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

mudhen,

SAME EXACT ANSWER, as I promised: Call the TPWD in the Austin HQ & ask them.

yours, tex

These threads never fail to be entertaining. And enlightening.

mudhen and mark are right about lions attacking horses. They do indeed. I worked one case in Mayhill, NM but the horse lived, but was scratched up pretty badly. Zero doubt it was a lion.

A few months later I was called to another attack about 7-8 miles from there to work a case where a calf was killed by a lion.

Lions do play hell with sheep ranchers though. They can and will kill many in one night. Especially when teaching their young ones to hunt/kill.

It is quite simple to search Google for this image, and I've done it already. This image is unique. (Meaning not posted elsewhere)

i could find nothing on google about any recent sittings in the valley, even called my uncle that lives in Mercedes and he had never heard of one being spotted around there either.

True^^^^^^^^^

We came upon a scene while hunting Mule Deer in the Independence Range in Northern Nevada one year that looked like a box car carrying wool had exploded on a mountain side. It didn't take a wildlife biologist to figure that caper out.

Ranchers kill every lion the can, Eagles too!

Maybe DH has some confidential informants....

http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2014/08/updated-black-panther-distribution-map.html

It ain't hard to get on this guy's map....

Hilarious....

I was sleeping in my tent and I heard a scream and saw a track the next day!

Guy says well let's put you in the map!

For anyone interested.......Liin Hunter and houndsman, Warner Glenn has an excellent book with some great pix of Jaguars (or the scarcity of) in So. AZ.

You used to be able to order an Autographed Copy directly from him but I'm not sure if those are still available.....or if he's still alive. I have one and cherish it.

https://colablancaproductions.com/products/eyes-of-fire-encounter-with-a-borderlands-jaguar

need to order the book, https://www.amazon.com/Tigrero-Sasha-Siemel/dp/B0006ATIQQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Siemel

Texdarlaidiot, jump on google and find out if wild rye is a grass.

For twelve years I was one of a group that hunted the same 100k acre ranch southwest of Sanderson for MD for three weeks each Fall. There were 24 mostly experienced Texas hunters in the camp and everyone wanted to kill a lion. We never saw one although their tracks were often encountered. A lot of nighttime varmint calling also took place with fox, coyotes, and bobcats taken, but no lions seen.

We went through three ranch managers and the last one was an experienced lion trapper. He caught six in his first five months on the ranch. Point being that they can be fairly thick and never be spotted.

The ranch management believed they never lost any cattle to lions, but when a bear moved into the West end of the ranch he killed two yearling steers.

Oddly enough, there were three old wether goats left over from a herd they originally had near Beef Canyon, and they survived the lions. I guess deer were easier prey........ or maybe they couldn’t stand the smell.

Years ago TPWD tried to re-introduce desert bighorns to the Trans Pecos area. Black Gap, to be more specific.

There's some desert bighorns in the area now, due to a concentrated effort, but when they tried that in Black gap the first time, the lions thought it was a bighorn buffet..

They killed every single one of them in short order.

TPWD tried to hire the trapper that came to be our ranch manager to work Black Gap , but they wanted him to work for a salary. He offered to work there for a bounty but they turned him down. He and his father are considered my most to be the best lion trappers in Texas.

I don’t know how much they spent moving the Bighorns from Elephant Butte to Black Gap, but I know helicopters don’t work cheap. Their “ investment” of 300 sheep dwindled to less than fifty by the second year.

He would have been a bargain.

This is NOT meant to be argumentative, only a question........I understand the desert bighorn population to be thriving now in the Trans Pecos......No?

And, yes, I know lifelong ranchers down in that country who seldom, if ever see a lion, but are 100% sure they are there.

curdog4570,

100% correct that "helicopters don't work cheap". = For such a major reintroduction project, the TXARNG & TANG aviators/helicopters could/would probably be used for that task. - In the past, the ANG & ARNG assets have done LESS important things for the TX environment.

Some of the oil & gas companies would likely provide air support (for the GOOD publicity) if asked. = FYI, I once, long ago got involved (in a small way, doing manual labor in loading/unloading the trucks) with feeding the starving ducks/geese in VA/MD during an extended/severe ice storm. - I was one of many "sportsmen"/DU members/"ordinary people", who helped pay for, hauled & helped load "bird food" (mostly "cracked corn") for the ducks/geese, that were "delivered by air".

yours, tex

When I hunted leopard in Zambia, one rarely saw them because they are nocturnal and secretive, but it was possible to shoot them by sticking a bait animal up in a tree, ideally against the setting sun and constructing a hide. Estimates were that there were as many as one million leopards throughout Africa, even within the major cities in South Africa, and it was silly to worry about extinction just because most people had never seen them and had no idea where they were.

We do have mountain lions in or near our neighborhood in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque, though most of the family pets are lost to coyotes.

Norm

I wonder if he still has his Winchester M 70 .375 H&H Super Grade?