Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mountain lion kills one and badly injures another

During my elk hunting days my biggest worry was being attacked by a lion. Sitting on stand hidden from view as the sun was setting always freaked me out. In 10 years of hunting I never saw one but I wasn't alone because their tracks were there

Things can happen in the woods. Sadly, they mostly happen to the wrong people. GD

I guarantee it wasn’t even close. Gold plated Cubs. Poverty Orphans.

So the hand saw the wolves on the calf and didn't get at least 1 killed??

That dude would be hunting a new job.

Not good

I know jack [bleep] about Mtn Lions.

Are they like coyote or hogs in that you can hunt the crap out of them and kill a pile of them and they just bounce their population right back up if you dont keep hammering them?

Would killing a bunch one year make a big dent?

Anyone owning cattle needs to keep a rifle at hand at ALL times. In 30 years as a game warden I never once charged or even looked into a man killing predators for harassing livestock. A lot of predators went from outlaw status to protected during my lifetime.

The black vulture is one of the worst on newborn calves, goats, etc., or they will eat the backend out of a cow in labor. There used to always be a few around, now with protection the population has boomed. 50 will surround a cow and newborn calf.

Killing a bunch would make a quick dent that might take years to fill. Population-wise lions ain't like coyotes nor do they have as many young. With good dogs, snow machines, gps collars, good tracking conditions, they can be knocked back, if allowed.

Lions reproduce slowly, maybe 1-2 kittens that survive more than a few months, every other year, max for adult females. I've never seen a female that had more than two kittens with her. Adult males kill young kittens when they get the chance.

Probably as much as anything that boosts the lion population, in states that have pursuit seasons, is most houndsmen only take males. When you take an adult male out of the picture more kittens survive and disperse.

all`s i can say is i have 220 Swift and 12 gauge in my truck , i always carry concealed and when in the mountains or woods a x-draw holster with a 357 mag. Ruger with hard lead bear bullets. oh i almost forgot an ax and a shovel in the truck too , we won`t go into my surprises in my home !

I remember when that happened.... Shows the stupidity of a good percentage of California's citizens...

Then we are lucky enough to get plenty of those idiots who move up I 5 to Washington and Oregon, to turn those states into California clones, minus the population issues CA has....

And its not like Wash and Oregon don't have their own stupid idiots.. courtesy of legalization of drug use.. where we have drug users from all over the nation, move here so they can legally eventually Overdose themselves....

to quote Forrest Gump... Stupid is as Stupid Does.

Problem is most cannot keep their lips sealed when they do have to do something.

You are correct. Stay quiet when you solve a problem and when they come to see you because your phone was tracked to the scene just politely say "I am not going to make any statements". Just because you were around in the general time frame will not convict you.

Dont even go to the actual scene. Also a good reason to leave the phone on the microwave if you think you will be involved in such activities.

Wasn't that many years ago, I was out hunting by myself at altitude, down on the Oregon California line. It was snowing pretty hard.. Had my 4 Runner with me.

Walked down a logging trail, that got narrower and narrower with heavy brush on each side. It finally ended at a cliff, that had been mined some. Evidently a long time ago...When I turned around to go back to my truck, I didn't get too many yards back up that trail, when I see fresh lion paw prints in the snow! A cougar had followed me down that road. Never saw or heard it. Especially wouldn't have in the snow that was falling. One the way back, I saw there the tracks had came out of the brush.

Needless to say, the hair on the back or my neck was standing up and I was on HIGH ALERT with my rifle ready to go and I kept turning around to see if it was following me, down the trail and back to my truck. Made it back to my truck, and decided to just take a nap. It was about noon and I'd been up since like 4 AM to get out there. Think I slept for an hour.

upon waking up, get my rifle out and get out of the truck. Cougar prints up to my truck and actually circled my truck 3 times. Put the rifle back in the truck, started the engine and left.


Why I never got jumped? I believe it was having a rifle with me. Those cats know what one is, especially if they have been shot at. That is probably what saved me from becoming cougar crap that time.


When I first moved here to Oregon, I was out and was hiking, looking for deer sign, on a logging road, up at altitude. Had my head down as it was snowing pretty hard. I was just carrying a 22 Mag rifle with me. The hair went up on the back of my neck, and I looked up and there was a curve in the road ahead of me by 100 yds. There was a cougar on a rock, in a position readying to pounce down upon the road. I pulled up the rifle and aimed it at the cat's face and started walking toward it. It got out of that crowched position and snarled at me a couple of times. I put a shot into the rock ledge just below its feet. It jumped at the shot and the rock flying when the bullet hit. I kept on walking toward it and just talking out loud. It took off after one more last snarl.

My underwear wasn't full of poop, but I bet my Blood Pressure was 300 over 300, and I was wired like I just ate an entire bottle of speed. I definitely was sweating....

Had been in that situation with a black bear or two in my lifetime. Glad it worked on Cougars also. These young guys in CA that just had the experience of meeting a cougar evidently weren't armed. I never go in the back country unarmed around this place.

Pete 53 you you need to move to calipornia and straighten those fugs out. Only thing that will fix it. Mb

Mountain lions in California seem to be getting bolder. This was an attack on two adult men. Historically most lion attacks were on children, or occasionally one smaller adult. It looks like many years of no hunting have conditioned lions to have very little fear of people. Not a good trend.

Ya left out the 85 lb Northern Pike watching it all go down from the Doug Fir.

Lonny;
Top of the morning to you sir, I hope your part of Idaho is getting some sun this morning like we are.

It's a tough thing to read about the young fellows getting attacked like that, my prayers are with the family and friends dealing with it.

To be clear I'm the furthest thing from a cougar anything, but have known and do know some houndsmen as well as try to keep up to date with our ungulate populations which of course are affected by predator numbers.

As you mentioned, the hunters typically take males and big ones at that.

We had a 2 cougar a year limit a decade or more back as the MoE decided there were too many, but then again it was the same MoE that banned grizzly hunting so there is that.

If you've ever talked to a bio who was involved with tracking collared cougars, some of them run huge loops of territory. One that comes to mind that I was told about went well into Washington in run that would have been at least 100 miles north to south, but less east west as it was circling the valley more or less.

Lately the populations here seem to have dropped off some and as a guess on my part and a wild one at that Lonny, the only thing that might have caused that is we've had the wolves move in big time on the mountain behind the house.

Prior to that the houndsmen would take at least one or two big toms within less than half an hour of our place, for sure though depending on the conditions you've noted such as snow, the dogs in the pack, etc.

As far as attacks go here in BC, I want to say they're not unheard of with 5 deaths over a century, so not nothing, but certainly our black and grizzly bears attack and also kill many more people here than the cats.

Thanks for your thoughts, they line up with what we've learned up here as well.

Dwayne

Kill a mountain lion in CA and you will go to jail. Hell they won't even allow you to have a mountain lion skin if you legally shoot one in another state. Several years ago they fired the head of the state game dept because he shot a lion in ID. Crazy state ran by morons.

Good to hear from you Dwayne. We're getting rain, but I ain't complaining as we need it. It seems anymore we always need rain and snowpack was very light this year on top of it.

Those big males cover lots of ground. The dispersing younger cats also seem to cover lots of ground trying to find their own territory. A number of years ago, a young male lion, came from central Oregon and ended up in central Idaho. Hundreds of miles and two major river crossings.

A guy, now dead, who was a lifelong houndsman and hound breeder from MT, said when hound hunters started letting females go, and only taking mature males is when the population started to rise in the Bitteroot Valley. This was late 80's early 90's. We saw the same rise here around that time. It seems to have now declined from those years.

I do think wolves have an impact as they take over any lion kill they find requiring the lion to find another deer or elk.

People seem to be crazy scared of lions thinking they are behind every tree. Things do happen at times, but in reality, a guy is more likely to be in a car wreck, struck by lightening, or get hurt falling out of bed. My youngest brother has hiked and mtn biked thousands of miles all over, ID, MT, WY and has seen more lions than most ever dream of seeing and he only recently started carrying a pistol and that was for the human predators.