Hunt Breaks Up Pack of Predatory Dogs : Antelope Valley: County officials, ranchers use trucks and a plane to track down animals that killed dozens of sheep. One is caught, one is killed in pursuit.

It was hours before dawn Friday, but animal control officers were already assembled--weary, but armed and game to do battle.

Many had managed just a few hours of sleep since Monday, frustrated in their efforts to hunt down a pack of dogs that had killed dozens of local sheep. By week’s end, the trail had gone cold--three of the dogs had eluded captors for days, blending into the desert darkness at night, hiding among the dense underbrush during the day.

“Why don’t we just napalm them?” quipped one official early Friday. For the next seven hours, he and a posse of Los Angeles County animal control officers and local ranchers waited for a glimpse of the hounds that have been terrorizing livestock in this part of the northern Antelope Valley.

By midmorning, they finally got a break. Two of the culprits were spotted with the help of airborne reconnaissance.

A fleet of all-terrain vehicles and trucks took up the chase through the desert near Rosamond, trailing the fleeing canines as they high-tailed it across the Kern County line. Overhead, the plane kept track of the dogs, and the hunters believed they were finally at the end of the chase.

“These dogs are pretty unpredictable,” said Bob Ballenger, a spokesman for county animal control, who joined the hunt.

The final chain of events began just before sunset Thursday. Workers at the Nebeker ranch--the center of the most vicious attacks--began to patrol the sheep and goat pens in trucks.

The dogs had struck at least three times over the past week. Stakeouts by ranch hands and animal control officers had failed to foil the hounds, who had slaughtered over 30 lambs, worth thousands of dollars. So on Friday, the ranchers tried to scare the dogs away with the truck patrol.

At 3:30 a.m., the animal control officers shuffled into their headquarters, located a couple of miles from the ranch. After guzzling some coffee, they hopped in their trucks in teams of two and drove to surveillance points along the mostly dirt roads that surround the ranch.

To reach the sheep pens, the dogs would have to leave their desert camouflage and dart across the road, where they could be seen and captured.

“It’s just a waiting game,” said county Department of Animal Care and Control Officer Michael Wilson, his breath fogging in the chilly, early-morning air. “You can’t predict what domestic dogs will do.”

Wilson was right.

As the officers shivered in their cars and waited, the dogs had already struck at another ranch farther north, killing several goats.

But as daylight began to break, the once-still patch of desert north of the ranch began to bustle with action as officers and ranchers in their all-terrain vehicles and pickups drove around trying, with little success, to flush out the dogs.

The hunt changed when Michael Lamb drove up in his pickup and asked, “Why wasn’t I invited to this hunt?” Officer Leslie Troncale, Lamb’s neighbor, smiled, saying, “He has a plane .”

A few minutes later, Lamb was airborne in his Cessna, with Troncale’s husband, Craig, at his side, radioing their observations to the ground forces.

The hunters, learning of the attack farther north, drove to the Kern County line, where they met Kern County animal control officers who were now also hunting the dogs.

As if on cue, the group got word that a homeowner just north of the Kern County line reported seeing three dogs running from her property with a chicken in their mouths.

Dirt and tumbleweed flew as the hunters sped off, crisscrossing a grid of riverbeds and ditches as the dogs scattered, the reconnaissance plane keeping track from the sky.

The smallest dog, a black terrier, tried to cut across a dirt path, but dashed in front of a pickup and was run over and killed. Another, a tan shepherd mix, dove into a drainpipe to hide. The exit was blocked by animal control officers, who crawled in, retrieved the whimpering hound and tossed it in the lockup.

A third dog--a German shepherd and pit bull mix, and the largest of the pack--apparently escaped.

“It looks like we got his gang, but we didn’t get the leader,” said Jack Cramer, a 59-year-old ranch hand. The remaining dog, he said, “may or may not be active. Once they lose their pack, their psychology changes.”

The hunters say they spotted a collar on the fleeing dog and saw signs that the dog killed in the chase had also belonged to someone.

That was just what Eugene Nebeker, owner of the Nebeker ranch, had expected. Last week, his ranchers had shot three other domestic dogs that had attacked his livestock. He was fuming that a pet owner’s carelessness had cost him tens of thousands of dollars worth of livestock.

“About two-thirds of our business has come to a screeching halt,” he said.

“I’m just absolutely fed up with this situation, and I’m not going to rest until it’s better controlled,” he said. “The custom up here with too many people is just to let their dogs run free.”

Gail Miley, manager of the Lancaster animal control shelter, said, “If people only knew what their animals are capable of doing.”