This weekend, I finally was able to go hiking (stopped raining).
I choose a steep rocky canyon with bluffs on one side. I took my Yellow lab so he could get some exercise too.
We were about a mile up the creek and the going was slow. The canyon was steep so I had to jump from boulder to boulder crossing the creek to get up the canyon.
I was getting ready to climb around a VW size boulder...my dog had already made it around the boulder and was standing on the bank of the creek.
I suddenly heard him whimper/wine then look at the creek on the other side of the boulder. The hair on his back was standing on end. He again looked at me and wimpered then looked back at the creek. I hollered at him to stay and instinctively felt for my gun. I knew there was something on the other side of the boulder...probably a porcupine or something.
I climbed up/around the boulder and there standing in the creek (15' away) was a huge mountain lion. It was twice as big as my dog which weighs 90 lbs. The lion stared at me for a second, then walked up the hillside away from me. I could see every muscle rippling under it's skin. I watched it walk up the steep hillside. By then my dog was thinking he wanted a piece of that cat....and the cat stops to look back at us.
I wasn't done hiking and was worried it might start stalking my dog, so I shot a .45 round over his head to make sure he knew that I wouldn't tolerate him around. He ran off in waist high brush. The only way I knew where he went was by watching the 3 vultures that were constantly circling above him.
Pretty cool encounter. I'm going back up to set up a trail camera because I think he lives in a cave near these bluffs.
Yup, the cat is thinking, got my trap set for when that silly human comes back with one of those box thingies. Yum,yum!
One of my favorite late deer hunting areas is also favored by numerous big cats. The last time my Dad went with me he stopped to sit under a tree. An hour later I circled back around and came up behind him. I could hear him snoring. 10 feet behind him was a steaming pile of cat scat. The tracks went by him at about 2 steps...
In the early sixties there was an older lady that lived in the Colorado high country on the back side of Mt. Princeton near a settlement called "Jumpsteady". She regularly put food out for the cougars and would watch them from her screen door. Every once in a while someone from the Denver Post would drive up and get a picture of a cat or two. NFS personnel tried to get her to quit out of safety concerns, but as far as I know the cats "honored" her screen door barrier.
I too was taken by their sinewy muscles the first time I saw one.
Burns Colorado....145 lbs 7'7" long
I have spent my entire life out in the woods and have only seen two other lions and they were viewed from a long ways away.
At the time I estimated it to weigh 180 lbs and it seems that is about the upper limit for a mature male cat. As it walked away, I don't recall seeing anything dangling, so it must have been a large female. If so, there might be a litter of cubs hidden in one of those caves.
From what I have read, they would probably be about 3 months old now and almost weaned. This bluff was full of narrow ledges leading to shallow caves and overhangs and was probably the only shelter from the weather aside from the occasional mining audit.
I think I will approach the bluff from the opposite ridge...get comfortable and watch it with binoculars for a few hours before setting my camera up.
I'll be armed with a camera................ and a bigger gun.
imaudigger, post: 410641, member: 7286 wrote: ..I have spent my entire life out in the woods and have only seen two other lions and they were viewed from a long ways away..
Don't look up in the trees much do you? 😉
They're there.
paden cash, post: 410651, member: 20 wrote: Don't look up in the trees much do you? 😉
They're there.
Oh I am well aware that I have probably walked under cats many times. What really got me was the fact that it looked just like an actual lion! Imagine that.
Not seeing them kind of makes you forget what they really are. I went to a high school party once and the girl's dad had a permit to keep two lions to train his dogs. We poked sticks into the cage and got them to come over so we could pet their noses. They would purr just like a house cat. They were not nearly as big and muscular as the cat I saw this weekend.
Last year I had a property owner caution me about a good sized cat that had 'stolen' a deer he downed a week earlier with a bow. He guessed they both were hunting that day and the cat beat him to the kill. He walked the creek down with us and we found some pretty good sized tracks in the silt. About a quarter mile down the creek he showed us what was left of the deer stashed up in a good sized hickory. Although the cat had made a pretty good meal of the carcass, he had eaten around the still visible arrow.
The big cats have been in NE Texas for as long as I can remember.
When I was 14 brought a black kitten home and in 6mos it weight nearly 40lbs and had to go cause it took the rooster and a few chickens.
We always joked with the metro hunters that leased land near Wright Patman Lake about keeping a lookout for monkeys.
Certain time of the year it is common to see a tail dangling from the trees.
In 1982 I was working in Siskiyou County on a USFS boundary. One evening we were hanging out with a local surveyor who was a friend of my boss. As darkness fell the other surveyor got worried about his employee, who had gone out that morning to post and blaze some line and hadn't checked in, so we loaded into a truck and went looking for him. As we reached the edge of town we saw him driving in. He was badly shaken up, said a cat had started stalking him. He threw the Carsonite posts he was packing at the cat, but it kept shadowing him. He ended up running the last quarter mile to the truck - no easy feat in that steep country - with the cat 50 feet or so behind all the way. He wouldn't go out alone after that.
At the time I thought he overreacted, that the cat was just curious. That was before cat attacks in California had been documented, but since then several kills and some non-fatal incidents have come to light. These days I'm more concerned about cats than bears when out in the woods.
An adult female won't get to be 180 lbs. A big female cougar may get about 120. Male cats don't really have anything "dangling". It all stays high n tight unless they are in the process of actively trying to procreate, but then it goes right back to it's protective carry posture as soon as the act is done.
If it was that big, it was a male.
eapls2708, post: 410694, member: 589 wrote: An adult female won't get to be 180 lbs. A big female cougar may get about 120. Male cats don't really have anything "dangling". It all stays high n tight unless they are in the process of actively trying to procreate, but then it goes right back to it's protective carry posture as soon as the act is done.
If it was that big, it was a male.
Well - I was only guessing on the weight by comparing it to my dog. It was a solid animal.
I'm hoping to get some video of it in the next week or so.
The last "encounter" I had was a year ago. It was winter and I was bored out of my mind due to the short days. After work I decided to look for some gold with my metal detector and a head lamp (crazy I know). It was pitch black dark and I was detecting with headphones on, when I heard something weird. I took the headphones off and heard a definite kitten sound...not like a house cat. I looked around with the light and thought about how defenseless I was (no dog and no gun). Of course I shook that off and continued detecting (this time with one earphone on and one off). Then I heard the sounds of two small kittens. I started thinking about mountain lions and the hair stood up on my neck. I decided to call it quits for that night.
Then next day my dad calls to tell me he saw a female mountain lion and two kittens about 1/4 mile from where I was detecting the night before.
Coincidence - maybe.
Jim Frame, post: 410691, member: 10 wrote: In 1982 I was working in Siskiyou County on a USFS boundary. One evening we were hanging out with a local surveyor who was a friend of my boss. As darkness fell the other surveyor got worried about his employee, who had gone out that morning to post and blaze some line and hadn't checked in, so we loaded into a truck and went looking for him. As we reached the edge of town we saw him driving in. He was badly shaken up, said a cat had started stalking him. He threw the Carsonite posts he was packing at the cat, but it kept shadowing him. He ended up running the last quarter mile to the truck - no easy feat in that steep country - with the cat 50 feet or so behind all the way. He wouldn't go out alone after that.
At the time I thought he overreacted, that the cat was just curious. That was before cat attacks in California had been documented, but since then several kills and some non-fatal incidents have come to light. These days I'm more concerned about cats than bears when out in the woods.
If you search the old newspaper collections, mountain lion attacks were more common that certain groups of people want to let on.
That's not the first time I have heard of someone being stalked.
Your story sounds familiar, but I can't remember who was involved. Probably a name I recognize. I want to say a guy named Alfred told me that story.
imaudigger, post: 410701, member: 7286 wrote: Your story sounds familiar, but I can't remember who was involved.
I think the employee's name was Chris, but I don't recall his last name. The surveyor was Ron Cooper, who was in business in Weaverville at the time. The jobsite was maybe 10 miles outside Weaverville, but I no longer recall which direction. (There might have been beer involved in the search activity.)
Nothing ringing a bell. I'm actually in the middle of reading a Zane Grey book (think it's titled "The Last Plainsman") which is a series of "true" short stories written by Zane Grey documenting some adventures he had with Buffalo Jones near the turn of the century.
Anyway - to get to the point, I left off this morning right where Jones is trying to tree a large tom lion so he can climb up there and capture it alive by tying it up while it's in the tree....
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My dad ran across many bears hunting/surveying over the years. He would do something that I found kind of odd....intimidate the bear to the point that it would run to the nearest tree and climb up for safety. Kind of backwards from how it usually works.
