

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He listens awhile longer, the sound of the dogs growing louder, more excited. "That dog's looking at a lion," Galles said.

Moving the snowmobiles again to the spot along the road closest to the tree, Galles removes the heavy coveralls needed for riding.

He unloads the rifle he normally carries in his backpack and limits his capture gear to a video camera.

This hunt will be strictly catch-and-release mostly because he's already killed a lion this winter, his limit under Idaho Fish and Game Department regulations. I'm along strictly as an observer until I regain my status as a resident hunter.

A steep hike of a quarter mile up the hillside brings us to the twin firs. All three dogs are sitting at the base looking up the tree.

Some 20 feet off the ground, a limb as thick as a man's leg runs parallel to the ground. A bushy tan tail tipped with black hangs down.

Like a Cheshire cat, the rest of the lion disappears behind a thick nest of branches.

A sidehill scramble through the thorns and brush yields a look at the cougar, a young tom weighing between 90 and 100 pounds.

The lion is the fifth he's treed this season, Galles said. He and his companions, on previous hunts, took three of them.

The cat is calm. It lies on a branch, then sits up peering down at the dogs and people below.

The lion yawns. It licks its whiskers. It shifts its position to another branch, then lies down again.

Prone on the branch, the cat lets one leg dangle down. Almost playfully, it rolls toward the other side of the branch and peers from its underside at the commotion below.

"Good dogs. Talk to him. Talk to him," Galles tells the dogs, now secured with leashes to bushes beneath the tree.

Looking over the lion, Galles said he believes it's a young tom about ready to set out on its own.

That may help explain the multiple tracks. He suggests a female with one or two young had passed through the area.

That could also explain why it sounded like the dogs had treed cats in two different spots.

With film and video shot, Galles takes the dogs' leashes for the trip back down the hill.

"You can't let them go or they'll run right back up there and we'll have to go get them."

Back at the snowmobiles, Galles loads the hounds back into the dog box, then climbs back out of the canyon for home.

As the road rises toward the rim, he slows the machine, then stops.

"There were two more lions through here since we came in. One crossed our tracks back there. Here's another one," he said.

Within two hours, the little canyon served as a crossing for five, maybe six, mountain lions.

Unless the lions find enough deer to settle in for awhile, the next day could find them all miles away in steep canyons inaccessible even by steep and rocky ranch roads.

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