Interview: Rod Noah’s Two-for-one Cougar Hunt
OutdoorHub Reporters 09.24.13
Washington hunter Rod Noah is still flabbergasted after his recent once-in-a-lifetime hunt and his first mountain lion (or should we say mountain lions?). In an interview with OutdoorHub, Rod described how an elk hunt with longtime friend Ben Hendrickson ended with him making a shot usually only seen in movies. The excitement in his voice was palpable, even two weeks after the hunt.
“I still don’t know how that shot happened,” Rod said.
Rod and Ben were calling for cow elk in Pend Oreille County, Washington on September 9 when they spotted two cougars approaching them. In the four years they had been hunting the area, they had never encountered a mountain lion. In fact, Rod had never seen one in the wild before. He said he first thought the cougars were deer, but then their tails went up and the hunter knew he was being stalked. Rod stopped calling and stood up so the predators could see that he wasn’t an elk.
“I was on my knees and when I stood up they saw me,” Rod said. “The smaller one jumped and ran out of sight behind a little dip [of a hill] behind the bigger one. The large one was looking at me and it had turned broadside, so I brought my rangefinder out and measured him to be about 32 yards away. It was in no hurry to leave.”
Thinking that the smaller cougar had been spooked and left, the hunters agreed that it made for the perfect opportunity to bag a mountain lion. Rod and Ben each had a tag for one of the animals. Rod nocked and loosed an arrow at the cat.
“The tail went up and the arrow was flying through the air like a flare,” Rod said. “It struck him dead-center. It struck him hard.”
The lighted nock Rod was using should have made it easier to find the cougar, but it had fallen off mid-flight. The hunters waited several minutes and tracked the animal further down the hill.
“We’re standing there looking at the blood trail and I knew the one I shot went to the left, but the trail went straight down the hill,” Rod recalled.
They eventually found the body of a cougar, but Rod said he knew something was wrong. He remembered hitting his targeted cougar broadside, but the arrow was lodged in the middle of this cat’s chest. After some investigation, Rod and Ben found the other cougar, the one Rod had initially hit, several feet away. It turned out that the arrow penetrated the first cougar and went on to hit the second one, much further behind it. Rod couldn’t wager a guess as to how close the two animals were, but he knew it was an extraordinary shot. Rod said he and Ben high-fived in amazement over the shot. However, it also meant that he technically double-bagged two cougars and the hunters’ initial excitement then turned to worry.
“Now what do we do?” Rod remembered thinking.
He could have let Ben tag the other cougar, which would have been illegal. At the same time, Rod could face penalties for the second cougar. In the end, the hunters decided that honesty was the best policy.
“I didn’t know how [it] was gonna go down, but there was no other way to do it,” Rod said. “We could’ve tagged them both, but that wasn’t right. And then I couldn’t tell the story.”
Rod hoped that the extraordinary circumstances of the shot would be on his side.
“I said ‘Well, we got to call it in.’ When I told the game warden I shot two cougars with one arrow he said ‘What?'”
An hour after Rod called the incident in, officer Severin Erickson showed up at the scene. In these kind of bizarre situations, wardens are often given leeway to make their own calls. Severin decided that the hunters made an honest mistake and that they did the right thing letting the department know. Rod said he is thankful Severin was so understanding, because it could have gone worse.
“He was a nice guy and he let my buddy tag the other one,” he said.
The hunter is now awaiting the return of the cougars from a taxidermist.
“I have room for them, if my wife would let me,” Rod joked.
Curiously, he said the two cougars, both of them male, seemed to be on friendly terms.
“One was 85 pounds and the other was over 100 pounds […] they were close together, they were hanging out,” Rod said.
Male cougars are rarely seen together, and usually maintain well-defined territories. Mountain lions are solitary animals and are usually seen together only when mating.
Whatever the case, the hunters now have a unique story that’s all their own.
OutdoorHub’s initial coverage of this story can be seen here.
