Cougar in Suburbia?

For a rare animal there sure seems to be a lot of them around. A lot of sightings anyway.

Jack B., it depends on where you are. I guess I'd phrase it that they're often seen, but not at all regularly in the same area by the same people.

As we go taking over their habitat and clearing out the places they can hide. We will see more of them until we kill them off.

http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/Mountain-Lion-Spotted-A-302835431.html

This one got hit by a car then shot by cops in metro Omaha.

The only "black panther" story I have heard was in the early 1960s a woman told us that she had been stalked by a black panther on a country road on the way home after dark. Which made me think of Ben Franklin's saying "All cats are grey in the dark" on the benefits of dating older women (but I didn't say anything).
I suspect a lot of large predator sightings locally were of bears, occasionally cougars, migrating between, say, West Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains.

Back in the 70's through the 90's there were stories every fall about someone seeing a black panther. I found it hilarious how many people believed it every year. Maybe a story about a pink panther would fly this fall?

Where I live, we are not that far from real confirmed cat habitat. Every once in awhile there are reports of such in the nearby local, heavily forested park that is quite hilly. Lots of deer and pigs that you can run into when you hike. We have. However, the cat sightings have not been confirmed in the park or nearby upscale housing built on similar hilly terrain. But it is possible.

A friend lived in Boulder and said that when the housing pushed into their surrounding territories, they got cats walking down the street for awhile.

I have seen a bobcat in our neighborhood, but only once. They are close by though.

Lots of coyotes though. I see them quite a bit. For a bit, they were more brazen, now they are more nighttime prowlers.

I work in Montana in the 1990's. There were several mountain lion attacks on people but I don't think any fatalities. The reason was to many lions. The young adults were being pushed out of the older lions territories with nowhere to go but areas near towns.

I've heard the black panther thing several times from at least 3 different people. One fellow shot one as it "stalked him" at night. It was a black house cat that weighed about 6 lbs.

However, if you view a Florida panther from behind in low light, they look blackish. (I've only seen ones in captivity.) The original Florida panthers have a black tip on a lot of the individual hairs and they appear to be a reddish or maroon tinted tan. When seen from the back they look very dark. The current population has been allowed to cross with Texas cougars to increase genetic diversity. This has turned out to be their salvation as the population is growing now. The reddish color, black-tipped hair, and the characteristic kinked tail are all disappearing.

Jack B. said:

For a rare animal there sure seems to be a lot of them around. A lot of sightings anyway.

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Yes... and that is the crux of the matter. (numerous claims of sightings).

The argument really shouldn't go beyond these few facts:

1. You can go into any barbershop in just about any town in any State, mention that you saw a Black Panther and before you leave, you will have one or more accounts of the same.

2. For there to be tens of thousands of 'legitimate' sightings (despite there being ZERO physical proof of such an animal), there would need to be a good number of BP's out in the wild. Even though Cougars can and do range widely, 5 or 6 BP's (if they existed) are NOT covering the entire United States! And we literally have claims from every State.

3. The odds of several BP's possessing the Melanistic gene necessary (and then passing it on) to produce enough BP's that THOUSANDS of people have seen one (but NO ONE has actually produced one) is not even worth discussing.

Same thing for 'Sasquatch'....but that one is even easier to debunk. If Sasquatch existed...there would be a Cajun Recipe for it. I find no such thing.

I get the allure of myths and tall tales and how it has always been a part of modern man's nature. But when it gets right down to facts and empirical evidence for such a creature, many folks seem willing to dispense with logic and intellectual honesty... for sake of the thrill.

Plain 'Ol Cougar....yeah I can believe a sighting or two just about anyplace, they are expanding. But when the discussion veers off to Black Panthers...you lose me there.

Flintknapper said:

Plain 'Ol Cougar....yeah I can believe a sighting or two just about anyplace, they are expanding. But when the discussion veers off to Black Panthers...you lose me there.

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Well, that may be my fault for introducing in the black panther reference to cat sightings in general. Maybe I was too subtle in the point and should have been much more direct in just saying that with so many people claiming to see black panthers that don't exist, it is hard to put a lot of credibility in so many sightings of regular mountain lions, particularly when so many sightings of the regular mountain lions turn out to be unverifiable and so many turn out to be untrue. https://www.twincities.com/2015/06/08/mountain-lion-on-st-pauls-east-side-not-true/

Mountain lions do exist. Mountain lions do invade suburbia. I just don't think they are nearly as common as the reports of them. I don't trust the general populace to be a good witness without additional confirmational evidence such as good photos, video, tracks, or hair samples.

Fine Figure of a Man said:

The reason was to many lions. The young adults were being pushed out of the older lions territories with nowhere to go but areas near towns.

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That could be what's going on around here - "too many lions." I brought it up in another thread about how it seems like once a year anymore the Idaho Department of Fish & Game has to tranquilize and deport a cougar from the big city of Pocatello - about 25 miles from here. In fact, last winter they had to tranquilize and deport one that was hanging around the Idaho State University campus.
Yet it seems like every time there's been a lion in Pocatello these last few year, it has been a young one. So maybe it's just like you said - the older ones are pushing the young ones out of their territories.

That's how it works with black bears... When the young ones go out on their own to seek a new territory for themselves and can't find one that's "vacant" they sometimes wind up in closer proximity to civilization. I have no experience with cougars but that's what I've heard about them also. They're pretty good travelers as was mentioned earlier. The thing that puzzles me is that there's a lot more surveillance around today in the form of trail cams, home security cameras, etc. and it seems there'd be more photo and video of them to prove their existence in certain areas.

Show me some pic's or trail came pic's and I'll buy the cougar population is growing .But until then I think most peoples imagination is running away with them.

The population has been on the increase in Texas, based on known sightings in areas where they once had been eradicated. CenTex hill country, for example, since the 1970s.

Jack B. said:

Show me some pic's or trail came pic's and I'll buy the cougar population is growing .But until then I think most peoples imagination is running away with them.

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Yeah, you're like me. I've heard and read that some places back east have overpopulations of white-tailed deer. I don't believe it though because I've never seen an white-tailed deer around here, and I've been successfully hunting deer (mule deer) around here for 55 years. Good grief.

.308 Norma, check out the bag limits for whitetails in Alabama as one example of a population much larger than, say, in Oklahoma.

Central Texas, because of changes in land use and a reduction in hunting in some areas, has seen the whitetail become a pest. When I moved back to the old family ranch, I went spotlighting one night and in an area of maybe sixty acres or so I counted some fifty pairs of eyes. Way too many runty little deer. When very-dry weather hits, the deer move into the edges of towns. The little community of Jonestown made the headlines because of an estimated 1,500 whitetails in and around town. That was the beginning of increased cougar sightings in the general area.

Art Eatman said:

.308 Norma, check out the bag limits for whitetails in Alabama as one example of a population much larger than, say, in Oklahoma.

Central Texas, because of changes in land use and a reduction in hunting in some areas, has seen the whitetail become a pest. When I moved back to the old family ranch, I went spotlighting one night and in an area of maybe sixty acres or so I counted some fifty pairs of eyes. Way too many runty little deer. When very-dry weather hits, the deer move into the edges of towns. The little community of Jonestown made the headlines because of an estimated 1,500 whitetails in and around town. That was the beginning of increased cougar sightings in the general area.

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It is interesting you mention this because people seem so darned worried that the coyotes and mountain lions are going to kill off all of our deer. I don't think our deer populations are in trouble or have been in trouble for quite a while now. As you mentioned, they are becoming quite the pests in some areas. While hogs take a huge amount of blame for crop looses, they still pale in quantity to deer and what the deer do to our crops.

Art Eatman said:

308 Norma, check out the bag limits for whitetails in Alabama as one example of a population much larger than, say, in Oklahoma.

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Art, I was trying to be facetious.
I know there are populations of white-tailed deer that are have become so large in some places they are considered pests, and are constant threats to drivers as well. There aren't many white-tailed deer around here though, and what I was trying to say was that just because I have not seen many white-tailed deer, does not mean I don't believe there are places that have large and growing populations of them.
The deer around here are mostly mule deer, and the mule deer population in this area ebbs and flows with the severity and length of our winters. The Idaho Fish & Game Department tacked an extra couple of dollars onto the cost of our hunting licenses (or our deer tags - I can't remember) about 25 years back to pay for mule deer winter feeding programs.
However, the Fish & Game Department having to dart and remove a mountain lion of two from the city of Pocatello (about 25 miles from here) every year is a fairly recent happening. Oh, we've always had mountain lions around here. We've probably seen a dozen of them over the years - two (or maybe one, twice) from our rear deck. But it's just been in the last 5 or 6 years that 1 or 2 of them show up in Pocatello every year. And like I said in another post in this thread, it always seems to be the young ones that decide to move to town.

Back in the 1980s in Fort Davis, Texas, some high school kids walking to school saw a cougar in a tree on the courthouse lawn. One of them told a deputy, who shot the cat. This led to gossip around town, explanatory about the recent decline in putty-tats and bow-wows.

From east to west, east of the Rockies, you transition from whitetail to mulies. There are relatively narrow overlap zones. From west to east, you run out of antelope.

A past Business Partner of mine lived in rural Ontario. His house was built on a hillside, the back view had a wooden deck, quite high up. Standing on the deck one weekend morning, drinking a coffee. A large Mountain Lion (Phil was a lifelong hunter) crossed his back 40. Just casually strolling along, till he shouted.
He measured the leap! 22 feet from take-off point to landing! A couple of inches of snow on the ground made this possible. That was one big cat.

Double Naught Spy said:

I don't know what they were calling "black panthers," but there were no actual black panthers, aka black mountain lions. They don't exist. They certainly don't exist in the frequency that people report them. Funny how many folks have seen one or more of these, but not actually seen a regular mountain lion.

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I personally have seen 2 black panthers in my life- one on our farm 1/2 mile outside city limits around 1988 and a second about 2005 at the Alligator Wildlife Refuge. I’ve never seen a tawny colored one in the wild and I’ve never seen a black one in a cage. Just my personal experience.

Catpop, not arguing but wondering: Is it possible that what you saw as black could have been a very dark brown? Quality of lighting often affects one's perception of colors.

Catpop said:

I personally have seen 2 black panthers in my life- one on our farm 1/2 mile outside city limits around 1988 and a second about 2005 at the Alligator Wildlife Refuge. I’ve never seen a tawny colored one in the wild and I’ve never seen a black one in a cage. Just my personal experience.

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That would put you in a very statistically unique position, seeing two of something in chronologically and geographically different events that is rare as to not ever having been physically documented, yet you have not seen the normal pelaged and comparatively common counterpart in the wild. So I think Art is onto something.