Cougar sighting

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Highland Lofts said:
Each full.grown cougar will.kill an average ofca deer a week, so round it off to 50 deer a year,
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Yep, I've heard that before.
Highland Lofts said:
I do like seeing the cougars out in the wild, but there is a price to pay for haveing them in the wild.
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Yep again. I also like seeing cougars in the wild. But I like venison too. And I probably don't need to tell you how the rancher friends of ours that I mentioned in my earlier post feel about all of the "cougars in the wild" around here.
 
five.five-six said:
Why does it seem to me that a rancher took care of a problem and that’s how he destroyed the evidence?
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As I said before, we get random sightings regularly, but the animals seem to quicklydisappear. Local warden tells me one reason they disappear is because they end up getting poached by some good ol' boy that thinks he's doing everyone a favor. That same warden says the poaching is one reason they are so reluctant to admit to or to publicize sightings. The minute you let it out that there might be a cougar in the SW part of X County, you got a truckload of Good Ol' Boyz ridin' around after dark with guns. DNR officials figure up to 60% of wolf deaths in the state are due to poaching. Good Ol' Boyz thinkin' less wolves=more deer. Same with cougars. Gotta be a reason ol' Bubba didn't get his buck last year....musta been cougars!
 
buck460XVR said:
As I said before, we get random sightings regularly, but the animals seem to quicklydisappear. Local warden tells me one reason they disappear is because they end up getting poached by some good ol' boy that thinks he's doing everyone a favor. That same warden says the poaching is one reason they are so reluctant to admit to or to publicize sightings. The minute you let it out that there might be a cougar in the SW part of X County, you got a truckload of Good Ol' Boyz ridin' around after dark with guns. DNR officials figure up to 60% of wolf deaths in the state are due to poaching. Good Ol' Boyz thinkin' less wolves=more deer. Same with cougars. Gotta be a reason ol' Bubba didn't get his buck last year....musta been cougars!
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I’m not saying I blame him. A cougar that’s found a taste for livestock needs to be dealt with. 50 head a year can put a ranch out of business.
 
Out here in Washington state the big cattle killers are wolves. What they don't kill & injure they stress out so much they abort tjoer calves so a year goes by with no replacements comeing.

In this area riding horses are killed & maimed by cougars. I hear of a few a year in the county I live in.

Dogs, house cats, goats, sheep and other small livestock are fair game as well.
If you live outside of town good luck trying to keep a house cat more then a year.
Our friends had a small Yorkie and took it out with them when they went steelhead fishing a few years ago. A bald eagle swooped down & grabbed it. Took it up in a tree and started eating on it in view of our friends.
Nothing they vould do except watch their little ankle bitter being devoured by one of our National Birds.
 
.308 Norma said:
I get that! I also remember that this is the second time I've seen a post by you about your seeing a cougar when you were in Alaska. And I thought that was a strange thing to tell about the first time I read it until I saw you're located in N.C., where cougars in the wild probably are pretty rare. It's not like that everywhere.
At least every couple of years a cougar ends up wandering into Pocatello (about 25 miles north of here) and the Fish and Game Department has to dart it and haul it back out into the hills. You can look it up with a simple Google search if you don't believe me. Of course you probably don't consider a cougar on the campus at Idaho State University actually "in the wild.":D
I'm just messing with you Milt 1. I actually agree with you in some ways - "the overriding majority" of people in the U.S. will never see a cougar in the wild in their lifetimes. But that's because "the overriding majority" of people in the U.S. live in the big cities of the east and west coasts.
Oh, and one more thing - if you look it up, you'll find out Alaska is not all that rife with cougars either. The cougar population in Alaska is growing, but it's not as large as I would have presumed before I did a search on it.
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I meant to just pick up your last couple of sentences starting with "Oh, and one more thing" but got the whole caboodle. You are right about not that many cougar in Alaska. When we got back to Haines I went to the local game warden office to report my sighting of the cougar and the game warden didn't believe me until I described what I saw. He then said that sightings near Haines was rare but occasionally one would move down into Haines out of British Columbia. I lived in Montana for three and 1/2 years and did a lot of hunting there but never saw a cougar although I did see a cougar deer kill up toward Monarch. And I saw two Bobcat while there. I'm really happy that I got to see that cougar as I'll probably never see another.
 
Highland Lofts said:
t more then a year.
Our friends had a small Yorkie and took it out with them when they went steelhead fishing a few years ago. A bald eagle swooped down & grabbed it. Took it up in a tree and started eating on it in view of our friends.
Nothing they vould do except watch their little ankle bitter being devoured by one of our National Birds.
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I might be a bad person, and don’t tell your friend anyone said this. I’m sure it was horrific to the people who loved that dog, but that story is just straight up awesome.
 
five.five-six said:
I might be a bad person, and don’t tell your friend anyone said this. I’m sure it was horrific to the people who loved that dog, but that story is just straight up awesome.
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A large tree up by my dads on state land fell down last year, it had at least one eagles next maybe more. They found several dozens of pet collars.

just the other day I seen a red tail hawk with a nice size rabbit, it flew down on to the edge of the road right in front of me, I sat there for a minute as it dispatched the rabbit.

I had a eagle take a 8 or 9 pine Brown trout from the ice one year, they like to sit in the tree's watching us fish. There picky tho if you toss a Bonnie fish they won't touch it.
 
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Milt1 said:
When we got back to Haines I went to the local game warden office to report my sighting of the cougar and the game warden didn't believe me until I described what I saw.
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This following story isn’t exactly the same, but it’s kind of funny how sometimes the Department of Fish and Game folks won’t believe what hunters are telling them:
About the same time wolves were being reintroduced to Yellowstone and Idaho 25 years ago, my wife, our son-in-law and I were deer hunting over near Lava Hot Springs, about 10 miles east of here. My wife and son-in-law saw two wolves, or maybe it was one wolf twice - we never found out. But we did go to the Department of Fish and Game the next day and reported the sightings.
The Department of Fish and Game didn’t believe it of course. They told my wife and son-in-law that they’d probably just seen a couple of “really big coyotes.”o_O
A few months later, the story about “Ligertown USA” near Lava Hot Springs, Idaho broke. It seems the animals, including wolves, African lions and even a few tigers had been going in and out of their cages almost at will. People in Lava were actually spotting African lions in their back yards!:eek:
We never did go back to the Department of Fish and Game to deliver a “WE TOLD YOU SO!” But we should have.:p
This year is the 25th Anniversary of the “Ligertown” fiasco. You can read all about it on the internet. Just do a search for “Ligertown, Lava Hot Springs, Idaho.”
 
My dad's cousins run a animal preserve type thing, most of the animals were old retired circus and zoo animals. At one time they had may big cat, elephants, camels, zebra, giraffe, bears, all kinds of stuff. Things would get out, most were caught quickly some tho not so much. This would make for some funny stories of people seeing the animals, more funny if there city people who just spent there life savings on a house lol.

I can tell you the noise a black panther makes is not a pleasant thing to hear 3:00 in the morning walking to your house after a long night at work. My dad was always on call since he was the one closest that had rifle to kill anything they had there, he never had to shoot anything tho. I know he wanted to pop a elephant, the African ones would go crazy sometimes, they were very old I think they had dementia or old timers or something. They would settle down after a while, tho a few did destroy some cars and property in the meantime. I seen one flip a semi trailer they would store feed in.

now they only have one Asian elephant they rescued, she is well mannered and does break out sometimes but she just goes on walks mostly to open mail boxes down the road. The last time she got out the news did a small story on it, luckily the sheriff know about her and didn't freak out. They still have some camels a zebra and some farm animals, so all the scary stuff is gone. One city hunter did managing to shoot a camel one time thinking it was a deer tho.

I have seen some crazy stuff in the woods, some I can't quite explain. So if I hear a crazy sounding story I tend to believe most.

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/asian-elephant-escapes-new-york-sanctuary
 
Florida really does have a huge infestation of large snakes and lizards. The native wildlife there is taking a big hit and will never be the same.
Their problem lies from people buying these snakes & lizards who buy these things for pets and let them go in the wild instead of humanly dispathing them.
 
five.five-six said:
I might be a bad person, and don’t tell your friend anyone said this. I’m sure it was horrific to the people who loved that dog, but that story is just straight up awesome.
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I have a friend up lives just above the Navy base over in Oak Harbor WA.
He smoked and would go sit out on his side porch to do so. The bald eagles use a large maple tree in his yard to sit in. About ten years ago a mature bald eagle was flying towards that tree with something kicking and thrashing about. He called his wife to come check this out. The eagle had a large live house cat in it's tallons. Once perched in the tree it killed it and started eating upon it same as that yorkie.
I have friends who have chickens, same things happen to them by the eagles & redtail hawks.

Semi locally domectic dogs have been killed and ate by cougars. Two years ago down in Machias a guy took his two blue heelers out to an over grown hay field to let them go take a dump. One ran straight back to the house as fast as it could, the other one was being chaced by something going the other way.
He went back to house, grabbed a gun and went to where the chase took place. By the time he got to where things took place a cougar killed his dog and had already ate some of it. He did get to see the cougar, but only for a couple of seconds before it vanished in to the thick cover.
Out here cougars are closer to you then you think they are but are rarely seen. Most people would know any signs of cougars being in their area if it kicked them in their rear end.
 
Captcurt said:
According to AGFC we have no cougars in Arkansas. I guess the picture of a cat with a looong tail on a neighboring farm's trail camera was something else. Sure, it may have been a 100 pound house cat.
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George P said:
They say here in Florida there are NO cougars outside of the Everglades; yet they get hit all the time up here in North Florida..............
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Same for Texas. Why the denial? I don’t get it.

Up until just a couple of years ago the Texas Parks and Wildlife said the same thing. No cougars.

And they remained unconvinced for decades despite fact that someone would shoot one about every other year or so, plus all the trail cam pics and photos.
 
Here in Washington State you get lies from several government agencies.
They got caught adding gun deaths, cancer deaths, car accident deaths and other deaths to the covid deaths to increase the covid deaths

We are being over run by wolf packs that suposedly migrated here from other states and canada.
The fish & wildlife dept. denies they imported any but people have seen them release them.
People call to report wolf sighting and they say there are no wolves in that area. Cofronted with pictures and trail cam pictures they still stand with there are no wolves in that area and the pictures are either coyotes or some ones pet dog.
I never seen a coyote that weighed over a hundred pounds.
A friend called the game dept. one time that seen a wolf in his large back yard (he has a five acre lot) next to a large wood tract.
They denied it was a wolf and told him that it was a coyote.
So he told them the next time he seen that large coyote he was going to shoot it.
They told him it is illegal to shoot wolves in Washington State and tried to.pry more information on his encounter.
Two hours later there was a game dept. truck going up & down his road with a antena sticking out of the truck window and was there up & down the road he lives on and a few other close by roads.
Probably looking for some large coyotes.
 
Nature Boy said:
Same for Texas. Why the denial? I don’t get it.

Up until just a couple of years ago the Texas Parks and Wildlife said the same thing. No cougars.

And they remained unconvinced for decades despite fact that someone would shoot one about every other year or so, plus all the trail cam pics and photos.
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In the case of Florida, they Florida Panther is supposed to be very rare and on the endangered species list because they only exist in the Everglades and now that we have an infestation of massive pythons, the panther and the gator are no longer the Apex predator. I suspect if the Panther is wide-spread, some monies could be lost
 
Highland Lofts said:
Here in Washington State you get lies from several government agencies.
They got caught adding gun deaths, cancer deaths, car accident deaths and other deaths to the covid deaths to increase the covid deaths

We are being over run by wolf packs that suposedly migrated here from other states and canada.
The fish & wildlife dept. denies they imported any but people have seen them release them.
People call to report wolf sighting and they say there are no wolves in that area. Cofronted with pictures and trail cam pictures they still stand with there are no wolves in that area and the pictures are either coyotes or some ones pet dog.
I never seen a coyote that weighed over a hundred pounds.
A friend called the game dept. one time that seen a wolf in his large back yard (he has a five acre lot) next to a large wood tract.
They denied it was a wolf and told him that it was a coyote.
So he told them the next time he seen that large coyote he was going to shoot it.
They told him it is illegal to shoot wolves in Washington State and tried to.pry more information on his encounter.
Two hours later there was a game dept. truck going up & down his road with a antena sticking out of the truck window and was there up & down the road he lives on and a few other close by roads.
Probably looking for some large coyotes.
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Maybe your buddy should shoot one of those "coyotes" and bring it to the press wondering how did the coyotes get so big?:thumbup::D
 
There is a confirmed woof pack over in the Sedro-Wolly area that was just recently confirmed by the State Fish & Wildlife Dept.
They denied for years that it did not exsit even when confronted with cell phone pictures and trail cam pictures. I personally seen one between Sedro-Wolly and Rockport about ten years ago.
When I told my brother inlaws about it they said the same BS, that I Seen a coyote or some ones german shepard.

I take my grandson shooting every weekend 30 miles east of our place up in the Cascade Mountains in Darrington which is twenty miles sourth of Rockport. People who live there and have trail cams set out get pictures of wolves. One guy had three wolves in one frame and the same story from the state game dept. Coyotes or some ones house pets.
They sure looked exactly like pictures of wolves you see out in the wild.
If I happen to see one of these large coyotes I will harvest it and have it tanned to hang up in my gun room.
 
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I saw a zebra in north ga woods while squirrel hunting. I was 14 sitting under a tree. Heard a branch snap looked up and bout pooped myself. Told my grandparents they said what kinda dope you smoking? After that nothing surprises me in the woods. Good friends dad saw a black panther a few miles from my our place.
 
South TX is known for big cats. I've never come up on one, but am wise enough to have a .357 skinned and ready in SA when I carefully open the deer stand door at 4:45 am on a crisp November morning. I've heard enough stories and seen enough pictures to be a believer. First round is hp, second is snake shot, followed by four more rounds of hp. I have met an unlucky racoon on one occasion. Had to clean my pants after that brief episode.
 
troy fairweather said:
Ya we don't have them in ny, guess the 200lb cat I seen like 6 years ago was a house cat, or the many people some I know who have them on trail came, but that can't be real or why would the confiscate the photos and video.

Oh don't for get that deer I found 15 feet up a tree on time, guess a squirrel got hungry and dragged it up there.
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They get run over by soccer mommies in Greenwich, CT, but it always turns out to be one that was vacationing there from North Dakota or some such nonsense! :rofl:
 
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