Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mountain Lions of west Texas

Sycamore,

You are FREE to believe or NOT believe anything that you like, including that the dark side of the Moon is made soley of green cheese. = That's called FREEDOM of EXPRESSION.
(Fyi, my money's on our DPS Trooper's honesty. - I've never known him to lie, throughout our college DAZE and/or as a LEO.)


You may also want to look at a TX map & see where Mercedes, TX is, as well as asking our State Game Biologists in Austin for their opinion on jaguars presence in the border areas of southwest TX.
(One of the biologists spoke to our TX Master Naturalist Class last year & stated that "- - - - jaguars are certainly here, including being seen & photographed within the city limits of some of the smaller towns. What is not known with certainty is whether they are actually resident in Texas or only sometimes cross the border to hunt.")

Most of the documented sightings & photos are in the area of less than 20 miles from the TX/Mexico border, between Brownsville & Eagle Pass

yours, tex
TMN Class # 41

Well, you have certainly led an interesting life...

The last supposed record of a jaguar in Louisiana is from Ascension Parish, about 10 miles east of the Mississippi River in 1886. We can't be sure that is what it was, as the houndsmen who killed it referred to it as "an American tiger." They noted that it weighed 250 lbs and was "much bigger" than the native "panther," but that is well within the upper range of weights of large male mountain lions. We don't know for sure exactly what it was, as they didn't bother to mention whether the pelt was spotted, striped or plain.

If you have evidence of jaguars being in Louisiana recently, I am sure that the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (not to mention the Center for Biodiversity) would love to hear about it.

Maybe he was referencing latin america.last jaguar killed in tx was in 1948, along Santa Gertrudis Creek near Kingsville,

Would they shutdown the entire area to protect a possible endangered species?
Would they send in hordes of college kids to study each other?

NOTHING ruins the credibility of a hunter faster than a black "panther" spotting.

Well, they haven't done that here in New Mexico, despite two having been photographed just south of where I live in the last 20 years or so, nor in Arizona where they have one in residence and two more that come and go.

Wait here.....I'll get the pop corn.

There's color phase bears, albino deer, and black coyotes but I've not seen or heard of a different colored elk. Nor have I heard of anyone in my circle that's seen or photographed a black cat up here.

Yep.....lots of them “seen “ around here where even regular mountain lions are few and far between.... But...

On two occasions, oddly enough, within a months time, I saw a bobcat turn from regular coloration to black and then back to regular coloration. Obviously it had to do with the light.

Both times, though it couldn’t have been the same cat because of the distance between sighting places, it was full daylight but the cat moved from sunlight to shadow AND turned its body. The tips of the hairs are black on a bobcat and I’m sure that had something to do with it.

I’ve only seen one mountain lion up close but never examined the hair tips.

In 77 years here in Young County I’ve seen exactly three lions. None were black.

stxhunter,

YEP. At that time/place I was "seconded to" the OAS from HQ, USASOUTHCOM & stationed in South America.
(Was that not clear??)

Our multi-national team was ordered to do whatever was possible to STOP kidnapping of the local Indios as manual labor & as "mules" for the narcotrafficantes, women/children for "slave labor"/sex "partners"/pornography/the "sex trade" & even babies/toddlers for "out of country", illegal adoptions.
AND
Where/When possible to destroy, damage or at least "cause trouble for" the narcotics gangs that worked both sides of the international borders.
(Frankly, we were much more successful in damaging the wholesale narcotics trade than we ever were at stopping kidnapping & sex crimes, if only because our Mike-force attacked/destroyed the fixed locations where illegal drugs were "processed", prepared for transport and/or stored. - Obviously "factories", vehicle loading/parking lots, airfields & warehouses are much more difficult to move about than members of criminal gangs are.)

A COL of the local National Police HQ had the idea of hiring members of families, who had had their women/children raped and/or murdered. = That "contract action force" was first called: "Los hombres de la noche". (Gentlemen of the Night) and/or more commonly: "The Mike-force" or "M-force".
The members of the local Mike-force always called themselves, unofficially/more correctly: "Buscadores de venganza" (Seekers of revenge.)

YES, The Seekers of Revenge got paid (a little over 3.00 US dollars per day each) but most of them would have worked for the team for free. = These were ANGRY & DANGEROUS MEN.

We "team staffers" were quartered with the local Native people with whom we served, ate what they ate & sent 3-man teams out to each hamlet/village to teach marksmanship, teach "small unit" tactics (We soon learned that there was NOTHING that we could teach the native hunters about bush-craft & "hit & run" fighting. - In reality, they taught us.) & thereafter gave each village chief ten Model 1893 Mauser rifles & ammunition & asked him to arm his 10 best hunters to protect their own local area.
(Obviously, the local chiefs KNEW more than we did as to who could best defend their hamlet/village from the narcotrafficantes & border bandits.- EVERY local "village protector" was 100% excited & thrilled to be given a Model 1893 Mauser rifle, which they thought of as "a modern rifle".)

Note: MOST of the local "Indios" had preciously had NO firearm. Other hunters had/used bows/arrows/spears, a muzzeloader or an ancient single-barrel shotgun for hunting. = A "census" of one native village found TWO muzzle-loading/flintlok muskets & less than a 1/2 pound of BP & some "homemade" lead shot.

yours, tex

You're being nice buddy....

Them jaguars are following Tex around, every single one sighted in the US in the last 150 years. ..

It's sooooo hard....

It's akin to these people seeing wild tatankas left over from Buffalo Bill running around the swamps competing with the alligators...

TEX

when you say LA that is the postal abbreviation for Louisiana.

when you say jaguars prowled around your tent in Louisiana, these good people are too polite to tell you you are FOS.

South America is a much better story.

Sycamore

I think you are right.

I hope you are right .

2011


https://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/newshound/2011/11/jaguar-spotted-first-time-two-years-arizona

Yes, a few males have shown in southern AZ in the last decade or two for a bit. Some died, some retreaded back to their true homeland south of the border....

Some with 40 miles of mi casa...

Dwayne,

Always good to read your posts. And yes, the weather has been beautiful. Good to see the sun.

Interesting to hear about the lion killing horses in your neck of the woods back in the 90's... Pretty amazing when you think about a lion, even a big one at say 150 lbs, killing a full grown moose or horse that might be a 1000 lbs. Like your area though, predation on cattle seems very limited here.

I've only ever heard of one time where a lion killed a week-old calf and my buddy turned his dog on the track and caught it in short order. It was a young cat.

I suppose lions could be hell on sheep, but what predator isn't hell on sheep?

Considering how many hunters now put out trail cameras in Texas, I would bet that someone, sooner or later, would have a good photo of a big black cat. Yet no one has taken one.

I'll say the same about Jaguars - there are known to be a handful of them in Arizona, but no one has gotten a pic of one in Texas. So I'd probably say there aren't any.

GregW,

Did you REALLY not understand that I was talking about US Army military service in a foreign nation?? - STXhunter understood me.
(Would you care for a "do-over"?)

Do you NOT know that USASOUTHCOM is located (and always has been) in the Republic of Panama, with offices/resident agencies/individual employees in several other Latin American nations?
(Any of the usual Internet search engines is a good tool to use for such things.)

yours, tex

Spell it out for us where you've seen jaguars so there's no confusion...