Catching a cougar is not an easy task

Cougars (also known as Mountain Lions) are elusive predators living alone on large territories making a extremely difficult task to hunt them.

As predators, cougars are aware of everything around them, know their territory pretty well and their keen senses, particularly sight and hearing allow them to detect danger - including hunters - much before it may harm them.

In fact, even hunting deer on areas with high lions population is hard to see one of them out in the bushes, so if you are planning to catch a cougar, prepare yourself for the ultimate predator hunting because you will be probably a lot of time outdoors.

Even when some lucky hunters have been at the right place on the correct moment and were able to catch a cougar with only a few minutes on the field, reality is that you need to invest a lot of effort to track a cougar and later shoot it!

On this regard, calling, luring and stalking a cougar have demonstrated to be ineffective, so using such techniques is a waste of time; furthermore, probably you will alert lions as well other cats on the area of your presence and they well leave the area much before you are even close to see them.

Since cougars prefer high positions to bed, they usually are able to have total visual control of a wide area and will see you even when you are moving slowly; on the other hand these animals are very active predators instead of opportunistic so luring or calling won't work properly; perhaps a coyote will show on the area, but not  lion.

So, if you really wish to hunt a cougar the best choice is to use hounds. Properly trained dogs will be able to follow a cougar track left even one day before; but with so much time ahead, there will be a lot of territory to cover, but there's not other choice, you must trust your dogs.

Once in the run, prepare yourself to walk a lot on extreme cold, abrupt terrain and step slopes; moreover, your physical condition must be remarkable, otherwise you won't be able to keep dogs rhythm, especially when they get close to the cat. That moment hounds become frenetic and move very fast to tree a cat and you need to be in good shape to follow them, after all the cat won't wait all day long for you in order to be shot.

If you don't have hounds the best options are to go out for cats with a friend who do has or hire an outfitter. Both are good choices and whichever you choose, be ready for the the worse scenario.

Bring with you enough water and food to expend at least two days out there, you will also need extra clothes and all the apparels to be safe by night in case you need to sleep in the forest. Most of cougar huntings last all the day but time to time hunters need to expend the night out because they covered too much terrain and are not able to come back the same day, then is when you need to be ready to expend the night out.

Remember that most of cougar hunting is done in winter time, thus be ready to face whichever mother nature throws regarding weather; from windy, cold days up to heavy snow.

At the end, no matters how much tough it was, if you are able to catch a cougar all the effort will be forgotten and you only will have the satisfaction of completing a difficult task which is not achieved by many hunters. Are you ready to face the elements and go behind a big cat?