Back on the track

A mountain lion hunt can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience even for the most avid of hunters, which is why volunteers from across northeast Wyoming were thrilled to provide one here in Crook County for a young man who recently recovered from leukemia.

The experience was organized by Oconto River Kids, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit with the sole purpose of providing outdoor activities for kids with life-threatening illnesses. The charity connected 16-year-old Austin from Cody with county residents Brandon and Cindi Baudhuin, who were recruited to help provide western-style hunts for the kids back in 2019.

The organization turned to the Baudhuins for this particular experience because, says Brandon, we’re better equipped to handle a lion hunt here in Crook County than in many other places.

“We have some friends that have a lot of experience with mountain lion hunting and have the hounds to do it,” he says. “We actually had landowners and houndsmen from Crook, Weston and Campbell Counties helping out.”

Oconto River Kids had already organized three other activities for Austin, but the cat was to be the icing on the cake. For it to happen, says Brandon, meant waiting for the right conditions.

“It really kind of snowballed, we got the right weather to make something like this happen. The Monday before, we got about four inches of snow, so we started getting things lined up with Austin’s dad and reaching out to some of the houndsmen,” he says.

“I couldn’t believe just how eager the houndsmen and landowners were to help.”

The hunt itself was slow for the first three hours, he says, but then, at around 10 a.m., the track was located.

“Things really started getting interesting,” he says. “It didn’t take long, the hounds made pretty short work of the lion track and headed to a tree probably half a mile from where we put the dogs on the track.”

The lion treed on public land atop what Brandon describes as a pretty substantial vertical climb.

“Austin did a great job, he’s finally starting to get his legs back under him after having the chemo treatments and he did really well, I was happy to see he was able to negotiate that kind of steep terrain. He made just an excellent shot on the lion,” he says.

When the team saw the animal, Brandon says, many were lost for words.

“It’s a heck of a lion. Most everybody who saw it said it was either the biggest or one of the biggest tom mountain lions that they’ve seen in this area,” he says.

“Austin was pretty excited, as were the rest of us. When we got to the lion in the tree, all of us knew how special of a lion that was.”

Austin has been an avid outdoorsman since he was old enough to participate in hunting, Brandon says. However, while he had participated in other hunts prior to his illness and his Wyoming hunting tour with Oconto also included archery antelope and deer in the Cody area and elk in the Rock Springs area, this was his first lion.

“It’s something that he may never even go after again in his life – it’s an animal that most hunters only dream of getting an opportunity to hunt, much less taking a tom of this size,” he says.

The Baudhuins have worked with kids through Oconto since 2019, including boys from Wisconsin and Idaho who both got antelope, deer and elk with them. While the charity goes to great lengths for all the kids it works with, Austin’s experience ended up being extra special because he’s a Wyoming native

“Oftentimes, the kids that we work with aren’t real local, so it’s hard to do a lot of the extra stuff – it’s hard to put together a lion hunt per se because you really need to move on a moment’s notice when you get the right weather,” Brandon explains. “It’s hard to coordinate with kids that live a thousand miles away, like many of them do that we’ve worked with in the past.”

Baudhuin says he is eternally grateful to those volunteers who made the hunt possible – and made it an overwhelmingly positive experience for Austin.

“He’s a very thankful kid and was grinning from ear to ear on all of them. He’s a lot of fun to be around and we’re really pleased we had so much support in this area. We have great people here and they put a lot of time and effort into making the hunt a tremendous success for Austin,” he says.

Oconto River Kids was established in 2012 by a landowner who envisioned a local volunteer group that would provide hunting and fishing opportunities for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families. The group continues to grow, but continues to follow that simple initial approach through experiences such as its signature bear hunt each September.