“The Cougar Hunt”
While drawing all that hair on the cougar's back in the drawing above, I had a flashback to a cougar hunt back in the early fifties. This story starts on a hot July night in the little rural town of Uvalde in Southwest Texas. Glenn and Charlie, my teenage buddies, and I are sitting at the new drive-in on Highway 90.
We are bored and need some excitement. I happened to think of the cougar tracks that I had seen last deer hunting season near a stock tank. I said: “I know where there is a cougar. Let’s go cougar hunting tomorrow. If we kill that big cougar, we will get our picture in The Uvalde Leader News.” My friends thought that was a great idea.
So the next morning we loaded up some food, bedding, and our guns in the pickup truck and headed south down US 83. On the way down, I was picturing in my mind how I would look in the picture with the cougar in the newspaper. We were headed for the Old Walcott ranch about seventy five miles away down toward Laredo.
This ranch had twenty six thousand acres and belonged to my dad’s business partner, so we could hunt on it anytime we wanted. My dad had a hunting camp on it. We got there just before dinner time (called lunch time now), moved in and ate several sandwiches each. We got our guns and headed out for an afternoon hunt. I said, “We are going over to the middle tank in the mule pasture—that is where we saw the cougar tracks”.
In the South Texas cattle country, there werent’ many natural sources of water and most of the well water was salty. So to get water for the cattle, the ranchers would build earthen dams across the dry creek beds and wait for the rains that would fill the bar pits dug to get the sand and dirt to build the dams. The long hole dug to get the sand to built the dam is called the borrow pit. The slang term is “bar pit”.
The bar pit, which is adjacent and parallel to the dam, is generally eight to twelve feet deep. When the tank is full the water will back up beyond the bar pit and cover several acres up adjacent to the creek bed. Since this area will get more water than normal, Bermuda grass will grow in this area of several acres. During dryer times, as the water recedes to be only in the bar pit, this Bermuda grass area will be several feet above the water level in the tank and in the dry creek channel that feeds the into the tank. Normally these small tanks were an acre or two in size.
We sneak up to the tank and hide behind some bushes under some mesquite trees. I can see that the water level is down to about two feet below the Bermuda grass area. I tell my buddies that we have to be very still and quiet. We get settled sitting on the ground leaning against some mesquite tree trunks.
Along about the middle of the afternoon it was really getting hot. It must have been over 105 degrees. The sweat is beginning to run down my back. The ants have found me. I am watching them one by one crawl up on my pants leg and head for my bare skin. For about twenty minutes one has been inside my shirt on my right shoulder blade. It is now working its way toward the center of my back. I am keeping up with every move of its six legs anticipating that it might sting me at any moment. I’m also keeping up with three or four gnats that are taking turns buzzing my ears. Every little bit, one will land and try to enter my ear. My legs are cramping. Glenn, sitting under a nearby tree is asleep gently snoring. Charlie, sitting a few feet to my left also has the ants and gnats working on him.
The only entertainment we have had is that a pack of coyotes will cut loose barking and howling every little bit up the creek. A little while ago, about half a dozen Brahma bulls came in to water at the other end of the tank. They messed around awhile and left about thirty minutes ago. Now it is just quiet, still and getting hotter. I’m rapidly losing interest in this cougar hunt.
I look over at Charlie and whisper: “That damn cougar could be a hundred miles from here, let’s go swimming.” He was all for it. I threw a small stick over to wake up Glenn. He nearly jumped out of his skin thinking the cougar was creeping up on him. We all agreed to go swimming. Since the hunt was over, we walked out on the Bermuda grass to the edge of the tank. The water level was about two feet down from the grass. We put our guns down, stripped and slid down the bank to the water and went swimming. Boy, did that muddy and dirty tank water feel good.
At a depth of about three feet, it gets a lot cooler than the warm surface water. We moved out to where we could stand on the muddy bottom with just our heads out of the water. From our waist down, it was really cool. About the time we were cooling down good, I noticed and could see just the top of the back and ears, above the grass, of an animal coming down the dry creek bed toward the tank. At first, I thought it must be a coyote; however, as I watched it, I realized it was a large cat…My God, it’s the cougar walking in the creek bed about thirty or forty yards beyond our clothes and guns!!!
I pointed at it to Glenn and Charlie, and like submarines with their periscopes up, we quietly headed for the grassy bank where our guns were. When I reached the bank, my gun was just out of reach. So, as quietly as I could, I tried to climb the muddy slippery incline of the bank. Each time, just before I could reach my gun, I would in slow motion slide back into the water. Charlie and Glenn were having the same problem. If someone could have filmed this scene on a video, it would surely have been on America’s Funniest Videos.
Finally, out of sheer frustration, I just stand up and splash my way up on the grassy bank and grab my gun. I’m standing there, gun ready, buck naked, looking for the cougar. Suddenly, a huge bobcat jumps up out of the creek bed onto the grass and, before I can think twice, it makes two jumps and is into the brush and disappears.
So what I saw coming down the creek bed was actually a big bobcat and not the cougar. At any rate, we got the excitement we had been looking for and had a good time. We also had an exciting story to tell to impress the girls with when we got back to town.
Cheers,
Acree
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