we used to watch those on an almost nightly basis when I lived in Leadville back ~ 20 years ago. Things moving so fast and changing directions so quickly, no plane that I know of could do that.
So, I also lived in Leadville exactly the time that thinhorn lived there. I had a 8’x4’ skylight above my bed and cannot tell you how many nights I saw the same thing. I PM’d him last night to confirm. Sh!T was just amazing.
1. One night camping in a wash near lukeville, az our group heard many footsteps coming our way in the moonlight. I raised my old buck black handle and glinted the moonlight light off of it. The desired effect was reached when I heard the footsteps stop suddenly with a very loud, “aye dios mio” directly after. About a hundred folks booked it back to the border that night.
2. Sorry, long story - I had single-lunged a good 4x deer north of Durango, CO . I needed to track it for about 2 miles in a really badly timed snowstorm. The deers path had passed my truck closely, so I shed just about everything I had to go super light with only a headlamp and camelback. I knew when I found the deer it would be dead if I found it. I started a grid search. I stumbled upon a sow bear digging in a kind of swampy bench thing for something I couldn’t make out even though I was 20 yards away. She had her back to me and I slinked below her and around regaining my contour, thinking that was a close one.
after a few yards I found a big fresh drag in the aspens, leading downhill. It was pretty big, but I didn’t put the pieces together immediately and continued to contour. I hit a creek, moved downhill and started the next contour. About At the fall line of the drag From before I came across a huge Downed fir root ball that I could hop up on and get a great viewpoint. As soon as I jumped up on the log, a lion sunk down facing me at the end of the downed log. Holy sh!t 20 yards away! I Slowly opened my jacket and fanned the sides out to get as “big” as possible. We locked eyes so hard for 5 minutes that I didn’t even see the 4X that the cat had dragged down the mtn right next to it, uphill of the log. I broke a couple of the rootball branches off and started beating the log with them making all kinds of f’d up noises. The cat is growling and I though this is it. Then what really scared me, was that I looked up hill of the log I was standing on and there was deer fawn covered up and cached right at my feet! So, double F’d I guess. After 20 mins of this “Unforgiven” stand-off, I finally eased off the log, in full eye contact, and literally did 360’s off the mtn, yelling and beating every tree and rock I could with those sticks. Scared Sh!tless.
I still have those Bear-Cat sticks hanging above the wood stove and I carry a glock 19 now.
3. In CO. Guiding from a spot we called the gun turret, I was looking down on my fellow guides clients and noticed a Lion about 50 yards behind one of them, stalking. I called TJ on the radio and said “you’ve got a lion 40 yards behind the young guy.” TJ walked over and yelled at his boy. The guy literally stood up, turned around and, not holding his firearm, took a picture of the cat! The cat sunk like the one I described above, and then TJ through a couple 45 rounds at it and it booked.
I got to watch it all from my safe perch on the hill.