Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Wild Hogs

We are not supposed to have cougars in Indiana. If they show up, walking to and from the deer stand in the dark might be a little more interesting. Skunks are the biggest threat now.

I thought cougars were actually known for being quite immodest, thus their attraction. That's just what I have always understood. We're talking about the same thing, right?

Guilty: Thread Perversion

What??? Who???

Where were all these cougars when I was young?

Not supposed to have any according to most local govt. sources, but the darn things somehow manage to get photographed every so often.

(I'm speaking in regards to cougars of the feline persuasion......)

I've never seen either type on my trail cam, but I keep checking!

A friend of my fathers claimed to have found 2 deer kills and numerous tracks near his place in Sinnemahoning PA.We just figured that he had spent a little too much time out in the woods alone.That all changed though after the cat in CT got hit by a car.I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if there where a few more out east.

Well, I'll believe there is a breeding population of cougars, mountain lions, pumas, catamounts or what ever else you wanna call them when someone finds a female with babies in the east.

Here in VA where guys run the snot out of the deer and bears with dogs during the firearms hunting season, the dogs never seem to run mountain lions up a tree.

One thing about mountain lions in the east. Florida sure is in the east, and no question about it, they have a well documented wild cougar population. They are spreading into new areas of Florida also. They have even been hit by cars. Some of them are live trapped and radio collared and relocated.

Surely none of them are ever relocated to other states.

After a lifetime of city living I moved to this 160 acre farmstead in October of 2008, just 3 miles outside of Lincoln. Knowing what I know now I would have and should have called it in, especially after finding out the Boy Scout Camp was so close, but there's now no doubt in my mind that what I saw was a mountain lion. It was a heavily wooded area with only the creek separating us. He looked at me as I was frozen, turned and walked away. Scared the hell outta me and I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

After that encounter I never went exploring unarmed and without a camera, but for the next 4 1/2 years of living there I never saw another one, nor did I hear of any sightings. I have no picture but I know what I saw.



I now live less than a mile from that property along the same creek-line with about 20 acres of wooded area. I only have 2 trail-cams out and I've seen about every critter here but nothing close to the size of that cat.

I found this last Thursday (Thanksgiving) while showing a friend around the property and it was clearly drug about 50' to where it was found, under secluded brush. I just figured it was a pack of Yotes that did it???

'Yotes don't care if they eat in the wide open. Did you look at the back of the neck or the throat? Any puncture marks?

A single Mt. Lion will kill an Elk or deer roughly every 5 days to eat it.

Great point, and I wished I would have checked!

It's been a week and we're expecting 3-5" of snow beginning tonight. If it's still accessible in the morning you've piqued my interest to check.

If I make it out there, is there anything else to look for, or in the area?

Thanks Esshup!

Cougars get hit on the roads in Florida all the time... About 15% of the cougar population in Florida is road killed each year.

http://cougarrewilding.org/CougarNews/?p=1908

If there were even 100 cougars in all other eastern states combined, we should be seeing about 15 cougars road killed per year. We see 1 every 20 years. It's just simple math, we don't have a reproducing cougar population in the east other than in Florida.

Mt. Lion prints are large. You won't mistake them for a large dog - they'll be larger than that. Even a 120# cat has paws as big as my hand, and I wear XL gloves. No claw marks in feline tracks.

Here in Maryland we have had several mountain lion sightings over the years. First the DNR said everyone was wrong they were mistakenly seeing bobcats or coyotes.

Then when video cameras started getting popular, they received at least 3 different videos of free roaming cougars in Maryland. One of the videos is even a black phase cougar. They said these animals were almost certainly escaped captives.

The last one was a few years ago when several people spotted a 6' cat in the area of Andrews AFB. Lots of deer in this area. It was discovered that it escaped from an enclosure. Never did hear what happened to that one.

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/naturalresource/fall2007/lions.pdf

This link best describes the eastern cougar/mountain lion population. The fact that so many people see "black" mountain lions to me shows it's that much more unlikely they are seeing mountain lions as a black mountain lion has NEVER been documented in North America. Even back in the colonial days when 1,000's were killed.

In the end it is a very simple math problem. Florida has roughly 100-120 cougars in the wild and has on average, 15-20 of them killed on the road each year. Yet, the rest of the eastern United States has 1 killed every decade and those usually can be tracked back to being a released pet or a long wandering male from far out west.

I hate to break it to people, wild reproducing mountain lions don't exists in the eastern United States. They died off when the whitetail deer almost went extinct(their main food) and the woods were all logged and burned in the late 1800's.

CJ, with all due respect, I have no idea whether you are right or not. Personally here in Missouri, our very own Missouri Department of Conservation for years negated sightings of big cats here. Basically said they DID NOT EXIST in any number. Until eventually, a couple were killed by cars. Well what do you know? They abruptly came out with the official report that the cats did exist. One of 2 things, they did not have a clue about the cats, rendering them as non experts in my opinion, or they were lieing about their existence from the beginning. Either way I find it difficult to respect their opinion now. Kind of like Linus's credibility when the Great Pumpkin never showed.

Rancid Crabtree can find them if anyone can. Heck, that guy can build a grasshopper trap.

Missouri is closer to established self sustaining populations of mountain lions. So, it would only make sense the occasional male mountain lion will find it's way there. It's far easier to get to Missouri than it is VA, PA, WV or MD from where the western populations of mountain lions are.

I suspect biologists in Missouri got a little sick of going out on BS sightings of mountain lions and down played the small number of legit sightings. It came back to bite them in the butt in the credibility factor. Missouri still most likely doesn't have a self sustaining reproducing population of mountain lions. Maybe in 20, 30 or 50 years it will. It takes far more time for females to spread into a new area than it does for males...

See: http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/wildli...in-lion-reports

When you start seeing a decent number of females in the mix, you know you have a reproducing population.

I see the same thing but on a smaller scale with black bears. 20 years ago, we rarely saw black bear sign on our land in PA. Maybe once every couple years we'd see a pile of bear poop. My best guess, it was a young male dispersing to a new area. As black bears got more common in their core range, more and more female bears were born and they dispersed but in much smaller distances. Instead of 15 to 50+ miles, they generally only disperse one third to one half a mile. Females don't get their heads bashed in by dominant males like young males do. If you are constantly getting whooped, you may decide to walk a long ways to find an area not chock full of large male bears already. This small dispersion area for females in a 5 year period may lead to only a couple extra square miles of new reproducing bear territory. However, over a few decades, this can really increase the range of a reproducing bear populations is found. We now have multiple female bears with cubs each year.

The same is true for mountain lions that are dispersing from Montana, Colorado or the Dakotas. As time goes on, if those populations there continue to grow the females will slowly expand out as well. It's just those pesky juvenile males who are sick of getting their heads beat in by dominant males in established areas. They set off for new areas and sometimes they travel a lot of miles. It's these males that are being seen in Missouri. In that one fluke, a male that traveled from the Dakotas to Wisconsin and then all the way to Connecticut.

CJ, in the upper portions of Wi., there are more and more sightings of Mt. Lions on trail cams this year than last. Don't know the sex of them tho.....

I don't know if that has anything to do with the wolves now on the "legal to take" list or not.

I would be willing to bet they are all males. Not so easy to sex mountain lions from photos, if only they grew antlers on their heads...

Delaware also has an interesting cougar issue. They've been seeing cougars for 10 years. The state says there are at least 2 free roaming cougars there. Many confirmed sightings. They believe a pair escaped captivity in the Philadelphia area and made a home in Delaware. They have been eating deer and geese.

in the news just this morning, FL panther/Cougar was found dead from gun shot. Found near big cypress national refuge.

I'm in general agreement with CJ, in that a reproducing, sustaining population of mountain lions is one thing, while a lone male "explorer" here and there is quite another.

HOWEVER....if I were losing livestock, or had a personal encounter with a mountain lion that, for whatever reason, didn't end comfortably for me, then I highly doubt the state's claim that the damage was due to a lone male individual would bring me much comfort. Sure they might be right, but would it matter if the deed was already done?

One more thing. That male that traveled from the Dakotas to Connecticut...how many folks observed that cat during its journey? For those who claim the eastern half of the country is too populated and too well developed to hide an out of place, large animal...

Hmmm?

Somewhere in my files I have an old newspaper clipping detailing the account of the moose that stopped traffic just a few miles outside of Bloomington, IN. A lone wanderer, just as CJ suggests. But it came all this way south before anyone took notice.