cougars

Go to Google maps: Texas Parks & Wildlife released a radio-collared young male cougar from the Black Gap Game Management Area in Brewster County. The cougar was killed in a rancher's sheep pen, two nights later--80 miles north, near Marathon.

A pilot friend of mine tracks radio-collared wild critters via his Cessna 172. One cougar was regularly tracked in hunting/mating travel from the Glass Mountains just north of Marathon, all the way to the south end of the Sierra del Carmen in Mexico--approximately a 200-mile ranging.
 
Years ago, while vacationing in Florida one winter, we saw a cougar dart across a very busy interstate.
It made it ok with moves any running back would have been proud of.
 
I'm in southeastern NC. When I was little my parents swear they saw a panther. Few years back we saw one cross the road by my house, found the tracks for it. Last year we heard something weird, like a high pitched yell or something, idk how to really explain it, looked it up and it was identical to a cougar. Last spring I saw tracks, they were old but looked very close to one. Our neighbor a road over swears he saw one 2 years ago. Also, about 10 years ago a lady 3 miles over was saying something about she saw a big cat. We got a book and had her flip through the pictures and the one she picked out was a cougar. I think they're sparse here, but I'm convinced we have them
 
Washington Dept of Fish and Wildlife had collars on several cats for a study several years ago. I was very interested, as I had been followed by a cougar. My interpretation of the data leads me to believe that a male " passing through" looking for territory, in an area without any other male cats....just found home sweet home! I have no doubt that cougars are spreading out. Every healthy female bears multiple kittens. I don't recall the survival rate, but it was enough that the population in Washington is high enough that tags are available over the counter. .

If there is a breading population in the east without a hunting season and enough cover to hide them....they are very sneaky.. You will eventually have a large enough population to be detected and confirmed.
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Yes, they are very sneaky and even with a large population, they are very difficult to find and hunt. Most people just happen across them. I get a cougar tag each year, but as part of a combo license in case I ever cross one. I don't actively hunt them though. WA state had 177 harvested in 2014 (2015 activity not yet complete or posted) http://wdfw.wa.gov/hunting/harvest/2014/reports/cougar.php

The state harvest guidelines varies from year to year, but hovers somewhere in the 250-300 range. So as you can see, even hunters can not reach the harvest limits in a healthy population. They are out there, just difficult to find. I do hear them occasionally at night from my house, (usually when the females are in heat). That is a sound that sends chills up and down your spine. Always sounds like a girl yelling "help" in the middle of the night.
 
"they've" been sort of monitoring a male jaguar in southern Arizona lately... believed to be the only documented jaguar in the U.S. for over a hundred years.

if jaguars are trying to make a comeback in the U.S. there's no reason why a puma which is already here can't expand its range.

again, the confirmed sightings of pumas in my area (east Alabama and west Georgia) have been confirmed to be exotic pets that got loose.
 
I lived in southern CA in the 80's and I remember the big political fight when their fish and game dept wanted to lift the moratorium on hunting them, on the basis that their popoulations had recovered after a 10 year moratorium. I remember two young girls being snatched up at two differnet county parks in Orange Co. about a year apart. (both survived) along with many other complaints and sightings in the area of mt lions seeingly unafraid of humans. Many attributed this to them being protected for so long. By the time I left in 1988, there were still all kinds of legal blocks being battled, and i don't know if they ever got their season.

I had only seen one at one time when I lived there. I saw it on a mountain several hundred yards away with my binoculars, and it was watching me. Kind of creepy!

The one thing I do rember is that they were very sparsley populated as was their nature, and they did not tend to overpopulate, as each lion claimed a lot of territory. At that time I thing the states population was estimated at 5,000, which was considered near the max that could be practically sustained.

I have little doubt that they exist elsewhere and their ranges constantly chnage, and probably grow. I thought I had read something where Florida was counting on the wild hog population as a source of food for them there.
 
Cougars don't seem to be real picky about diet. Quail, jackrabbits, housecats, dogs, javelina and deer. Plus sheep and goats.
 
""they've" been sort of monitoring a male jaguar in southern Arizona lately.."

Saw that on TV this morning. THAT should make tent camping in that area lots more exciting.
 
Yeah I agree and would totally believe that there are cougars in Alabama, Georgia, vicinity etc. Here in East Texas where they have an acknowledged sustained population and have for centuries, the landscape and climate is hardly different in East Texas from Alabama, Georgia and the entire Deep South. So I don't see why not at all there would be cougars in other places east of the Mississippi when they already have good populations in other areas of the Deep South with nearly the exact same landscape and climate.

Some people have misconceptions of Texas just being the Wild West being nothing but arid hills, deserts, mountains, and lots of open plains. While we do have all of that here in Texas plus much much more, There are millions upon millions of acres of solid Pine forests and swamps just like the rest of the Deep South. The climatic name for East Texas is the "Piney Woods". If you cross into Texas from the eastern borders you will have to drive for hours and hours, hundreds of miles before you start to feel like your not in the Deep South anymore, because the landscape is nearly identical to Louisiana, Mississippi, etc.
 
I normally have quite a few cameras out in the "piney woods", and last summer I was seeing some deer with strange injuries. I saw one with what looked like scratch marks on it's rear end, and one with a chewed up area on it's front shoulder. Several had what looked like scratches on them that looked suspicious. I asked a game warden about this and he states that there are definitely no large cats in this area....period. He said he hears reports about them often but there are none here. I find the whole situation strange, but have seen none on my cameras. I sincerely doubt the damage done to the deer could have been done by dogs.
 
We get tagged bears from Jersey here all the time. Some came quite a distance and they are a heck of a lot bigger than a cougar. My Buddy's kid shot a 17 year old bear last year. Three tags on it.
 
I happened across one while duck hunting in a salt marsh at the mouth of the Guadalupe river in southeast Texas. It was just walking through the shallow water possibly hunting feral pig, deer, or gator.
 
Plus sheep and goats.
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Neighbors know I do a lot of coyote hunting so I get a lot request to hunt them on their property to help control their livestock loss.

So I get a call from some folks that live a good piece from me, they explain they and two of their neighbors are losing a good amount of sheep, goats and calves.
I drive out to their place to take a look, it just so happens a ewe was killed the night before and this time whatever killed the ewe did not get away with her.

We were in a drought, the ground was cracked and as hard as concrete in the lot where the ewe lay so there was no tracks.
I inspected the ewe and she was ripped open at the paunch, I told the lady that I was pretty sure this was not a coyote kill as coyotes start at the rear and not the paunch.

She told me a little while back they lost a full grown ram and it was in the same lot as the ewe, they found parts of the ram in a pasture a good distance from the house.
The lot where the sheep are kept at night has a fence made of 48 inch woven wire with two strands of barb wire spaced about three inches apart, this fence is four and half feet tall and the wire is tight as a banjo string.
There's no holes or gaps under the fence so whatever took that ram from the lot had to take it over the fence; I told the lady again that I don't believe that was done by a coyote.

I ask her if she had contacted the MDC with her problem, she said she had twice and her neighbors had also contacted them.
The MDC offered no help other then telling them to keep their animals as close to the house as possible or in a barn.

I contacted the MDC to see what the legal requirements would be if I shot a cougar on the ladies farm, they knew who I was referring to.
I was informed it was legal for me to act as shooter on the behalf of the land owner losing livestock to protect their livestock as long as I had a Missouri hunting permit.
I was also informed that if I killed a cougar trying to kill the ladies sheep that I had to contact the MDC agent of that area immediately and that I could take no parts of the cat.

What was strange about this whole deal was that within a little over a week of me calling the MDC the live stock loss on all three farms stopped.
The lady ask me why that happened, I did not have an answer but I do have suspicion of what may have happened.

Best Regards
Bob Hunter
 
Some of those livestock attacks yall are speaking of sound more characteristic of cougar attacks than anything else. Definently dont sound like canine attacks and at least where Stony is at there are really no other predators that would try to take down a deer other than canines or a cougar, and at least around here coyotes very rarely take down deer. Maybe a fawn every now and then if they get the drop on it but thats it.

In my first post on this thread I was talking about how a buddy of mine I was hog hunting with saw a cougar near a corn feeder he was hunting. Anyway just three days before that a large donkey about 800 lbs or a little bigger somehow strayed onto the property we would hunt from the neighbors. We contacted the neighbors and they said they would be out there in a few days to get the donkey. So the next morning we go down there to cut some firewood and fix some fence and the donkey has huge gashes and cuts all the way from the top of the base of its neck all the way around to its throat and huge raking gashes across the top of its back. So we got the donkey in some cattle pens and checked its wounds. They were big but not deep enough to cause any really injuries. So the donkey was fine just cut up real bad. And the day after that was when my buddy saw the cougar down there.
 
"What was strange about this whole deal was that within a little over a week of me calling the MDC the live stock loss on all three farms stopped.
The lady ask me why that happened, I did not have an answer but I do have suspicion of what may have happened."

Around 2010, several reports came out about cougar sightings about 4 miles west of my place. During the early part of archery season, a knowledgeable hunter reported a cougar to the landowner where he was hunting. Right before rifle deer season, a whole flock of bunny cops showed up with radio telemetry receivers, numerous chase trucks, and an airplane. It appeared the plane was "hazing" something in the area where the bowhunter had reported a cat sighting. This went on for a couple of days and then suddenly stopped one day before rifle season. My thoughts are there was a collared cat in that area and the bunny cops corralled and darted it. For the last year telemetry equipped vehicles have been seen cruising the roads and when questioned the reply has been "We're doing turkey nesting research". Yeah, right, in the middle of winter-sure you are.
 
Black cats?

I have always found it interesting that no matter where I hunt in the state of Louisiana, I can find hunters who will swear that they saw a "black panther".
Those same hunters will almost always state that the cat they saw was very large and had a long tail.
Trail cam pictures of 1 or 2 cougars have surfaced from remote areas. Those cats were of a normal tan coloration. Some may have been escaped pets.
I have no doubt that some of the people I have spoken to truly believe that they saw a black panther or cougar.
I am told that a black color phase of cougar, AKA mountain lion does not exist. I have never seen a photograph or trail cam photo of a black cougar- dead or alive. I have never seen a picture of a wild black color phase jaguar from the continental United States although I have seen pictures of them from South America.
Very odd.
 
As near as I can tell, the "black panther" black is not a true black, but a very dark brown. Looks black in dim light.

I got into a discussion of this with a Terlingua local, after his daylight sighting of a "black panther". In retrospect, he agreed that it could well have been the very dark brown. He had gone by the usual "I saw a black panther!" idea.

Years back, I had a brief view of a cougar which was very much like a sealpoint Siamese: Brown mask, paws and tip of the tail; otherwise the usual tan color.
 
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