Boone and Crockett scores a cat based on the length and width of its skull.Ī taxidermist took rough measurements of the skull, and Bradley called his friend, Ryan Hatfield, an Idaho native who then worked for Boone and Crockett, and gave him the unofficial score.Īfter the required 60-day drying period, Hatfield officially measured the skull at 15 14/16 inches. It weighed about 160 pounds, he said, but weight means nothing in determining record-book status. “The guides kept saying, ‘Look at the size of that cat,'” Bradley said. “I was intimidated.”Īfter aligning a perfect shot, he dropped the cat. “It was pretty eerie looking into the eyes of an ultimate predator,” he said. When Bradley arrived, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw, and it wasn’t just the animal’s size. The hounds had the cat, a huge male, treed and holding. “Much of our climb was on all fours,” Bradley said. The hunters followed, scaling a steep hill coated with up to 18 inches of snow. They listened to the dogs for another 10 minutes with no change in their location or in the tone of their barking. The pursuit usually lasts hours, sometimes longer. They released the hounds and the pack rocketed uphill.Ībout 15 minutes later, the sound of the baying hounds abruptly changed.Įven the guides looked a little puzzled, Bradley said. The morning was fruitless, but midday they crossed a fresh set of tracks. On the final day, there was 6 inches of fresh snow and ideal tracking conditions when they set out. But “easy” should be put in perspective.Īfter two days of searching, they cut only one set of tracks – a female and a cub, which were legally off-limits. He had to be home Thursday evening, which gave him precious little time to hunt.īut the weather worked in the group’s favor, piling fresh snow each day, which made it easier to spot fresh cat tracks. They arrived at Craig’s backcountry camp along the Lochsa River the next day. The Bradleys scrambled to gather their gear and get on the road. That call came on a Monday evening in December 2007 with simple instructions: Be here tomorrow. They were basically on call when conditions were good. When Craig offered to take him on a hunt, Bradley and his father, Bert, were in.īut there was a catch. He’d heard many stories about cat hunting from his friend, Tim Craig, the owner of Boulder Creek Outfitters in Peck.
“In all my years of hunting, I’ve never seen one,” he said.īut Bradley was intrigued by the idea. But taking a record mountain lion took him by surprise. 10 in the club’s all-time records.īradley, 40, is a lifelong hunter with many trophy elk and mule deer to his credit. “My wife turned to me and said, ‘This is a big deal, isn’t it?'” Bradley said.īradley’s cat was the largest taken in North America for the three-year period from 2007 to 2009 and the second largest ever measured in Idaho, according to Boone and Crockett, which certifies the largest big game animals.īradley’s cat is No. The second came in June when he got a gold medal at the Boone and Crockett Club’s Big Game Awards in Reno.
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