Big cats are in Tennessee !!!

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WestKentucky said:
No pics, but just south of Hopkinsville Ky I know I was in ones presence a few years ago. The property owner was an older guy, lived alone, drank PBR 24-7 but said he saw a big cat and shot it. Asked my buddy to go look for it about 12 hours later. We went, and got to a spot that was very eerie. Big tree in the thick woods where all the scrub brush was gone. Just a big opening in thick briar bottomed woods with a large tree right in the middle. Claw marks on the tree and half of a young doe up in the tree. Got real nervous and felt I was being watched. We got close and got out of the woods, pretty sure we were being stalked. The old man died a few weeks later. Never heard anything else about that spot but there has been rumors around there for decades.
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Mt lions are ground feeders. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s highly unusual and I’m not sure if it’s been documented that a Mt lion drags a kill into a tree.

Ive hunted lions professionally as a guide and doing animal damage control. I’ve seen dozens of Mt lion kills and have never seen one drag a kill into a tree.
 
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Once you learn how to hunt them and what to look for in a lion populated area you’ll soon discover that there are far more Mt Lions around than most people would believe. When I was hunting them it wasn’t uncommon to see four or five in a week with hounds and several a week without hounds. A lion sighting is usually a quick glimpse of one running away. The way to find them is to look for their kills in their prime hunting habitat. Find fresh kills and you’ll find lions.

They are really not the mythical blood thirsty ghosts of the night that people who don’t understand lions and lion behavior make them out to be.

Above are some pictures from when I was guiding. The clients faces are covered for obvious reasons. I’ve been around Mt lions quite a bit and I really enjoy them and love chasing them and seeing them in their natural habitat. Lions live in some beautiful country and I consider it an honor to share their hunting grounds.
 
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FL-NC said:
Bobcats are common everywhere in the southeast, yet they are rarely seen. I saw 2 a couple months ago from my tree stand. My neighbor is a lineman for a power company and he has seen one on an easement. There is (was?) a number of cats called jagarundis from south America that were released in NW Fl many years ago, and many migrated to Al. According to FWC, they have been killed off, but a friend got one on a trail cam a couple years ago. I saw the photo- too small and dark to be a Fl panther, too big and dark to be a bobcat- also it had a tail. Even though they have been "killed off", and no longer exist here, it is illegal to shoot these non existent animals. The endangered Fl Panther is mostly found in S. Fl., and isn't found north of the Naples/Ft Meyers area- the FWC is unwilling to concede the idea that any have made their way north of this boundary.
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The Florida Panther IS north of Naples; just ask the folks who live here in North Florida. As I stated earlier, my wife and I damn near hit one as it was running across the road while driving up in the Panhandle - had to slam on the brakes
 
This is a bit of a strange post. My mother studied art in college in the mid '50s. Taught art in the 60s-80s at junior College. When she saw an animal leap from the roadway and disappear into the brush, she sketched it for me on a napkin over lunch.

What do you think she saw?
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S.E. Illinois circa 2019.
 
I saw a picture of one in the local newspaper from the rural county next door to the county that I lived in . It was caught on a cars dash cam that hit it . It didn’t kill it . The Game Department still doesn’t recognize them here , so I guess there is a open season on them if you were to see one and shoot one .
 
here in northeast pa, you can hear about all kinds of so called sightings, just about every weekend at 200:am at the vfw hall when the bar lets out there seems to be a lot of them seen and every once in a while a elephant is seen.
 
I personally have never seen one, but my grandfather said for the majority of his life that he saw one on his cousin's farm while hunting as a young man. Everyone in the area always claimed he was drunk or seeing things as he had just came back from Vietnam, but he spent tons of money and time putting up game cams and scouting all over his, his brother's, and his cousin's land for the next 30 odd years and never saw or got a picture of another one.

Even more sadly, shortly before he died and was suffering from severe dementia his brother's granddaughter caught a picture of a solid colored cat that was approximately 2 and a half foot tall at the shoulder. The pictures were taken just before it jumped the fence into her chicken coop and killed/ate several of her chickens. And again no one else has ever seen anything like it since.

I'll see if I can dig up her pictures and get the collective's opinion.

ETA: I guess I should have mentioned that both of these "sightings" took place on the Morgan and Cullman borders in northern Alabama.
 
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Probably 5 or 6 years ago a co-worker had a video on his phone from his outdoor security system. It shows clearly a mountain lion on the back side of his fence that is pacing and looking at his big dog. The big dog was of course barking its head off but they just stared at each other for a little while and then it just turns and walks away. IMO if was without question a mountain lion and not a bobcat.

This was in North Alabama not 20 miles from the Tennessee state line.
 
I saw one for maybe 1 second while in a stand in southeast Arkansas. It growled/screamed, I looked and saw it and it fled into the brush. there was one shot and killed in Troup county Georgia by a hunter but it was determined to be an exotic pet that escaped because it was so well fed and had so few parasites on it. the hunter that shot it was fined because he did not have a license to shoot pumas et al. I can't say the one I saw in Arkansas wasn't a pet that got lose but it was only about 100 pounds in my estimation, a bit smaller than the one killed in Georgia.

*** I just googled and saw where the Ga. cat was a Florida panther offspring of some sorts.
 
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I wonder if the dragging the deer kill up into a tree is an adaptive behavior to prevent the growing (invasive to some degree) coyote population away from the kill. Not something a puma might ordinarily do unless it had been loosing kills to coyotes.
 
3Crows said:
I wonder if the dragging the deer kill up into a tree is an adaptive behavior to prevent the growing (invasive to some degree) coyote population away from the kill. Not something a puma might ordinarily do unless it had been loosing kills to coyotes.
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Anything is possible, where I hunted them there were plenty of coyotes and I never saw it happen.
 
It's a possibility there are some ML in Alabama, Georgia. Someone killed one in Nunan GA few years ago. I have never found a place where they make there territory.
 
whughett said:
Taken from one Google source:

“In Tennessee, no confirmed sightings had been made since the early 1900s. The first confirmed sighting in a century was made on September 20, 2015, in Obion county in the north-western corner of West Tennessee. Six days later, and about 56 km (35 mi) to the southeast, a hair sample was found in Carroll County. DNA analysis revealed that it was from a female genetically similar to South Dakotacougars. Since then there have been at least eight additional confirmed sightings in the state; all were immediately east of the Tennessee River in Middle Tennessee: initially in Humphreys county and on September 4, 2016, further south in Wayne county.[63]”
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Timeframe works out to be roughly for when I had my odd experience. I still lived in Ky but I was already married. I would guess it to be 2014. Hopkinsville KY isn’t terribly far from the Tennessee border. What is more likely, but could never be proven without a dead critter, is that somebody had an exotic pet that got away or got turned out and instinct kicked in. Fort Campbell is within a few miles from that spot and it is well documented that the soldiers have brought home some interesting critters. A cayman or small gator was caught in a pond just outside the fence of Ft Campbell around that same time, so I don’t discount either possibility. What I know is that I did not want to be there.
 
Washington State is over run by cougars. Almost every one who put out trail cams get pictures of them.
The guys who do hunt in this state would love to have your state game department come and take all of them.
They average one deer a week, fifty two weeks a year. That is a lot of deer to feed one large cat.
On top of the large cougar population out here the game department transplated wolves.
They are depleting every thing in sight.


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Highland Lofts said:
Washington State is over run by cougars. Almost every one who put out trail cams get pictures of them.
The guys who do hunt in this state would love to have your state game department come and take all of them.
They average one deer a week, fifty two weeks a year. That is a lot of deer to feed one large cat.
On top of the large cougar population out here the game department transplated wolves.
They are depleting every thing in sight.


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Do you know what the story is on the third picture?
 
The 3rd picture the guy shot it with an arrow while hunting other game.

Another picture of it.
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They can get big. The game departmrnt treed, tranqulized, took test, tagged and radio collard then released a big tom a couple of yeas ago over by Spokane.

A couple of weeks ago there was a full size cougar over in the Hospital parking lot a few block from out house right in the city.

They treed one and relocated it about six years ago three blocks away down by Kent Parrie Elementery School.
 
Highland Lofts said:
The 3rd picture the guy shot it with an arrow while hunting other game.

Another picture of it.
View attachment 980286

They can get big. The game departmrnt treed, tranqulized, took test, tagged and radio collard then released a big tom a couple of yeas ago over by Spokane.

A couple of weeks ago there was a full size cougar over in the Hospital parking lot a few block from out house right in the city.

They treed one and relocated it about six years ago three blocks away down by Kent Parrie Elementery School.
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I thought that looked like an arrow wound.

Was it a self defense situation or was it just some guy who shot a lion?
 
It may not seem like a good thing to some hunters but the lions, wolves and bears are simply reoccupying niches and territory they had been shot, hunted and trapped out of. The explosion and spread of coyotes is a response to the lack of other top predators (and their adaptability). There is a balance needed in everything, the predators reentering the ecosystem will help the deer populations by weeding out the weak and sick and unhealthy.

I swear a few years ago I saw a puma cross the road at a stream bridge near my house along the same stream that cuts the corner of my property. It was dark and I only caught a glimpse of something, low, long and big. Then about two weeks later the big cat in daylight wandered through the elementary school grounds in Valley Center and there were numerous cell phone photos to prove it. The big cat moved on, no children or cattle were eaten and the area is still overrun with deer.

Seeing a half eaten deer carcass up in a tree would freak me out ;) too.
 
Michigan used to be native country to cougars, but most were out of here by the early 1900s. Lately they've been making a comeback, though are still quite rare. I live in the Huron National Forest. We had one in this neighborhood in the last few years which I found the tracks from and quickened my pace, head on a swivel, on the walk I was on. Luckily it was winter and the foliage was light, so I could see a long way into the woods. Told my neighbors about it and they quickly adjusted the way they let their pets out. Somebody eventually got a nice picture of our local one, and it was posted in the county paper. Most of the pics you see from Michigan are from the Upper Peninsula, like this one from Mackinac County, my old stomping grounds, and where my Mom grew up.

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The guy was up in a tree stand that shot the cat with his bow. He was hunting for deer or elk at the time.

I have seen three cougars by chance and it didn't take them long to put distance between me & them.

That bullship about then only taking the young, the sick & the weak deer, elk and other big game animals is total BS, they kill everything in sight.


H&Hhunter said:
I thought that looked like an arrow wound.

Was it a self defense situation or was it just some guy who shot a lion?
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Highland Lofts said:
The guy was up in a tree stand that shot the cat with his bow. He was hunting for deer or elk at the time.

I have seen three cougars by chance and it didn't take them long to put distance between me & them.

That bullship about then only taking the young, the sick & the weak deer, elk and other big game animals is total BS, they kill everything in sight.
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A mt lion will definitely kill healthy deer and elk. But they prefer an easy target if one is available.

So that lion was taken legally with a bow or was it shot illegally? What I’m trying to figure is if the guy saw a lion and shot it or if he had a tag?
 
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