Mountain Lion?

[Flysmallie]

When I was in high school ('87 or '88 I suppose) a buddy of mine and myself were fishing on the Little Sac north of Springfield. We came across two dead critters that were dumped. One was an adult Coonhound. The other was a Black Bear cub. Both shot in the head. I went home and told my Dad, we drove out and he confirmed that I was correct on the ID's. My buddy went home and told his Stepdad, who also visualy confirmed that we were not full of crap. I called the MDC. They sent out an agent. The next day agent Smith called me and said that he found a dead Coonhound and a dead Chow Chow at the sight that I described..

This was when you were in high school right? Oh yeah we believe you?

Now why don't you go ahead and tell us that story about meeting George Carlin again.

[Wayne SW/MO]

The few that were spotted in Missouri are thought to have been traveling through to other states.

Other states is a pat answer to avoid the uninformed public from screaming LION! It's a pretty simple precess, daddy runs the young one off and he goes looking for a good deer herd and a girlfriend.

With hunting in the west at a standstill and the large area required to sustain them, it's inevitable that they will spread east.

I hunted deer and elk, fished remote rivers and floated long stretches of near wilderness, saw Bighorns and the normal bear, elk and deer. Had one leave its tracks in our barnyard, but while Oregon had a good sized lion population I never saw one.

[Gary Lange]

I was out in Montana's Glacier National Park Backpacking in about 1995 I think it was and the Girls that were with me had just finished Law School and taken the test and wanted something different to do. They all decided to go Backpacking in Glacier National Park. Well the night before they were all setting around a picnic table talking and a Mountain lion came through the camp went between one of the girls legs and she could feel the fur as it passed and it climbed up the hill and was gone. They said they all just froze when it came through and breathed a sigh of relief when it passed through and kept on going.

[fishinwrench]

I was out in Montana's Glacier National Park Backpacking in about 1995 I think it was and the Girls that were with me had just finished Law School and taken the test and wanted something different to do. They all decided to go Backpacking in Glacier National Park. Well the night before they were all setting around a picnic table talking and a Mountain lion came through the camp went between one of the girls legs and she could feel the fur as it passed and it climbed up the hill and was gone. They said they all just froze when it came through and breathed a sigh of relief when it passed through and kept on going.

And the moral to this story is.... ?

Gotta be something about a lawyer with two pussys, right ?

[Gary Lange]

No Moral to it just a story about a close encounter with nature.

[walleyerich]

My link

[walleyerich]

Same cat?

[Al Agnew]

Well, since the other mountain lion thread got whacked, I'll give my thoughts here....

I've seen one mountain lion in the wild. It was about 15 years ago in western Colorado, where I was bowhunting. Two of my wife's brothers and I were hiking/climbing up a very steep mountainside to get to a plateau on top when we saw the cat about 30 yards above us, moving gracefully on up the mountain. We really thought it was a wonderful event. That night, we were all sacked out in a four man tent when we heard noises outside. Something was circling the tent. And then we heard a "rowwll". I'd heard captive mountain lions make the same sound, so I immediately knew what it was. Then we heard a much higher pitched "mew". I'd also heard mountain lion kittens make that sound--back in the days when I was teaching, one of my students brought a kitten to class. So we apparently had a female with at least one young one circling us.

It was slightly scary, but all of us were pretty sure that we were in no danger. Mountain lion attacks are exceedingly rare. But we couldn't figure out why the cats would be circling us. After a bit everything got quiet and we finally went to sleep.

We got up before daylight and went out hunting at first light. Just as the sun was coming up, about a quarter mile from the camp, I again saw the adult mountain lion. This time it leaped out of thick oak brush, heading away from me at a hard run and soon disappearing.

When we gathered back at camp during the middle of the day and started poking around looking for tracks, we discovered that our campsite was apparently a popular spot during the rifle season, because there were deer and elk bones all around the camp in the brush. So we suspect that the cat had gotten used to slipping in and feeding on scraps from animals butchered by hunters, and maybe it was upset with us since we hadn't killed anything yet!

I know a lot of guys, including hunting guides, who have spent much of their lives in the wilds where mountain lions are plentiful yet have never seen one that wasn't treed by dogs. On the other hand, as Wayne has pointed out, with the curtailment of lion hunting in many states and the encroachment of houses in mountain lion country, sightings and conflicts with humans are getting more and more common. But usually mountain lions are scared of people--heck, they are scared of small dogs. There have been a lot of mountain lions treed by little dogs that they could have wiped out easily. Still, they are cats, and all cats have predatory instincts that can be triggered by anything that acts like prey. I was once watching a clouded leopard in a zoo. The cat's exhibit was behind thick plexiglass, and it was sacked out on a fake rock ledge, apparently asleep. People were coming up and clapping their hands and doing all sorts of stupid things (which, of course, had been done so often that the cat was totally used to it and exceedingly unlikely to react) to wake it up, with no effect. Then a mother with a baby in a stroller came up to the exhibit. The baby, which was just old enough to barely toddle, made a little whimpering sound, and I saw the cat's ear twitch. Then the mother lifted the baby out of the stroller, and set it on the floor while she rummaged around in her bag for a pacifier. The baby began to cry, and to crawl across the floor away from the mother, and the next thing I knew the cat had risen and in the blink of an eye had launched itself off the fake ledge, crashing into the glass hard enough to shake it. There was no doubt that something in that baby's sound and movement had triggered a serious predatory instinct!

Still, given the shyness and ability to hide that mountain lions are well known for, the chances of one attacking a child or even a pet in Missouri are pretty slim. The chances of getting attacked by a drunken driver are astronomically greater.

I have friends who I consider reliable people who swear they have seen mountain lions in MO. And I think it's just possible that that there could be a very small breeding population. It really makes little sense that a roaming young male mountain lion would come all the way to Missouri from the nearest occupied mountain lion range, which would mean it would have to cross the entire length of at least one state and part of another. The nearest occupied ranges are in south central Texas (it would have to cross part of Texas and all of Oklahoma or Arkansas), the western half of Colorado (crossing eastern Colorado and all of Kansas), and central South Dakota (crossing part of South Dakota and all of Nebraska or Iowa). Since young males usually roam only until they find unoccupied territory where they can find food, and since there are plenty of deer in most of the land between those places and Missouri, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that we'd keep getting these roamers from those supposed places. Escaped or released pets are more likely, but apparently DNA and other evidence indicates that at least a few of the Missouri cats didn't come from breeders.

It's odd to me that so many of these sightings don't come from the Ozarks, which you'd think would be optimum lion habitat. What I think is that there may be a small breeding population in the deep Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas, where it's easy for them to stay hidden, and the cats being sighted in north and west Missouri are strays from this breeding population. At least that's what I'd like to think. I think mountain lions are the most beautiful animals in North America, and I love painting them.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I don't know what the situation in OK is now, but 30 or 40 years ago there was supposed to be a breeding population between Broken Bow lake and the AR line. The land at time was owned by one of the timber companies and was pretty isolated then.

[Tim Smith]

I was once watching a clouded leopard in a zoo. The cat's exhibit was behind thick plexiglass, and it was sacked out on a fake rock ledge, apparently asleep. People were coming up and clapping their hands and doing all sorts of stupid things (which, of course, had been done so often that the cat was totally used to it and exceedingly unlikely to react) to wake it up, with no effect. Then a mother with a baby in a stroller came up to the exhibit. The baby, which was just old enough to barely toddle, made a little whimpering sound, and I saw the cat's ear twitch. Then the mother lifted the baby out of the stroller, and set it on the floor while she rummaged around in her bag for a pacifier. The baby began to cry, and to crawl across the floor away from the mother, and the next thing I knew the cat had risen and in the blink of an eye had launched itself off the fake ledge, crashing into the glass hard enough to shake it. There was no doubt that something in that baby's sound and movement had triggered a serious predatory instinct!

Had a similar incident with my cheetahs and my son as a toddler at the Milwaukee zoo.

Your physiological responses in a situation like that make it pretty clear your family is more important than the cat. Of course, the chances a cat in the east will go aggressive that way seem pretty far fetched. They barely even have enough habitat to eek by. How could they possibly make it if they confront humans?

Certainly things are different in the west. I worked in coastal California for a couple of years where mountain lions are thick. We'd find fresh deer carcasses and cat tracks in the stream beds and several people in our crew saw them while we were working. One of the properties we sampled there was owned by a USDA animal control officer (which in Alaska is aparently enough qualification to be the head of the DNR). He was a great guy and loved to talk about his work. Often that involved taking down mountain lions after they killed livestock (and yes they were often llama kills).

He said the hunt was mindlessly simple. Start the dogs on the carcass. Follow the trail and since the cats have little stamina they won't be far from the scene and they won't run far during the chase. They simply run up a tree and they rarely turn on the dogs. He generally took them with a pistol.

If climate change is a controversial issue, predator management is another level beyond even that. In the west, where they still have relevant populations of all the big predators, they're lining up to do battle over wolf seasons and coyote control and a hundred other issues. In Alaska the animal control agent they hired to run the wildlife division has legalized commercial trade in bear pelts and encouraged systematic culling of the bear populations around Anchorage and elsewhere to increase deer/elk/moose/caribou herds. Fourty former state biologists have petitioned for his removal and biologists still inside the agency who object to the new policies are being reassigned and removed.

Those fights will never go away not only because of different value systems about animal life, but also because of different perspectives about risk and personal and economic safety.

I don't like the idea of taking predators just because hunters want more deer to shoot. The wilderness is not a farm and the DNR isn't in the ranching business. I'm not interested in paying tax money so hunters don't have to actually learn their hobby. I'm also impatient with people who want predators dead just because they see them as a general threat. To me that's a level of intolerance that's just not warranted. I'm also not sure I care to pay your predator control bill because something came and grabbed your pooch. If you love them so much, bring them inside at night. Once you're losing your livelihood or something turns aggressive toward humans...ok. Fine.

I'm not going to judge that farmer. But I sure wish that mountain lion were still alive.