doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT - Mt. Lion Attack

Rudy, I think that what the "greenies" would find distasteful about this thread is the RANT that is bound to come from someone like me to the effect that: Our forefathers went to lots of trouble a long time ago to exterminate most of the Varmints that kept eating the children. Why are we now so hell-bent in protecting cantamounts, griz, wolves, black bears, and gators so we can again share the environment with them. They don't share, they eat the children. We already learned that lesson once....Geo

I dunno, GN. I have never had a single Greenie Stick-em Cap rant at me about anything. 'Course I once knew a guy whose coffee cup used to cuss him every morning. He eventually went insane.

Charlie, I'd get a pair of Irish Wolfhounds as companions to your Springers, just in case.

JC

In 2007 a group of friends and myself went javelina hunting on the San Carlos Reservation in AZ. Every javelina tag purchased came with a free mountain lion tag that could be used up until the time you got your javelina.

Never saw one.

While by no means commonplace, lions are expanding their territory in Nebraska and the experts think they could be found in any part of the state (more prevalent, though, out west). Case in point is the cat killed on the damned freeway in suburban Omaha a couple of years ago. I started carrying a .357 on my belt when deer hunting for this very reason, even though I have few illusions about the outcome if a determined mountain lion decides he wants me for breakfast. TT

Here is a no-nonsence factual website on cougars/panthers if you are interested.

http://www.easterncougarnet.org

The big cats are definately expanding their range from west to east across the central part of the Country. Even here in Florida where the resident panther population was in dangerous decline, an infusion of Texas cougar genes has invigorated the population significantly and the cats are now moving north out of the traditional range in southwest Florida. Several factors are probably at play in this increase, and an increase in deer and hog populations is surly a player. Our black bear population is expanding rapidly also, and the gator numbers are unbelievable. Don't think that you are at the top of the food chain in Florida!

We even have them back in Illinois now for the first time in over 100 years. There had been stories for a long time, but they finally found one dead on the railroad track down near home a couple years back.

Destry

This photo was reportedly taken by a motion camera near Wellington, Texas this year. Now folks, Wellington is darned near the Oklahoma border! Lions are unheard of that far east in this part of the country.

That photo and a couple others like it were pretty well diagnosed as photoshops.

As for lions, they are abundant in a number of places relatively "close" to the east. As in places like the Black Hills where they are "full up" with lions. So, young lions, almost every one of them male, up and leave. Some come east and some of those make it as far as Iowa or Illinois or whatever. They are young males that in no way shape or form are going to start a population. Jonathan Jenks at SDSU has radio collared individual animals moving from the Black Hills to Oklahoma City - about 700 km, if I recall correctly.

We get moose in Iowa also. Not to worry though...

Brent

What you say about the young males being the primary movers is true. That holds also with black bears. Here in Florida, however, we're finding that now even the young females are moving north. We had a record panther road kill last year,12-14 or so, and several of these were female. Given the old rule that "Nature Abhors A Vacuum", many wildlife biologists think that a breeding population will become re-established in favorable habitat where the cats were exterpated decades ago. I think so also, though I am a forester primarily, with a limited wildlife biology background.