Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mountain Lions in Texas ... evidence ?

Not black mountian lions as I believe none have ever been ID'd and certified anywhere....but the last one I saw was killed in Newton county which is on the TX/LA border. It was killed by a deer hunter and I went down there with the TXPWD biologist to verify the kill, that would have been in the early to mid 90's.

I wish I could say I have seen more, but I have only seen a adult mountain lion once. A mother with two half grown "kittens".
Of course, most of my outdoor time has been spent East of I-35 and on smaller ranches. Heck, I enjoy seeing regular colored bobcats!

stumpy

wow a black panther sighting would be great!

We have mountain lions, cougars roam through Ohio.
I'm sure they are in a huge state like TX.

When I was young there was one that lived a few years near my home on the Grand River. Indian Point.
Pug marks were found all the time with an occasional sighting.

back in the 80s i work for a guy from benavidas tx who raised them. i would pick every road kill rabbit i found to feed them, one time he bought a horse with a broken leg that we fed them.

Big cats. Here in Massachusetts, the Game Wardens said there aren't any Cougar. Yet,they hand out photos of the critters and pictures of foot prints and tell us Hunters"you won't see one but, if you kill one you have to notify the State so they can examine it" Go figure. Everyone knows there's big cats here.

I did see a mountain lion here in east texas and it "looked" black but it was dark and he was crossing the road in the headlights. That was about 10 years ago, also seen one when I was younger while dad was driving. Late evening coming out of cow pastures both times. I don't recall anyone around here saying they are black.

A little over a year ago my daughter was out in the yard with the kids. My grandson called to her when she went to him back by the fence there was a cougar just standing there looking at them from the other side of the nature trail about 40 feet away. This took place about thirty five miles northeast of Dallas. Don't think with the five Great Danes in the yard the Cougar was generating much interest in jumping the fence.

My family has stories of "black panthers" in post civil war Arkansas & region, yet as said, not one documented pelt, photo or dead mountain lion ever turns out to be black. OTOH I have seen a black one: it came to a call on an overcast day in the snow. I'm sure that had I killed it, it would have turned out to be in the normal range of cougar colorations, some of which are quite dark reds or greys. It looked jet black in that light condition.

I have seen several mt. lions in the wild, and the single most noticeable characteristic IME is the tail: big and waving or flowing or doing something. Fabulous animal to see.

same thing here. We found tracks twice on our property last winter.

The two I saw were following some cows and I thought they were calves. The tails gave 'em away, then I put the scope on 'em.

Ther are lions all over Texas with varying densities by habitat type...

When I was in high school Roy Swann was the outdoor editor of the Corpus Christy Caller and was associated with a Black cat club or society due to the history of such a high number of people in S. Texas who reported seeing large, non-existant black cats in the brush country.

Before that, I was in jr high and followed the RR tracks a few miles east of Beeville one morning with my pellet gun one spring morning.There was a shallow bottom with oaks a few of us kids had killed squirrels in. Before getting there I saw a black cat with a long tail in the edge of a plowed pasture. It appeared the size of a big bobcat.

Many years later out of Refugio, with a summer job as a pusher for JP Johnston and Son oilfield construction and maintenance I was driving a trailer load of trash a few miles out of town to the city dump. The road went through as thick a brush country as exists as it parallels the Mission river. In a low spot a large black cat with a long tail flashed across the road and jumped the fence.

By that time in life I had killed a lot of deer in central, east and south Texas and a few coyotes and bobcats and hogs and javelina hunting on foot and on my own. I figure that kit must have weighed 70-80 lbs.

Those from near Corpus may be interested in researching the club and history of such in the 60's.

We've had lions in Nebraska since the early 70's but until recently the DNR/Game+Parks has denied their overall existence until these so called phantoms starting appearing in Omaha and surrounding residential neighborhoods.Just a matter of time before I capture a pic on one of my game cams,know they're here,have seen their evidence but they seem to be camera shy.

I got a hummer from a Cougar in Marble Falls, but she weren't black.

There are Govt trappers in texas paid to trap ML on ranches by the state if they have problem lions. There is no dispute that Texas has lions, the question has been the observance of large black cats. I remember a hunter dropping off my brothers deer lease near Marble Falls due to having seen a couple come and drink at the pond just behind the feeder he observed while 'hunting' from an elevated and enclosed stand/blind. I guess he forgot he had a gun.

The same thing happened on a lease in Polk co. in east Texas. this time the cat was supposedly black Nd the guy almost had a heart attack.

I guess they never consider what a good lion hunt costs and how lucky they are. I also suppose the fact they didn't shoot is a testament to their shooting ability.

I know a guy in west Texas raised in SE NM who was watching a water hole for deer there one pm and he drilled a ML with his bow as it drank. 45 min later he drilled another.

Black ones are dangerous.

I think the possibility of a large black cat existing in the States is small. But there's a chance. There's also the chance of mis-identification. And there's a chance it's a species we haven't documented yet or thought was extinct.

There were no breeding populations of jaguars in the U.S., until they found them. And Ca fish and game says there are no wolves in Ca. But I've seen them. And there are pics of them. They also say there are no brown bears here. Yet they couldn't explain the pics of two of them. Of course, they also failed to recognize their "failed" program to re-introduce both brown bears and wolves.

Not much escapes a game camera in the south nowdays with a game camera for every 10 acres or so it seems. I have run long term population studies on deer with a camera for every 10 acres and haven't found one yet but I have gotten mountain lions on camera exactly twice. Once a tail as it walked by and another of one covering a deer kill.

Black & Decker Pecker Wrecker

I saw one back in October/2001 in Fannin County (North Texas along the Red River) one morning when I was cruising down some back roads with binoculars, I turned around at the end of a one-lane track in some bottom-land and saw it cross the road about 50 yards away. I mentioned it to one of the U.S. Forest service technicians that I knew and he didn't doubt it because he saw a tri-colored one near his house, in fact he said I was not the first to see one in the area.