Navajo Fish and Wildlife issues last permits for cougars
Navajo Times | Christopher S. Pineo
Wildlife Conservation Enforcement Officer Larry Joe, 63, of Ship rock, lays out the hide of a female mountain lion on the tailgate of his truck parked at the Navajo Nation Department of Fish and Wildlife on Dec. 31.
WINDOW ROCK
When Larry Joe, 63, looked down the barrel of his magnum at a treed cougar in Sanostee Canyon, he didn’t know the hunt was far from over.
“Doom,” he described the gunshot.
Joe, who works as a wildlife conservation enforcement officer, brought the hide to Navajo Fish and Wildlife Department on Dec. 31, the day after the organization had issued the last permits for cougars.
Joe used hunting dogs to track the cat. He had treed the cougar a mile earlier in the hunt, but a section of tree trunk blocked a clear shot.
The tree saved the cougar temporarily, but the second time the dogs treed it Joe’s bullet struck the cougar in the side. It fell from the tree, but the hunt still wasn’t over. After getting shot with a high-caliber handgun, falling from a tree, and dropping down a crevasse, the cougar held onto life.
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