Cougar!

The trigger fingers and the palms of western cougar hunters itched at the news. For the biggest cougar kill of the season (eight cats--in nine days), Jesse Stockdale and his son Url, of Twisp, Wash, this week got a $400 bounty check--$50 a carcass--from the State Game Department.

Like all men who hunt with hounds, cougar hunters are out for more than money. They are proud of their dogs, of their skill, of their sport. A cougar hunter must be as rugged as the country he hunts --the mountain wildernesses of the western U.S. On the snow-covered trail of the biggest cat on the North American continent, sometimes grown to nine or ten feet in length from gorging on deer, the hunter must make as much as 30 miles a day. Creeping along rock ledges, plunging through rough timber, always pressing to keep his dogs within sound, he often follows a trail for days before he makes the kill.

Because cougars are predatory, there are no bag or season limits. But cougar-hunting is primarily a winter sport: scents last longer in snow than on ground soaked with summer rain. This winter, western snows are light and cougars are high up in the mountains. Hunting them demands supreme endurance.

To the Dogs. Smart cougar dogs can follow days-old trails, baying continuously so that the hunter can follow. Good hounds will keep the big cats treed for half a day until the hunter catches up. The West has developed its own breed of hounds--big, rangy, fast "black and tans." Hunters start training with a sackful of house cats for practice treeing. Only after two seasons of running with veterans do most dogs learn to disregard deer trails and stay on the cougar scent.

Most dangerous is the moment just before the kill. With a single swipe of its claws, a cougar could kill any dog or man that ever trailed him. But the big cats rarely learn. While the dogs are being tied up so that the cougar will not crush them in his death fall, their frenzied barking keeps the beautiful, snarling beast from springing. Some hunters have had to pump as many as 20 bullets into the vicious animal before he fell.

Because a cougar kills 40 deer a year, five western states pay bounties. Washington alone pays nearly 100 each year. Last week the greatest hunter of them all was oiling his gun. White-bearded John

Huelsdonk, now 76, was beginning his 55th year of hunting the big cats.

Life Begins at 76. Until two years ago, when a road was pushed through to his Hoh River valley farm, "the Iron Man of the Hoh" packed all his supplies 20 miles by canoe or on his back. When trail crews first hacked into the fastness of Washington's Olympic Mountains, Huelsdonk earned double pay by carrying double loads--200 Ib.

He has killed more than 150 cougars, including the dreaded "Big Foot" which harassed the Hoh and Queets River valleys in 1936. Ten years ago the sport almost cost Huelsdonk his life. A surprised female bear made a swipe at his cougar dog, Tom, and sent him yelping 30 ft. through the air. The bear then lunged for the Iron Man. They grappled for minutes, until Tom came back and drew the bear's fury again. Huelsdonk finally reached his 30-30 carbine and killed the beast.

His legs ribboned from a dozen deep slashes, Huelsdonk trudged five miles home. His wife argued with him for a week. Finally the 66-year-old Iron Man buckled, went to the hospital.

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