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Show Mountain Lion Lead Chase In Trc TROPIC Unusual excitement excite-ment came suddenly into the life of a young Tropic woman about 9:30 one morning as she chatted with a friend on the telephone. Sharon Pollock gazed out the front window of her home located at the west edge of Tropic when a mountain moun-tain lion darted swiftly across her neighbor's yard and into a tree in his front yard. The cougar batted frantically at crows perched in the tree as Mrs. Pollock hung up abruptly to call the home of another neighbor, professional mountain lion hunter and guide, Clint Mecham. Mecham's wife, Lori, placed a quick telephone call to her husband in Escalante where he was working with Tom Becker on a Utah State University mountain lion study in the Boulder Mountain area. The two men packed their tranquilizing equipment and headed for Tropic, 43 miles away. The mountain lion, in the meantime, mean-time, left the tree, raced across the street, gracefully jumping fences into the fields dotted with cedars and oak trees. Mrs. Mecham jumped into her car and went up the block to Mrs. Pollock's home where the two ladies held a hurried conference, and headed out to find Clint Mecham's dad. Stan, also an experienced ex-perienced hunter and guide. Stan Mecham, it seems, was out hunting mountain lions, but another son, McClain happened to be at home. McClain Mecham loaded up his snowmobile and his favorite hunting dog, Clyde, and headed for the spot the cougar was last seen. Clyde is an experienced hunting dog, bred from a 30-year line of "Walkers," and he looked forward to capturing his 84th mountain lion The snowmobile moved swiftly over the fields covered with the previous night's fresh snowfall, and hunter and dog quickly found the animal and treed him. The agile cat jumped down and ran again, only to be chased once more by Mecham and Clyde, who trapped the animal in the canal ditch by Tropic's old headhouse. Again, Clyde treed the animal, this time in a short cedar tree. The cat jumped down again and dog and hunter chased him to a knoll behind the Clint Mecham residence where he climbed another , tree, this time to stay, with Clyde making certain he did. Shortly after, the two cougar experts arrived from Escalante with their tranquilizing equipment. Making certain that the animal was in a tree that could be climbed, they shot their tranquilizing darts. Waiting five to 10 minutes for the drug to take effect, they climbed after the cat, lowering it gently and safely to the ground. The male lion proved to be 7 feet, l'-. inches long, with pads 2 inches wide and 3 inches long. They determined that he was about 18 months old, and at only 70 pounds clearly undernourished. A conservation con-servation officer commented that he may have been weaned too earlv Becker and Mecham discovered 'hat the cat had been tagged bv Fish and Game as No. 901. Thov added another mark, the number seven tattooed on his ear. They decided that there was no point in killing the lion and agreed to keep him sedated while they transported him back to their study area on Boulder Mountain. They would take him to a remote area, leave a substantial amount of horsemeat for him to feed on, and observe him as a part of their study. Study lions are tagged and some are fitted with electronic radio collars which emit at beeping sounds audible only to special receivers operated by study team members. When the animal is resting or asleep, the beef sounds twice a second and when the animal is on the move, it sounds once each second. When the lions are recaptured, recap-tured, their weight is rechecked as well as their growth and general condition. The distance between tagging points is also calculated so that their range of travel can be determined. 1 Clint Mecham r sman for the Becker is a te mountain hor. Sharon P '. . home.chat'iri ; . keeping a -window. |