Mountain lion stories

[malakajim]

I've never seen one in the 30+ years I've been hunting and out in the woods in general.
Closest I've came happened several years ago when I hunted this property near Fossil, can't remember if it was during deer or elk season but it was dry. There's a road from camp that's part dirt and gravel in different places and leads to the mouth of a canyon, which I sometimes walk in during the morning in the dark, no lights. On my return to camp one day as I'm looking in the dirt for signs of game crossing the road, I see cat prints along my tracks heading in that morning! I sure got the heebie jeebies at that moment.

 

[Coloradocat]

It's a cool clip not far from my house.
I don't know how to make it a click and go

 

[Oregonhunter5]

Driving over to bend from Eugene area and one ran in front of my pickup on the pass. Dark chocolate color. 180lbs. Easily.

Cats are scary, but wolves are a different league. I hunt wolves in Idaho based off of they kill our elk, and they scare lots of guys with elk down over here. They circle up and start howling. I WILL kill one this winter.

 

[Howard1955]

Thread resurrection in 3, 2, 1…

View: https://youtu.be/cH9K9Ad4Ogo?si=Am55GFvTicw_TRZF

 

[OldBroad44]

We have had a resident cougar in our neighborhood for at least about a decade. Its a residential area contiguous with McDonald Forest. Most houses are on 10 acres or more and neighborhood itself is heavily wooded but with enough open areas to sustain way more deer than McDonald Forest does. It was badly overrun with deer until the cougar moved in. Judging from kill sites and remains she takes about one deer per week. She stays hidden during the day. Very well behaved. Has never stalked anyone. She has come right up onto peoples porches at night, though, if there is a small dog or a cat visible through a sliding door. and she does scream sometimes. And leave big footprints in gardens. Nobody leaves small noisy dogs outdoors at night anymore. They tend to vanish. An additional improvement, I think. Everyone in neighborhood has guns, so if cougar started stalking people we would take care of it. But actually, we really enjoy her ecosystem services. So we just gossip about her. Nobody does anything stupid like try to feed her.

My next door neighbor spotted the cougar family when walking her dog at 5am about a month ago. Two adult females and two cubs. I'm guessing it was our resident female plus a yearling daughter and this year's cubs. Then two days after that a neighbor heard what sounded like large animals in his back yard. He had a shotgun, so, like other residents , was not afraid of cougar breaking in through sliding door. Just figured it was best to stay inside out of the way. Went out the next morning and found a half eaten deer carcass in his front yard. That's about 75 yards from my front door. Cougars have likely been all over my yard and within 10 feet or closer to back door, as a major deer trail runs along there.

 

[Provincial]

They are fine as long as they are healthy, can kill their preferred prey, and try to avoid contact with humans. Most attacks are made by animals that no longer can function properly in their ecological niche, and start looking for an easier meal.

Pretty much every predator reaches a point in life were it cannot function properly in it's ecological niche. The poster child for this was the "Man Eating" tigers in India. Healthy tigers avoided humans.

 

[P7M13]

Cali. A friend from Willows wrote me about it this morning.
Cougars are protected in California.

Worthy of the repost:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TDn8ZHgEUQ

 

[Jay Walk]

Encounter 1. riding my dirt bike down an ash covered road in the fall, came around a corner and there it was in the shadows broadside in my path, took it about half a second to scurry up the bank and disappear.

Encounter 2. driving east on road 90 and one was coming uphill from swift and crossed in front of me, took up nearly one entire lane nose to tail. They are crazy long.

 

[Provincial]

A few years ago I was walking my mini-excavator (with an open ROPS) down a dirt road when a cat ran across in front of me. It crossed an open area of blasted rock about 40 yards wide before reaching and crossing the road, crossing from my 2 o'clock toward my 8 o'clock. It disappeared into the forest at full speed. Very large, very fast, and very sure-footed on extremely rough footing!

 

[Howard1955]

Are cougars good to eat? I'm not talking about just edible if you are starving, but good, so you like eating it rather than just force yourself to.

Yes, it's very tasty meat. Smells funny in the skillet, though. Cat.

 

[Provincial]

Smells like a Chinese restaurant? Or maybe a Mexican fiesta?

 

[Howard1955]

View: https://youtu.be/8fUZw6er0Eg?si=Fi8pBdRlLSmq1SMh

View: https://youtu.be/ZUzbrGO6M98?si=kNb_o_E9p_0fPGA9

 

[Tlock]

I've had a few over the years......

 

[kmk1012]

I've eaten cougar before, one of them was killed by a hunter, the others are still alive

 

[dangerranger60]

I have had a few encounters.
I was out feeding livestock and none would come to the feeders. So I go out looking for them. When I find them all huddled up, nothing I could do to move them back to the feed troughs, so I gave up. Figuring they would come up when they got good and hungry. as I'm getting close to the feeders I see a young cat stretched out on a rock about 30 yards past the feeder! It just sat there watching me. Best I could tell it was waiting for the squirrels that clean up any grain dropped by the cattle. But the cattle were having none of it!

The next time I was feeding horses before sunup. Again none of the horses would come out of the barn. I thought I saw one of out neighbors dogs in our pasture. So I went down to our lower pasture to chase them off I heard movement off to my right and then two animals going under the barb wire fence. about a second later I saw something moving off to my left that was long. When I got home in the evening I went down to see what kind of tracks were left.
I found on the right two sets of kitten tracks, and to the left BIG CAT tracks. My best guess is I was standing between Mom and Kittens! Mom was probably teaching them to catch ground squirrels.

We moved out of the city when our youngest was in 3rd grade. The first day of school they came home with a note telling us that they had spotted a Mountain lion along the fence. My wife says "Great! We traded Drive By alerts for Mountain Lion alerts!" DR

 

[Flopsweat]

They taste like sweet pork if cooked right.. good eating...

View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hXD7cG4erto