CUSTER, S.D. (AP) - A pair of booming howls bounced off of canyon walls and a family of three stopped in their tracks waiting to hear what would happen next.
The haunting melody of hunting hounds on the scent of quarry echoed up and down an out-of-the-way canyon in Custer State Park. They were announcing the start of their favorite game to the world. And that other worldly sound, only heard when good hounds strike a scent trail are what South Dakota houndsman Brad Tisdall lives for, the Pierre Capital Journal (https://bit.ly/21TNZcE ) reported.
“That’s the song,” he said pulling out his GPS unit to track his dog’s progress.
The dogs were more than 500 yards out and moving fast. It was 8:40 a.m. on March 19 and Tisdall, his wife, Wanda, and their daughter, Carah, were only about an hour into their first walk of the weekend.
The family had started their day around 3 a.m. at their home near Rapid City by unloading Brad’s truck and packing all of their gear into two other family vehicles. The truck refused to start and they needed to get to the park by 4:45 a.m.
The trip had been on their calendar for more than three months by that point. Carah was lucky enough to draw an access permit for hunting mountain lions in Custer State Park during one of the four periods that hounds are allowed to help find and tree the big cats. It’s a hard permit to draw Brad said.
“We see this as a once in a lifetime tag,” Brad said. “This is probably the only time she’ll be able to hunt lions in South Dakota . Because I’m a hound guy. It’s really special to me.”
Carah has lived with hounds since 2008, when Brad first acquired some dogs of his own after spending years watching friends hunt bears in Wisconsin.
She’s 13 and was excited about getting to chase lions with her dad’s dogs Valhalla and Two Socks for the first time.
The Tisdalls didn’t hit the park until about 5 a.m. That was still well before daylight so there was enough time to run the dogs down a little travelled dirt road before too many other park visitors started driving.
When the sun rose, it was time to get out and make a few walks with the dogs. The cool morning was air was pierced by the rippling gobbles of tom turkeys trying to get into the swing of mating season. Temperatures in the 70s and a distressing lack of snow in the central Black Hills seemed to have set them off. Though that morning was cold.
Snow is one of the most important elements to a successful mountain lion hunt. Boot hunters, the guys who walk the woods looking for their lions are virtually required to have snow to have any reasonable chance at success. Those hunters must find and follow a lion track through the snow. It can take hours and there’s no guarantee they’ll get close enough for a shot before they spook the lion or lose the track.
Without snow, the success rate for mountain lion hunting drops almost to zero. That is one of the most important reasons why the Game, Fish and Parks Department allows the use of hounds for lion hunting in the park.
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In the early 2010s the park’s wildlife populations, elk in particular, were struggling, said John Kanta regional wildlife manager for the Black Hills. Several years of drought in the previous decade had forced wildlife managers to reduce the park’s elk herd in order to preserve rangeland and prevent conflicts with nearby private landowners.
At the same time, the Black Hills mountain lion population was increasing. By 2012, wildlife managers were struggling to grow the Custer State Park elk herd again. Elk hunting, which also is allowed in the park, had been drastically cut back and adult survival was pretty good. The problem was calf survival.
In 2011, 16 of 19 elk calves fitted with radio collars as part of a study of the elk herd were killed by mountain lions before they turned a year old. In 2012 11 calves of the 30 that were collared as part of the study had been killed. Seven of those deaths were lion kills.
Kanta said it wasn’t that there were more mountain lions in Custer State Park than anywhere else in the Hills. Lion populations are pretty consistent throughout the hills. It was actually the small prey population. Lions were having a disproportionate impact on the park’s elk herd because it was so small, Kanta said.
Something had to be done. Wildlife managers have few truly effective tools with which to manage an animal population. When there is an imbalance between a particular species population and it’s food source there are really only two options. The first is to do nothing, which runs the risk of an eventual population collapse, conflicts with other groups and disease. North America’s snow goose population, which is destroying its own nesting habitat, is a good example of over population.
The second option is to allow hunters to help balance out the populations.
Hunters were already allowed to apply for an access permit to hunt lions in the park. But even with snow, boot hunters are never all that successful. So, in 2013, GFP officials began allowing houndsmen to hunt lions in the park.
“We wanted to put more pressure on the lions,” Kanta said.
The first lion harvested with the help of hounds came in the middle of February 2013, after three other lions that were either too young or had kittens were let go, according to a Feb. 15, 2013 story in the Rapid City Journal.
Since then, the park’s elk calf survival rate has jumped and the herd is growing, Kanta said.
“Within a couple of years we basically doubled calf survival,” he said.
By the time the Tisdalls were setting off from their truck into Custer State Park’s backcountry, four lions had been killed in the park during the 2015/16 hunting season. All of them, Kanta said, were taken with lions.
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The first half hour of their first walk was spent with Brad quizzing Carah over what to do if she gets lost and what to do if Valhalla and Two Socks strike a scent. It was a leisurely walk in 14-degree temperatures. There was no wind to speak of.
“If you want to hunt lions they say you learn more on your feet and you’ve got to be among them,” Brad said as the walk began.
Turkey gobbles continued to echo through the morning. That is until the dogs spotted a small group of strutting toms and broke their party up. Brad had to call the erstwhile pair back in and in the process discovered that Two Socks’ collar was on the fritz.
It was a big problem. The dog’s collars carry GPS transmitters that show Brad where his dogs are and lets him call them back when needed. Without the collar Two Socks, who is younger and faster than Valhalla, could easily get lost.
Brad swapped Two Socks’ collar out with Valhalla’s. The older dog would run without the collar.
Within 20 minutes the two dogs struck their first trail of the weekend. Upon the first bawling howl the Tisdall party stopped in their tracks listening hard to make sure the dogs would follow the track.
“This is when the work begins,” Brad said.
Both dogs were sounding off, Valhalla’s high-pitched barking bawl was easily separated from Two Socks’ deeper howling. The Tisdalls took off again a little faster this time but still methodical. There was no need to run to catch up. If the dogs were on a lion, they’d either keep tree it and keep it there or they’d lose the scent and come back.
The dogs worked their way deeper into the canyon before crossing a small spring fed creek and launching themselves up and over the steep northern wall. Within minutes, they were close to a mile away.
There wasn’t much else for it and the Tisdalls gave chase, working their way up the several hundred foot high canyon wall. Halfway to the top snow started falling. It was light but picking up steam and would likely complicate matters.
“The snow will cover up the scent,” Brad said.
By the time the Tisdalls hit the top of the canyon wall, Valhalla and Two Socks were 1.7 miles and another canyon or two away. After working the family around a small mountain, Brad called a halt so he could try to work out what the dogs were doing.
A light dusting of snow had started to form when Brad made the decision to start working down the mountain and into the next canyon over. It was called Barnes Canyon. The two dogs were still hot on the trail of something but whatever it was wasn’t climbing any trees as far as Brad could tell.
That wasn’t a good sign. Usually, Brad said, once the hounds jump a lion it’s in a tree within a few hundred yards.
“About 50 percent of the time they work the trail backwards,” Brad said.
The dogs were still sounding off, a sign they still thought they were onto something. Their voices could be heard faintly in the distance.
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By 10 a.m. the dogs didn’t appear any closer to treeing whatever it was they were chasing. Brad started trying to call them back, yelling their names at the top of his lungs from the top if a high ridge. It didn’t work. Both dogs were intent on the scent they were trailing. On the plus side whatever it was had circled back around and was getting closer to the family.
The Tisdalls worked their way into Barnes Canyon, closing to within a mile of their hounds. Brad was confident that the dogs weren’t going to tree what they’d been chasing but he still needed to get closer before the dogs would leave the trail and come back to him.
The sun broke through the clouds as the Tisdalls hit Barnes Canyon road and started hiking back out. The ground’s light coating of snow burned off quickly taking any scent trails with it and effectively ending the hunting day.
Valhalla and Two Socks were still out there though. Brad sent Carah and Wanda up the road to get around a mountain and to the truck. He was going to get the dogs.
At 11:15 Two Socks appeared slowly working his way through the trees. The dog was tired and alone. Valhalla hadn’t come with him. She’d gotten separated somewhere along 15 miles that Two Socks had run. Brad spent the rest of the day worried sick. Valhalla showed up at a campground at 9:45 a.m. not far from where the Tisdalls were spending the night.
In all, the Tisdall’s had walked eight miles, climbed up and over a small mountain, been snowed on and come up empty. Even with hounds only about half of lion hunters will succeed.
“It’s tough,” Carahh said of lion hunting. “It’s fun but it’s a lot of work.”
Her family would be up again at 5 a.m. the next morning to do it all over again.
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Information from: Pierre Capital Journal, https://www.capjournal.com
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