Holy Moly dogzapper! It sounds like you have been blessed with that old Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". So far your stories look like material for a whole book with sequels!
I can't even come close to your tales! Back in CO, I once ran into what may have been a rogue cow who had retired as lead cow. I sure got some lessons from her. This was back when I was younger and my knee didn�t need replacing yet. I have never had the luck to hunt supported by riding stock, so my lot is to hunt shanks-mare. One day after more than a week of days of slogging up and down the mountain, postholing in the horse tracks along the access trails, and hunting blowdown criscrossed timber, I was a little worn down. Racing the horse hunters was just not working. So I decided to take an easier day and hunt a lower finger ridge where I had once seen a really nice mule deer buck. I was poking my way down the top of the ridge, tehoretically deer hunting, when I cut another hunter�s very fresh tracks coming from the opposite end, so I knew he had cleared off the ridgetop. Nevertheless, I continued down the ridge to see what tracks I might cut. Shortly I found a huge elk bed. Close inspection indicated that he had blown out an enormous cow who had been bedded solitary and securely in a very defensible position. Her leaps down off the ridge were impressive, Olympian, despite knee to crotch deep snow! Shortly I ran into the hunter and upon inquiry, not only was he unaware of the cow, but he had no intention of following.
Unfortunately I had a cow tag, and am apparently lousy at promising myself I won�t do something stupid. I had vowed not to undertake a marathon that morning, but here I was looking at fresh cow tracks leaping off the ridge, crossing the valley, and heading up the mountain. Sigh! I had to follow. She had a good head start. I hoped, foolishly, that she might have gotten over her fright, and relaxed, and even might bed down in the timber. I am a timber hunter, so that idea appealed greatly.
Ha! That old biddy crashed off the ridge, ran up the next ridge, got into some horrible deadfall, and then stopped � standing in the top of a deadfall of lodgepole with its needles still on. She had waited there for a long time. She must have seen me on her trail and left. She went through open talus in heavy snow, then through a bedding area where she stood in an elk bed and jumped uphill almost 15 feet into the tracks of other elk. That took a while to sort out, I have to admit. Then she took me through more tangle, always up lung-busting steep hillsides. She stood and waited in several places to see if I was still coming. Bye and bye, I knew I could not possibly get her, but I had to see what would happen. She doubled back, used other fresh elk tracks, reversed direction, and dragged me through several open areas of deep snow with talus or sage where she could easily watch for me. I finally saw her. After the last steep talus patch, when I was practically crawling, I spotted just her ears and eyes watching me from the other side of a ridge. She was standing in the gully on the far side, out of sight except up to the bottom of her eye sockets. It was maybe 60 yards. Our eyes met, and she was off again. I was a pawn. She made a monkey of me in the end. After many hours of that chase I was beat, but I sure got an education. I parted then, wishing her well, and hoping she had left behind a string of offspring with her wisdom. Given her size, she must have been amcient, and should have had a string of maybe 18 to 20 calves brought up. Hopefully they inherited her smarts. If wolves ever move down there, they will need all the smarts they can get.
