Cougar killing horses

[brewdog]

"Our forefathers" were bent on "taming nature". Nowadays many people want nature back as it was.

I have to admit that we need some predators to reduce the deer population, they are causing too many car accidents. I hate to drive after dark around here in fall and absolute refuse to ride my motorcycle after dark because of the deer.

Ken

I can understand your opinion. We have a huge bear population, coyotes, bobcats, etc. We don't have wild pheasants left in the state. They stock a few but they quickly turn into coyote food. Not many rabbits here either. Grouse are fading away. It was much better when there wasn't so many coyotes. I saw a black bear in East Fork park, ohio this past fall. Surprised me.

 

[Ken45101]

I can understand your opinion. We have a huge bear population, coyotes, bobcats, etc. We don't have wild pheasants left in the state. They stock a few but they quickly turn into coyote food. Not many rabbits here either. Grouse are fading away. It was much better when there wasn't so many coyotes. I saw a black bear in East Fork park, ohio this past fall. Surprised me.

Yeah, we know about the bear in East Fork SP, I have a friend who also saw it. We also talked with a bow hunter there who was very shook up, he said that a cougar came after him. He was shook up enough about it to report it to the 911.

(For those who don't know about East Fork SP, it's about 30 mi east of Cincinnati.)

Ken

 

[flusher]

The Orange County Register

A mountain lion killed one bicyclist and injured a second this afternoon in separate attacks in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, authorities said.

According to reports, the dead victim was found in a ravine after the person痴 mountain bike was apparently abandoned on the Cactus Run trail.

The second victim, a woman named Ann, was riding with another woman when the lion reappeared and attacked her. As the lion pulled the victim into a ditch, her friend grabbed her legs and fought a desperate tug of war with the animal.

Another group of mountain bikers arrived and threw rocks to scare away the mountain lion.

"We hit it square with all three rocks," one of the men told KCBS-TV/2.

The injured woman reportedly suffered head and neck injuries and was taken to Mission Hospital.

A 911 call was received at 4:40 p.m.

Trackers and sheriff痴 deputies were searching for the lion tonight.

That attack occurred in Jan 2004 in one of the county wilderness parks. The biker was within sight of his condo complex located on the edge of that park when he was attacked while apparently fixing the chain on his bike. He was a nationally ranked mountain bike racer getting in some trail time.

That cat was spotted an hour or so after the 911 call by licensed game hunters called in by the county park authorities. They staked out the area near where the cat had dragged its prey and used night vision gear to spot the animal. It was shot.

I used to live in that area (Aliso Viejo). My son and I hiked trails in that park about 4 days before the attack. Large fires in the Santa Ana mountains destroyed the habitat and caused the cat to move to lower elevations to find food (lifestock, pets, and, unfortunately, humans).

Be careful out there. Cougars are beautiful animals but never forget that they're predators.

 

[JamesHW]

Never seen a cougar in my area of Upstate NY, but have recently spotted pairs of coyotes near my house. Caught a pair 10 feet away in my flashlight beam one night while lighting a campfire for some guests that had just arrived and were in the house. Must have been a male and female as one was considerably larger than the other. They were feeding on some melonn rinds my wife had chucked into the brush just behind where my firepit is. they just leasurely finished their snack and slowly wandered off, pretty much ignoring me.

One thing though, haven't had any feral cats around the last two years and I figure the two things are related.

 

[Ken45101]

One thing though, haven't had any feral cats around the last two years and I figure the two things are related.

We have plenty of coyotes and there are a couple of feral cats (our house cat is a rescue from a feral litter).

From everything in this thread, I would think that just because you haven't seen any cougars doesn't mean that they are not around. Especially if they have the large range some have mentioned (200 mi), they may really be just about everywhere. But here in the eastern part of the country, with an excessive deer herd, they may be less of a problem than in areas with less natural prey for them.

Ken

 

[gengine]

The Wyoming g&f deny the wolves have left yellowstone, but they won't take a look at the pictures of wolves taken in the opposite corner of the state, roughly 200 miles away. I don't know of anyone here that likes the wolves, it's the people that don't live in Wyoming, and possibly have never visited, that decided we needed wolves. Fine, I'll live with wolves, but every other state should too. Wolves once ran through the entire country. Lately, we have been seeing cougars coming out of the hills. It has been an extremely light winter, so it's not the snow pushing them out. It's been the same thing with the bears. My buddy up the road has a picture of a cougar peering in his sliding door to the patio. His three year old spotted it and told mommy, who grabbed the camera. We don't have any of them black cats, but they probably don't like the -40*f weather we get here for a month at a time.

 

[lockhaven]

My point exactly everyone thinks that predators like wolfs and cats should be repopulated, everywhere except where they live. A predator does not need to be old crippled young or hurt, all prey on what is easy. The only thing that keeps them from moving into the towns is fear, once that is gone no place is safe. We have bears and coyotes, no problem with the coyotes because mostly they are shot at on sight, bears generally are not a problem because they to are hunted. Bears are also omnivorous so killing prey is not their main source of food. I can live with bears but want no part of wolfs or cats. Some that hang around the parks are a problem and become aggressive.

 

[LMTC]

DNRs always seem to deny the presence of certain critters. Early 90s I was seeing coyotes here (SW Ohio) while hunting, while DNR was saying they hadn't made it here yet. A friend who trapped since childhood (few people spend as much time in the woods as trappers) laughed at me, saying he never saw them....right up to the day he ran into one while deer hunting, again, early 90s. Seems he started seeing them a lot after that.

Saw a cat in the early 80s, still not sure what it was....solid black, NOT domestic, but not cougar size either...maybe 40# or so, from a distance of 50 yards at most. There had been regular reports of chicken coops being raided and small stock kills in the area for several months. Fast forward to the early 90s and there were local complaints of livestock kills (warden lived close to us, and was a very forthcoming individual) here and in a neighboring county or two. A farmer near Newtonsville, OH reported tracks in a field, not sure who got the casts but someone did, and there the story died as far as public info goes. Farmer supposedly told neighbors that officials had a cat expert from the Cincinnati Zoo come out and he confirmed the tracks as feline and likely a cougar. That's 20 years ago. Plenty of woodland left here, and a reclusive critter could easily exist, especially a nocturnal hunter, without ever being seen, or with only occasional glimpses. I quit going into the woods without a firearm in the early 90s.

 

[Butcherofwood]

For a good read about mountain lions and the science behind them I suggest "The Beast in the Garden". I lived in the hills west of Boulder, CO in the early 1990's when mountain lion behavior changed dramaticly. A lot of pets and eventually some people got hurt before much was done. Things to consider;

Habitat: Lions will populate based upon the carrying capacity of the land. The foothills had hundreds of abandoned open shaft mines, which was a mountain lion Hilton. The city government then purchased land to ring the city in open space park land, creating a dense urban population right next to great cougar habitat.

Food Source: The politicians then decided that hunting was bad and the deer population exploded. It was common to see deer 25 blocks into the city. Mountain lions followed their natuaral food source.

Behavior (of people & animals): The first shift in behavior was when lions began following deer into the city at night. The lions then switched from their natural food source, deer, to pets. Those were the tipping points. The final shift in behavior was from nocturnal predation to daylight. The DOW took the position that if the Pol's weren't going to allow hunting to cull the deer, then it wasn't their problem. Eventually when enough people got tree'd while jogging and a kid got killed the DOW started giving people rubber shotgun shells to haze problem lions.

What strikes me about this post is that horses are not a normal food source for mountain lions, assuming they are healthy animals and not newborns. A normal reclusive cougar wouldn't bother me a bit. There all over and nobody knows it most of the time. But horse as a food source just seems strange and would concern me.

 

[nybirdman]

Never seen a cougar in my area of Upstate NY, but have recently spotted pairs of coyotes near my house. Caught a pair 10 feet away in my flashlight beam one night while lighting a campfire for some guests that had just arrived and were in the house. Must have been a male and female as one was considerably larger than the other. They were feeding on some melonn rinds my wife had chucked into the brush just behind where my firepit is. they just leasurely finished their snack and slowly wandered off, pretty much ignoring me.

One thing though, haven't had any feral cats around the last two years and I figure the two things are related.

Just because you aren't seeing coyotes doesn't mean they aren't there.We rarely see them(I had a coyote /hound hunter stop yesterday) they had killed 27 THIS YEAR in my area...50+ last year.