Local News Headline

Kevin Stenberg

Well-Known Member
12/ 07/ 18 150 lb Mountain Lion killed in an auto accident. Pictures included. 12 miles west of me.
In the artical. DNR denies any cats live in Minn. Kevin
 
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RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Yep, like the mountain lion from Idaho that walked all the way to Connecticut over two years. Tracked its stool samples all the way. Kill by a car when it got there. You have lions there, as the wolves in the PNW and Montana are pushing them further eastward every year.
 

Intheshop

Banned
Same here in Virginia Kevin,game dept refuses to even discuss mountain lions despite being sighted by hunters......

Me thinks there's more to it than meets the eye? Limited monies.... or money in general prolly near the root of their position?
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
if they admit to them being there they have to pay for livestock kills in many areas.

the wolves pushing them along is interesting.
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Publicly there are 120 wolves in WA. Privately they admit there are about 500. Mountain lions have been killed in the school yards in the northern part of the state. Wolves are so efficient at killing game (and stock), they are pushing the mountain lions out. May change when they introduce grizzlies next year up in the wilderness area northeast of Seattle.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Yes, the standard pattern for F&G deptments. Fla denied it for decades, NO FLA PANTHERS LEFT.

Then, after many, many sightings, all denied by F&G, somebody deposited a dead body on the floor of
a F&G office and said, "OK, so what is this?" An escaped pet, of course. With nothing but deer and
squirrel in it's belly. Right.

Then another dead one......finally F&G allowed as how there "Might be a small breeding group left deep in the
Everglades." A friend works sometimes (for free) for a Prof at UF Gainesville tracking them. He has tracked
them into suburbia, and nobody says they have seen anything when they went door to door asking. Lots of them
and at least as far north as central Fla.

Same in KS, although they still deny. I saw one, for certain, and my wife saw it too, same time. We agree
exactly on what we saw. I have asked farmer friends, and they say, "sure, we've seen them and their tracks"

But there are none, according to KS Dept. of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, at least
the last time I heard. A whole lot more out there than we know. Very stealthy animals.

Our forefathers were smarter than we are, killing out the wolves. Dumber than heck bringing them back.
Suppose you saw this big 'yote and punched a hole in him...... Oh, darn.

Bill
 
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waco

Springfield, Oregon
Dammed cougars are everywhere around here. People get up to go to work and find the things sleeping in the beds of their trucks.
It's no wonder the deer and elk population has been decimated around here over the last 10-15 years.
Law makers won't let hunter use hounds anymore.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Unfortunately, the decimation of the deer and elk is a feature, not a bug, of the way a lot of folks
want to run things in the future. Wolves, the same. Some people in charge don't like hunting, so
one way to minimize it is to put lots of predators in place, make hunting no longer fruitful. No deer
or elk, no hunting.

Bill
 
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CZ93X62

Official forum enigma
Coyotes are the primary predator around me, though we do have MLs in some numbers in the local mountains and deserts. I had a little set-to with the fish & fauna fascists some years back (1982) concerning bears in the mountains south of Palm Desert. I was detailed to stand watch over a crime scene overnight where a drug dealer/mule received his retirement allotment all at once for having shorted a load or some cash for same. He had been sampled by the local fauna as table fare to some extent prior to being found. I had a ton of reports to get written, so I volunteered for the duty about halfway through swing shift. Dark moonless night, slight breeze blowing--I parked the Holstein upwind from the taped-off remains, with the ambiance degenerating as it had.

About 2 hours in, I heard a thrashing in the buckbrush and manzanita on the passenger side of the car. I turned on the alley light (fixed beam, shines 90* to the right from the light bar) and saw a black bear about 25 yards off kind of blink his eyes and turn away from the aircraft landing light's intense beam and saunter off. I unlocked the 870, and felt safe enough with 4 deer slugs in the mag tube. No further problems that night from Mr. Ursus americanus, either for me or for the deputy that spelled me at 1:30 A.M. for graveyard shift. He did bring along one of the Station rifles, though--a pre-64 Winchester 94 in 30/30. After sun-up, the graveyard guy took photos of the bear tracks that circled the parked patrol car. These were made after I arrived, and overlaid my inbound tire tracks. That was a mite unsettling, given that Senor Bear might have expanded his culinary options a bit.

Cal-DFG basically called me and the later deputy a couple liars about bears being located in the area we saw him. I had the ID Bureau make an extra set of the photos showing the prints, and met the local warden a few days later to hand them off. The warden was a good guy, but wanted no part of seeing the photos and DEFINITELY wanted no part of taking them to his Lieutenant. A valuable lesson in Adminspeak and State Secrets early in my career, reinforcing the notion that agency shotcallers of all .gov orgs like their truth dispensed in small dosage units over extended timeframes.
 
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Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
In the Adirondacks back in the early 70s they told us we were nuts when we reported turkeys. In the late 70's they told us we were crazy when we reported very large coyotes. In the late 70's/early 80's they said the same thing about moose. I saw a cougar in the early 90's myself, no mistake about what it was, investigated a car accident with a moose in the mid 90's, but we "don't have any moose". They said people were too stupid to know what they were seeing when reporting Bald Eagles in Northern NY. In recent years they told us that we must have been seeing beaver or porkies when reporting black bears in built up areas along the St Lawrence. Talking with people far more knowledgeable than myself in the ways of gov't, I've been told that admitting there is a population means developing a management plan, because obviously they are the states animals and there have to be rules!!! Makes sense to me.

In the east predation on livestock isn't compensated, any more than people are compensated when they hit a deer with their car.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
that sounds like how they count Grizzly's around here.
it generally goes something like this in the paper.

well area XX-2 has a population of around 20 bears full time and another 200 to 225 bears that rotate in and out on a frequent basis.
they 'basis' their count on big brushes they put up about every 3 miles for the bears to rub against so they could get hair samples.
 

S Mac

Sept. 10, 2021 Steve left us. You are missed.
I took a pic a couple of years ago of a pair of tracks, two different size animals in the same pic. The larger ones where as wide as my hand, no claw prints. I suspect a mama and cub. I showed the pic to our local conservation officer, a friend of mine. He forwarded them to their biologist. He said they were dog tracks. Deniers.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Dog tracks have claw marks if the ground is soft. In the case of our mtn lion sighting.
pure tan all over, rolling-rotary motion of front shoulder blades as it walked like ONLY cats have,
and a tail 3/4 as long as the body, reached to a few inches from the ground and curled back up about
8-10" length past the lowest point. Not a dog, not a bobcat, for certain. Didn't bother
talking to KS fish cops, after the years of experience with the Fla fish cops.

De Nile isn't just a river in Egypt.

Bill
 
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Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Had a black panther in my back yard 2-3 years ago. Thought about calling Fish & game but had a pretty solid idea what they would say & so didn't bother.
 

david s

Well-Known Member
Here in Montana for the last 25 to 30 years there has been a push by the federal government to reintroduce Grizzly bears in the Bitterroot mountains along the Idaho-Montana border. The governments point being that this is the bears natural habitat so they belong there. The basic plan is take Grizzly bears from elsewhere and put them in the Bitterroots. If you ask the powers that be they will tell you that there are no Grizzly bears currently in the Bitterroots. Absolutely- Positively no Grizzly's in the Bitterroots!!! This despite people claiming to see them and photos showing otherwise. See if the bears naturally reintroduce them selves the governments management plan is off the table there fore there cant be any Grizzly's there. Ten or fifteen years ago a Grizzly was seen and videoed eating a dead moose by Skalkaho Pass in the Bitterroots. You would think this would mean the bears were in the Bitterroots right? Nope they trapped it and took it out. This fall a young Grizzly bear was digging on a golf course in Lolo Montana which is in the Bitterroots. Must mean Grizzly's in the Bitterroots right? Nope trapped it and took it out. Now Grizzly's digging on a golf course is a good reason to relocate a bear but eating dead moose by Skalkaho Pass is what Grizzly's are suppose to do. The Skalkaho Pass area is serious country make no mistake about it. If Grizzly bears are naturally reintroducing themselves into the Bitterroots they have to be left alone no outside help according to the governments rules. The last sentence is a simplification of the rules but it is the basic gist. So are there Grizzly bears in the Bitterroot Mountains? I dont ask the people who will lose there funding if the bears are there.