Well......as everyopne knows here in PA......if you believe the PGC, mt lions do not exist here.
Well.............a few days ago a friend of mine who works in a neighboring town got a call of a large animal, possibly a mt lion in a womans yard. My friend took the pic......showed it to the PGC.....who said it is definitely NOT a bobcat......but would not say its a mt lion.
My friend is an avid fisherman and hunter......so he knows what a mt lion should look like.....as opposed to a dog, etc. Your opinions??
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KMKeller
October 17, 2003, 06:27 PM
That my friend is a died in the wool cougar. No ifs ands or buts about it.
444
October 17, 2003, 06:35 PM
That looks like a lion to me.
Rebel Gunman HK
October 17, 2003, 07:05 PM
Thats a nice picture of his butt. :eek:
Bruz
October 17, 2003, 07:36 PM
if you believe the PGC, mt lions do not exist here.
I'm afraid they are right...they are trying to crack down on house cats that are abusing steroids. :rolleyes:
auschip
October 17, 2003, 08:03 PM
It's obvious, that your friend took a picture of a snipe. Notice the Mt. Lion like color, and the rounded skull with cat like ears. No doubt, it is a snipe.
Atticus
October 17, 2003, 10:14 PM
How did he get that close? Any exotic animal keepers in the area?
I found some fresh cat tracks nearly as big as my hand in Sothern Illinois last year (they aren't there either according to the DNR). And another guy here in Southern Ohio (who I trust absolutely) saw one two years ago.
But he does have a neighbor who raises exotic animals...so who knows.
I don't know why they wouldn't be returning to former ranges, with the current restrictions on hunting and the explosion of whitetails, coons, etc.
Art Eatman
October 17, 2003, 11:32 PM
If it's a cat, it's a mountain lion. Period. The ferns and weeds are, what, knee high or so? Looks about the right size for a mostly-grown female, or a young male.
Art
WYO
October 17, 2003, 11:41 PM
So, if they don't exist, does that mean it's ok to shoot them?
444
October 17, 2003, 11:50 PM
Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I was told last night that there are a pack of wolves running around Pahrump. Appearently it was in the newspaper.
I guess someone had a couple wolves that they were keeping as pets and they got loose, reproduced and are now raising havoc with the local livestock. :confused:
mete
October 18, 2003, 01:26 AM
There have been many sightings of mountain lions in NE PA, but it's nice to have a photo of one. Nearby in the Catskill Mtns I've talked to a number of people who have seen one , but of course they don't exist according to the NY DEC. I have also talked to people in various eastern states who have seen them but in most cases the officials say they don't exist !! NJ has introduced them and now admits it , VT also admits their existance.
Steve in PA
October 18, 2003, 01:35 AM
I don't know how close he was. When I return the pic I'll ask him. I'm sure the pic was taken by a camera with a zoom. I don't think he could have walked up too close to it.
mod12
October 18, 2003, 05:02 AM
i'll bet it can eat a lot more than 667 squirrels!
gun-fucious
October 18, 2003, 06:23 AM
dats one o dem Cappybaras ain't it?
:evil:
Looks like the Nittany Lion got out of some ones New York Apartment
"Most of the time he's the lord of the jungle, everyone grins while he gripes. Usually he's found just loungin around in his stripes. He's a Tiger in the Rain, it's the thunder and lighting he can't explain..."
-Michael Franks
I just can't imagine a cougar lounging around in a yard in the middle of the day like that unless it's a pet that's gotten free.
Keith
Dr.Rob
October 18, 2003, 02:58 PM
Dat be lion, sho nuff.
mod12
October 18, 2003, 03:05 PM
i'm voting for the house cat/steroid theory. take a look at its deltoids!
mod12
October 18, 2003, 03:08 PM
a lounge lion? i've heard of lounge lizards. dated one in fact!
PALongbow
October 18, 2003, 08:13 PM
Steve,
There are mountain lions in PA. I saw a coyote back in the early 80's while hunting in your neck of the woods and I called the PGC and basically they told me there were no coyotes in PA and it must have been a fox.
Ron
H&Hhunter
October 18, 2003, 11:05 PM
Why couldn't your friend take a picture of the front of this "lion"?
From that angle and because of the poor quality of the picture I'd say it's definatley a sasquatches house cat. Or maybe JFK's poodle oh oh I know it must be Elvis's pit bull.
;)
Guys that's either a malamute or a husky..
1.The picture is purposly fuzzy and off angle
2. No respecting Mt Lion alive would wait around in someones garden in broad daylight and let some one walk up behind it to take the worlds worst photograph. And if it was a tame one then we could have gotten a better picture don't you think?
But if you want it to be a Mt lion.........................well ok but it doesn't even remotely look like one.
semf
October 18, 2003, 11:28 PM
Well It sure as hell aint no tabby. Wrong colar for a Malamute right colar for a mountain lion. To thin for a Husky right size for a Mountain Lion. I've seen Fla Panthers in the wild that one looks similar.
Steve in PA
October 18, 2003, 11:33 PM
Deleted my response because after reading it....I found myself lowering myself to another persons level. :neener:
St. Gunner
October 18, 2003, 11:58 PM
Below is a pic of a set of feline ears, I won't tell you what kind. But look at them, and at the pic posted by Steve, and see if those ears don't look almost exactly alike. Mainly coloration we are talking about, markings and such.
Who thinks it looks like the same type of ears?
spectr17
October 19, 2003, 01:01 AM
Hey Steve,
I posted your pic in our varmint/predator forum, hope you don't mind. The voting is for something other than a cougar. The ears say bobcat to me.
I'm in the Calif Bay Area. I was out purposely looking for game to take pics of. A mtn lion would have been the grand prize. I took my daughter with me and we went on a hike. Only pics I got were turkeys. Big deal.
On the way back, she was looking out the window and said, "there's a moutain lion!". We circled around and took a pic from quite a ways off accross a pasture. Then we drove back again and parked out of site and walked up the road. I snuck to the edge of the road and took a pic. I raised up and took more. Then, I snuck back down and then down the hillside through a fence and walked up an older version of the road. Quite close now, I raised up and snapped a pic. It didn't run so I raised up full and took more.
The whole time, I was consentrating on the pics and ignoring the danger. Finally, I decided I would just take three steps, take a pic, repeat and see how close I could get. I was unarmed.... I picked up a large rock and started forward. I did it once and took the pic. Then, my damned feet wouldn't move! I promise I wasn't scared, but they just wouldn't move. So, I tossed the very big rock and tried to raise up the camera and snap. I was one second slow on the camera. I about hit it with the rock. That told me it was only about 20 yards. When it turned and ran, I also figured out it was a bobcat....
The light was dim, my eyesight not great. And, a very huge bobcat. As big as the very biggest pics I've seen. Maybe 28" at the back? I also followed it as it went in a tree and back out. It was never scared of me. The pics didn't come out well, but it was an adventure (in stupidity, I know).
only1asterisk
October 19, 2003, 04:17 AM
I hate to disbelieve anyone that (like myself) has seen a cat where they don't belong, but that photo could be of a dog. It looks like the feline in question as well. I guess would believe what my friend told me either way.
David
mod12
October 19, 2003, 09:04 AM
i still think it's a lounge lion hanging out at the lpcal watering hole!
Art Eatman
October 19, 2003, 11:45 AM
Bobcat ears? Trouble is, that ain't no bobcat tail, just barely visible on the ground. Never seen an unspotted bobcat, although the spots sorta fade into the darker color that an old bobcat changes to with age. But that critter in the photo is light.
One lion I almost shot :) was "pointed" like a sealpoint Siamese. The other two I've seen were light brown, all over. I've seen a couple of hides that had an orangish tone to them; one from Canada, one from Alaska (IIRC). Lots of folks around Terlingua have seen "black panthers", mucho-melanin cats. IOW, colors definitely vary. The three my wife has seen here in south Georgia have all been pretty dark.
:), Art
Keith
October 19, 2003, 02:39 PM
You know, maybe it IS a darned bobcat!
Art points out a tail visible on the ground, but it's hard to tell if that is a tail, or how long it is.
Every bobcat I've ever seen has been heavily spotted, but the first site I googled up shows one that's almost the same color as this one - here: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/plaza/abf90/bobcat.htm
Seen from the rear (in the position of the photo in this thread) and with no way to judge the scale you'd likely think this Bobcat was also a cougar.
It just goes to show how hard it is to rely on someone else's observations! Perhaps the guy who took the photo has never seen a cougar OR a bobcat. We have one photo, from the rear, of a cat in its thin summer coat (hardest to judge) and... who knows?
After seeing the photo of the tawny colored bobcat, I'm going to go with that. I think it's a bobcat.
Keith
KMKeller
October 19, 2003, 03:23 PM
The ear markings are typical of most of the female big cats. They work as little flags for the young to follow and react to. When the kittens see the little white flags disappear (due to mom flattening her ears), they hit the deck.
It's a female mountain lion (cougar, puma). The body mechanics are too long to be a bobcat and bobcat ears are proportionately larger compared to the size of the head that are a mountain lions. In this case, the ears are almost too small for a mountain lion, but I'm allowing for angle of the head. The body almost seems too narrow to be a mountain lion though and while slender, doesn't appear malnourished. I'm still going with mountain lion, but the picture is too fuzzy to be 100% sure.
spectr17
October 19, 2003, 04:10 PM
Lots of folks around Terlingua have seen "black panthers", mucho-melanin cats. IOW, colors definitely vary.
I've heard and read hundreds of black panther stories. Only problem is no one, repeat NO ONE has ever found a black panther carcass or shot one, not one black panther has ben hit by a car unlike the other brown cougars, not one has been captured on a game trail camera. The ONLY thing the black panther advocates can point to is the guy in Honduras pic from the early 1900s holding up what looks like is a dark colored cougar. And even that pic is questioned for being a circus pet.
Over 200 years of history in North America and not one shred of proof. Until they find the first scientific evidence of black panthers I'll just enjoy the tales as just that, tales.
Here's a pic of a cougar I got on my game cam in SoCal where I deer hunt. This big male would slip down in the evening from the foothills following the deer, hoping for a snack. It was raining heavy this night, that's the reason for the big dots on the pic.
You know, I thought the same thing. It's that "lankiness" that makes it look like a cougar.
Then, after reading the other commentary it occured to me that this is a summer photo! We're used to seeing a bobcat in its fall/winter coat that hides the slender feline form beneath.
It's the same with foxes. If you see them in the fall/winter/spring they look fat and "fluffy". See them in the summer and you can see the actual lanky body shape, etc.
And of course, I assumed that all bobcats have spots because every one I've seen had them. But, that's not the case, apparently. It may just be that the spots are more pronounced in the winter coat...?
Edited to add: I just went back and looked at the photo of a Bobcat that I posted. You should all take a look - that photo (the second one down on the page) is of a Bobcat in a summer coat! It DOES look lanky and there are no spots! That may be answer - the summer coat of a bobcat doesn't have spots, or at least they aren't as visible...
Take a look: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/plaza/abf90/bobcat.htm
Keith
444
October 19, 2003, 04:53 PM
I don't know, it still looks like a lion to me. But you are right, I have never seen a bobcat in the summer. It looks too long to be a bobcat. A bobcat has a body that is proporional to it's height if that makes any sense. This animal looks real long.
It looks to me like the reason the picture quality is bad is that it was taken with high magnification and a hand held camera.
I would tend to believe that a bobcat would be easier to photograph like that than a lion. Bobcats seem to be very unafraid or maybe just stupid. I have called them in to within 10 feet of my truck with the headlights on, the doors open and the interior lights on with two of us standing there whispering back and forth. And, it seemed like you couldn't spook them enough to make them bolt away. On the other hand, I have never seen a lion that was alive in the wild. I have seen them in zoos, and I have seen them dead, and I have seen them mounted but never saw one in the wild.
Keith
October 19, 2003, 04:54 PM
Look at the picture I posted...
Keith
Steve in PA
October 19, 2003, 07:27 PM
No, I don't mind anyone posting the pic.
I've seen bobcats....never this size......never this coloration.
Maybe they'll be more sightings or pictures. Wish it was better.
KMKeller
October 19, 2003, 09:18 PM
Ears are still to small to be a bobcat and the head is too large as well.
Art Eatman
October 19, 2003, 09:36 PM
Well, here's a bobcat.
Art
Art Eatman
October 19, 2003, 09:47 PM
For full frontal nudity, go to http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?threadid=3305 and scroll down a few posts.
:), Art
WYO
October 19, 2003, 11:14 PM
I didn’t post a conclusion on this topic initially because, for all the mountain lion sign I’ve seen, I’ve never seen one live in the wild. (In this respect, I’m skeptical like Keith and H&H (point number 2).) I have seen a few Louisiana bobcats (spotted and non-spotted), though, and that picture doesn’t look like the ones I have seen. Some of them looked only slightly bigger than some of the jumbo house cats I have owned. Looking at the size of the “suspect” creature against the flowers and plants (Art’s point), this animal is multiples of the size of a bobcat. The proportion of the ears to the rest of the body doesn’t look right to me, either. (I agree with KMKeller on that point.)
I checked the coloration of Steve’s cat against pictures of a mountain lion that a friend shot two years ago. Although I don’t have a good picture of the back of the ears, it does appear to have the darker coloration running from the head all the way down the back and tail, similar to, but not the same as, Steve’s picture.
I am not a dog person, so I'm not in a postion to say that it couldn't be a dog, but it is consistent with being a mountain lion. I would have liked to have seen a track or some droppings.
4v50 Gary
October 19, 2003, 11:35 PM
Looks like a mountain lion (cougar/catamount) to me. Bobcats have spots there's more hair growing out their ears.
ojibweindian
October 20, 2003, 10:44 AM
To be honest, that looks like the backside of my son in law's dog, and she's half coyote.
Have no real idea, though...
Dr.Rob
October 20, 2003, 12:16 PM
Lions have been known to do some strange things, like lounge on the side of the road sunning themselves in places where you aren't allowed to shoot them.
Sometimes you may find one lounging in the driveway of your mountain retreat.
H&Hhunter
October 20, 2003, 02:48 PM
I've seen dozens of Mt Lions in the wild. I've hunted them professionally both for sport and control. That is not a Mt Lion in the picture. That's my personal opinon.
If you'd like I can post dozens of pictures of lions both alive and dead but I don't think that would prove anything as to this particular photo.
Can we all agree that the photo in question has some very dubious qualities to it?
It immediatley reminded my of one of those fuzzy bigfoot shots from the 70's. My previous reply was an attempt at humor I didn't mean to insult Steve but after rereading I see that there was no way it couldn't be insulting and I appologize for the delivery of the post.
However I stand by my original conclusion. I think that the Photo is of a dog.
444
October 20, 2003, 02:53 PM
I would believe it was a dog before I believed it was a bobcat.
I agree that with one picture that isn't of good quality, we will never know what it was. And since we will never know, to me, it still looks like a lion. I don't care one way or the other, but I honestly think it looks like a lion.
Keith
October 20, 2003, 03:06 PM
I wish somebody would look at and comment on the picture in the link I posted above.
The picture of the bobcat in summer coat is identical to the picture of the cat taken in PA. Same tawny short-haired coat, same lanky frame - same type of critter as far as I'm concerned.
In the first "British Big Cats" thread there was a link to a photo of a black "leopard" taken in a field somewhere in England. That picture fooled a lot of people who claimed the "scale" showed it to be a 150 pound critter, six feet in length (or whatever). It isn't until you see the follow-up photo's that you are let in on the fact that it is an ordinary house cat.
When you see an object with the naked eye you have a fairly narrow focal plane that blurs objects in the foreground and background allowing you to unconsciosly judge distance and size.
You don't have that in a photo taken with a deep focal plane - everything is in focus and that distorts the size and distance.
You see that in "trophy pictures" where the hunter sits well behind the game to make it appear larger in relationship to the hunter. If you were standing there you wouldn't be fooled, but in the picture you are.
And you see that in pictures like this, even though they aren't taken to deliberately fool anyone. I think this is an ordinary bobcat in it's thin summer coat.
Keith
gun-fucious
October 20, 2003, 04:00 PM
next someone is going to claim that there are no big cats in New York State
well maybe not wild ones
didn't we just see a Bengal Tiger come out of a NYC apartment?
that dood had an African lion cub too, but the Tiger killed it.
An escaped pet catamount is a really good possiblity
heres some feisty kitty reports from other locales:
http://www.frii.com/~mytymyk/lions/attackex.htm
Art Eatman
October 20, 2003, 05:55 PM
Keith, I flipped back and forth between the "lion" picture and the ones in your link, particularly the lower one.
I dunno. It's possible it's a bobcat. I've not seen any of the local cats at my place "pale out" like that, so that's a new one on me. I noted the text commenting on the varying colors and size between northern range and southern...Most Texas bobcats seem to weigh around 25 to 35 pounds.
I was mostly judging on the possible size of the plants around the cat in Steve's picture. If they're around knee height, I think the cat is taller than is likely for a bobcat.
Seems to me like that photographer needs to go back out and get a better picture.
:D, Art
gun-fucious
October 20, 2003, 09:33 PM
the darker green foliage appears to be pachysandra
http://images.google.com/images?q=pachysandra
it has about a 6 inch span to the leaf umbrellas
i color corrected the image to match pachysandra:
John Galt
October 21, 2003, 01:12 AM
Your friend said he saw it from all sides & it's a mountain lion.
Where's the question? Whether your friend is a liar?
I'll just believe both of you...
Keith
October 21, 2003, 01:23 PM
Well, his friend was NOT prepared to say it was a mountain lion, only that he was sure it wasn't a bobcat.
I didn't know about this pale and spotless summer condition of bobcats either, and I would have had trouble identifying the critter as a bobcat as well.
The photo either shows 2 1/2 foot sitting figure of a bobcat near some 12 inch vegetation or a 4 foot sitting figure of a cougar near some 18 inch vegetation. We can't see the tail. The coat could be either cat. The ears say "bobcat".
This is Pennsylvania, so Occam's Razor tells us that it is more likely a bobcat in its pale summer coat.
Keith
gun-fucious
October 21, 2003, 02:06 PM
based on the size of the Pacysandra
i would estimate the animal at 3 feet
from base of tail to top of head
Although this is Pennsylvania's only wild cat, the Bobcat is smaller than many folks imagine, being little larger than a big house cat._ A mature Bobcat averages 36 inches in length, including a stubby, six-inch tail. This bobbed tail gives the Bobcat its name._ Pennsylvania Bobcats weigh 15-20 pounds, with large individuals as heavy as 35 pounds
http://forestcounty.com/bobcattext.htm
heres a PA bobcat:
http://www.harford-mystery.com/images/bobcat.jpg
Keith
October 21, 2003, 02:18 PM
Good work!
That photo is absolutely convincing. If you didn't KNOW it was a bobcat, you'd certainly ID it as something else!
Keith
Futo Inu
October 21, 2003, 02:26 PM
"So, if they don't exist, does that mean it's ok to shoot them?"
I like that - makes sense to me.
Art Eatman
October 21, 2003, 03:47 PM
Er, Keith, what other spotted cat has that short a tail? (I've not seen a lynx outside a zoo, and that's been several decades.)
Art
444
October 21, 2003, 04:09 PM
"So, if they don't exist, does that mean it's ok to shoot them?"
Why would you shoot it ? I am not talking about self defense or a situation where it was causing damage etc. I was talking to a guy at work about his deer hunting trip in Northern Nevada just south of the Idaho border. He claimed he saw a wolf. He said he knew it was a wolf because he had seen wolves when he lived in Alaska. I said, so what did you do ? "I shot at it". Why ? Why would that be his first reaction ? He sees what might be an animal not normally found in this area. And animal that once populated pretty much the whole country that is making a comeback and his first reaction was to kill it.
I dont' get it.
Just because you can shoot something, that doesn't mean you should (at least to me). I am not a tree hugger. I hunt and I shoot varmints for no reason other than my own personal enjoyment. But, my knee jerk reaction isn't just to shoot anything I see for no good reason.
Of course if this guy that took the picture had shot it, we would know for sure what it was.
Keith
October 21, 2003, 04:18 PM
Er, Keith, what other spotted cat has that short a tail? (
Well, yeah... obviously in this photo you can see the bobbed tail and the remaining spots along the belly.
Yet, if you set that cat down on its rear end facing away from you, what do you have? From that position, you'd see the lanky body shape (which you wouldn't associate with a bobcat) and you'd see the thinner tawny coat (which you'd associate with a cougar), etc. It would be easy to fool somebody.
Keith
Dr.Rob
October 21, 2003, 04:55 PM
Still think its a lion.
We don't have wolves here either, but they aren't extinct in wyoming. I know what coyote tracks look like. Never seen a Pack of feral dogs with prints THAT big running in a group of a dozen or more. Scared a dark-looking 4 legged canine of some sort across a snow swept logging road.. paw prints were so far apart as to make you doubt what you saw.
Lios still exist inremote parts of WVA.. Why not PA?
mete
October 21, 2003, 06:44 PM
I'll repeat again, there have been many sightings of mountain lions in NE PA. But to shoot it ? PA law says that if it's not listed as a game species it is illegal to shoot even if it doesn't exist.
Keith
October 21, 2003, 07:09 PM
Correction: there have been many REPORTED sightings of mountain lions in PA, and all over the northeast. But nobody ever shoots one or runs it down with the car - or even takes an unambigous photo!
I think there very well could be mountain lions coming back in the east, but there's just no real evidence as yet. Lots of people see Elvis, but nobody ever shoots one and brings him back to town to show everyone! Until they do, I have to think Elvis is dead and gone (I mean, the first time he was dead and gone...)!
Keith
Steve in PA
October 21, 2003, 10:02 PM
Hey.....a few years ago they said there weren't any coyotes in PA either. Yuk, yuk, yuk
Maybe there are mt lions....I don't know. The picture looks like one to me. Wait for more evidence I guess.
spectr17
October 22, 2003, 01:50 AM
Correction: there have been many REPORTED sightings of mountain lions in PA, and all over the northeast. But nobody ever shoots one or runs it down with the car - or even takes an unambigous photo!
If you'll look at my post again you'll see your misquote of my post. My statements were in reference to all the BLACK PANTHER tales and NOT about brown cougars.
You're also mistaken that no one shoots them, runs them down or takes their unambigous photo.
I can post several news articles from the past year or two of cats that were either run over, shot and had their pics taken by game cams or by video in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas and other states. It's not NE but it is in areas where cougars are not known to have a breeding populations or are not acknowledged by state biologists. Until now that is.
As someone pointed out, if there truely is a big cat in the area the physcial evidence is easy to find. Cougars are not magical and they leave scat, tracks, hair just like all animals.
Just keeping things straight. :D
gun-fucious
October 22, 2003, 03:01 AM
There have been some Mtn. Lion sightings in Montgomery county, Maryland
WYO
October 22, 2003, 09:44 AM
My comment about shooting the lion was made in jest, in response to the alleged position of the game and fish department that lions don't exist in PA. Game and fish departments don't have a lock on information, particularly when dealing with animals that don't respect state boundaries. The migration of the wolves reintroduced in Yellowstone is a good example. They may well be in northern Colorado by now.
Art Eatman
October 22, 2003, 09:48 AM
Changing emphasis a bit: In central Texas around Austin, the land use changed away from farming, and there was a decline in ranching activity. The deer herd began to regain its old territory. It wasn't long before there began to be rather infrequent lion sightings, but lions were indeed seen by folks who knew what a lion looks like. And, coyotes moved in to all this new "opera house" to practice yodelling.
If you have timberlands and deer, there's no reason for a lion not to consider it a Happy Home. Lions go where the food is easiest to get, and they can be travelling sons of guns. As long as there's no active predator control program, it's pretty easy for them to not be regularly seen.
So if anybody north of Interstate 10 sez he saw a really big, long-tailed cat, I readily believe mountain lion...(South of I-10, it could have spots and scream in Spanish.)
:), Art
Turk
October 22, 2003, 12:32 PM
I’ve never seen a Cougar in the wild but my initial impression of this photo was it was a skinny German Shepherd with its head tilled down?
Concerning Courgar's in the east the magazine Fur-Fish-Game had an excellent article on this very subject a month or so back.
Turk
Keith
October 22, 2003, 08:43 PM
Two years ago somebody caught a mountain lion in a wolf set on an island in Southeast Alaska. That cat was several hundred miles from the nearest known cougar population and it had to have SWUM out there across ten miles of very cold water.
I don't know much about cats, but I know small groups of young wolves will instinctively seek out new territories when they break from a pack. Sometimes they'll travel hundreds of miles before settling in somewhere.
Does anyone know if young cougars do that regularly? I mean, they must move some distance from the parent to establish a new territory, but do they move long distances like wolves?
Keith
Art Eatman
October 22, 2003, 11:18 PM
Keith, Texas Parks & Wildlife folks trapped a lion down in Black Gap Preserve, on the east edge of Big Bend National Park. They put a radio collar on him and released him. A rancher in the Glass Mountains, north of Marathon, killed that lion in his sheep pen, two nights later. The lion had traveled some 70 miles.
My flight instructor was telling me of a radio-lion he'd tracked from the Glass Mountains on down to the southern part of the Sierra del Carmen in Mexico. The lion moved five to fifteen miles a day on this 150-mile trek before heading back north. It seemed to be a regular travel sequence.
At around age 15 to 18 months, mama lion runs off the kids. While the female may stay in the general area, other more dominant males run off the male cub to go find his own territory. (So the game biologists seem to believe, anyway.)
Art
444
October 23, 2003, 01:01 PM
"Concerning Courgar's in the east the magazine Fur-Fish-Game had an excellent article on this very subject a month or so back."
Can you give us a summary of what they said ?
Horsesense
November 3, 2003, 12:30 AM
My great great grand pappy, and his neighbors, worked hard to kill off all the dangerous varmets around these parts. I would consider it my civic duty to kill any wolf, mountain lion, bare etc on sight. The KY department of wildlife released (so the story goes) rattlesnakes to control the turkey population, just a few miles from my farm! You can be sure I will kill anything I don’t like on my place. Mountain lion "sightings" are becoming common place, although no proof as of yet.
The environmentalist wako's need to take a Prozac and leave decent folks alone.
Art Eatman
November 3, 2003, 09:09 AM
Now, Horsesense, I'd have to think that the idea of a wildlife agency releasing rattlesnakes like that is a rural legend, worthy of Internet status like that of Urban Legends. For one thing, rattlesnakes aren't known for egg-eating...
As far as lions and such, "dangerous" to whom or what? Y'all heavy into the sheep and goat business? Coyotes would be a lot bigger problem...
:), Art
Horsesense
November 3, 2003, 11:55 AM
I’m heavy into cattle and children.
"There can be no covenant between lions and men" Homer, Iliad XXII
mete
November 5, 2003, 01:37 AM
I've just talked to some one in Elk Co PA who has seen mountain lions more than once, one in his driveway, no photos though. Considering the number of people that I have talked to who have seen the lions there is no doubt in my mind that they are in various eastern states.
Turk
November 5, 2003, 01:15 PM
444,
The FFG article basically mentioned sightings in the east but no really comfired ones. I've seen a photo from north of Ashland, Ohio and it was suppose to be ML. Picture was from a distance and fuzzy?
Mete mentioned Elk county PA. been through there a number of time lots of forest and mts. I've hunted Potter county PA and its the same.
Have a good day and remember to pray for our troops.
Turk
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