Lassoing a Lion

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 6, 20 February 1911, Page 18

Lassoing a Lion

(Reprinted from the " Westminster

Gazette " of August 4.)

(By R. B. TOWNSHEND.)

Buffalo Jones is a man with a past. In his unregenerate days he began by helping to destroy the American buffalo when they were being shot down by millions for their hides forty years ago; but, moved to pity by the sad fate impending over so noble a race, he made up his mind to a save a remnant alive. So, getting a couple of first-class ropers to help him, he secured by sheer hard riding and skilful lassoing over fifty young buffalo; he tamed them, and their progeny are now numbered by hundreds. Fired with this success, Buffalo Jones later on, accompanied by John Rea, made an expedition to the Barren Grounds of Canada in order to catch and domesticate the musk-ox. He secured five calves, and was joyfully making his way back when a strange fate overtook them. The superstitious Indians had a belief that, if the white men carried any of the game alive out of the country, the Great Spirit would be angry, and all the game would die. So they dogged the tracks of Buffalo Jones and his comrade, and stole on them one night and cut the throat of every musk-ox calf. They laid no hand on the white men nor on their dogs, nor did they desire to eat the meat of the captured musk-oxen, what they did was to sacrifice them there to the Spirit of the Barren Grounds, and utterly ruin a unique chance of domesticating the most singular of Arctic animals.

More recently President Roosevelt made Jones the Warden of the Yellowstone Park, where the U.S. Government still keeps a few half-tame buffalo; but two years ago the daring old Plainsman made yet another new departure. Along with Zane Grey, an American novelist, a gigantic Mormon named Emett, and Jim Owens, a forest ranger, he went to the Grand Canon of Arizona to rope lions. The cougar, or mountain lion, is a powerful cat, measuring as much as eight feet from tip to tip, and extraordinarily active. On Powell's Plateau on the Canon's North Rim they found the lions at home, lots of them. They had brought half a dozen useful

hounds along, and started them after a young lion on a hot scent, and the men rode headlong on their trail through the rocks and cedar brakes. They found the lion treed by the dogs in a cedar, and, leaving their horses, they advanced on foot with their lassos. Mormon Emett climbed the rocks above the cedar, and managed to throw his rope over the lion's head, but the animal was too quick and flung it off with his paw before the noose drew. Meanwhile Buffalo Jones actually climbed the tree itself, with his lasso, and by the aid of a long forked stick poked his noose at the lion. The lion bit at the rope, and Jones was clever enough to lift the slack noose over his ears. " Pull," he yelled to the men at the other end of the rope on the ground; they surged all together, and down came the lion crashing through the boughs, and down came Jones, shaken out of the tree also by the lion's fall. The lion was tip in a moment, and made a bound for Jones, who just managed to dodge, while Jim tied the free end of the lasso to a sapling. The lion bounced round in a whirling wheel of dust and yellow fur, but the choking noose had drawn on his throat, and he presently dropped senseless. Jones sprang on him and loosed the lasso to prevent him from being strangled to death, while Jim got nis rope on hie hind-paws and stretched him out. Now the ropers had their victim pretty well helpless ; Emett held each of the lion's claws in turn, while Jones, _with a pair of strong wire-nippers, clipped short every claw; then on his neck they put a strong collar and a _ chain in place of the lasso : and they tied all his four feet together like a trussed calf. There they left their first lion to cool off, and hastened next to where the baying of the hounds told them that they had already treed a lioness. As before, Jones climbed the tree, and with a long stick poked the noose on to her neck, and, as before, as soon as the men hauled on the rope the lioness fell out of the tree. Emett Avas ready under the tree with an open noose in his hands, and he slipped it over one hind foot as she fell; so there were two ropes on her, Jim and Jones hauling on her neck and the gigantic Mormon on one hind foot. But the lioness was a big handful. She was all over the open space under the trees at once. To quote the words of the teller of the story in " Field and Stream," "The dust flew; the sticks ■napped; the gravel pattered like shot against the cedars. Jones ploughed the ground flat on his stomach, holding on with one hand, with the

other trying to fasten the end of the rope to something; Jim went to his knees, and on the other side of th« lioness Emett's huge bulk tipped in a sharp angle and then fell." At last, however, Jones succeeded in making fast his end to a tree, and then got a third rope on her front paws. Now they had her stretched out and at their mercy, and they clipped her claws and put a collar on her, as they had done with the lion; and, lastly, a stick between her jaws for her to bite on, they muzzled her with wire. On this their first attempt they had secured a lion and lioness as completely iinder their control as the pair Noah took into the Ark.

Buffalo Jones has been sixty-five yeare on the frontier, but roping American lions which run up cedar trees is not hard enough work to satisfy the " Last of the Plainsmen." Three months ago he started with his horses, hounds, and lassos for East Africa, and there his intention was to go one better .than that good friend of ms and bold hunter, ex-President Roosevelt, by riding down and roping the far grander lions of Africa, out on the bare and open veldt. Already the news has come that he and his cowboys have roped a full-grown lioness, and neither man nor horse was injured in the struggle; but the King of beasts—or should we say the Queen ? -—proved herself far stronger than her American cousins, and it cost the cowboys six hours' hard work before they had her tied down.