Ya' never know what's up there.

[oldwood]

The company I worked for used to set up Electrical Engineering seminars to keep it's people informed of the latest developments in electronics. For several years , a fellow eng. and I used to draw the same time slots for our refresher courses. He was from Wyoming ,and said he and his wife frequently took there three young children , with them on long walks through the back country. At the time , there were a couple griz. attacks , one fatal , on elk hunters in the same area where they lived. He said , his wife , and he , and kids walked in a line , w/mom first , three kids next , and dad in the rear. Mom carried a 3" mag. pump shotgun , w/ 2 , 00 buck in the chamber and magazine , and a rifled slug last , for follow up , and dad the same in the rear. He said they would never challenge a bear , but felt between them , they could defend themselves. Don't think I personally want to go at it , w/any grizzer.

 

[chorizo]

Bottom pic is a bobcat. Newspaper article is a cougar.

This is the griz medicine I carry in my guide gun if I have to be where they are

https://www.garrettcartridges.com/4570540tech.html

 

[oldwood]

Here in Pa. , in the 1990's, we had too many credible folks seeing mountain lions , for there not to have quite a few here. I was out on the road every day doing my employment ,and to break the daily trips up , took back roads through the Central Pa. mountains , and woods. My travels of 600 miles a week ,allowed me to see 2 mountain lions w/ my own eyes. I circulated among many people , daily , and listened to their lion encounter stories . Our State Blame Commission adamantly denied , the lions were there , in the Pa. woods. That's when I began to completely distrust that govt. agency. The lions have always been here in Pa. , but not in the numbers we were seeing in the 1990's..
The good news is , mountain lions won't stay in an area , unless there is a good population of deer for them to eat. They migrate to new hunting grounds , which is what they did here. Now a days , they are seldom seen by anyone. We figure they just got hungry and left.

 

[Bullit]

Many winters ago, my father and I were hunting on horseback on our family lands in SW Illinois. We were coon hunting and the dogs were a couple miles from us at the time. The Kaskaskia river cut through the middle of our ranch and at this particular time the river was out of banks. My dad thought that we could take a short cut to get to the dogs but we'd have to cross some water before we got to a dry island, then across the island, back into the water on the other side and hopefully to the dogs. We waded the horses through chest deep water, keeping our stirrups up and back so as to not get wet and then onto the island. As we started across the island dad said, "What the hell is that?" A pair of huge eyes staring at us from the middle of the island. Well dad and I commenced to chasing it till we got close enough to see it was a big mountain lion. Now they're not supposed to be in that area of the country but apparently nobody told the lion that. We went round and round that island several times trying to get closer when the big cat vanished. The horses were at this time pretty lathered up and steaming but no matter where we looked we couldn't see the cat. Finally dad swung around in the saddle and there he was, he turned the tables on us and was moving in and now we were the stalked instead of the stalker. Dad's next words were, "To hell with this, let's get outta here." That was my first and only encounter with a big cat. The dogs had to come home that night on their own.
My second experience with a dangerous animal was out squirrel hunting on the same ranch. I was scanning the trees and moving slowly when out of the blue, I was charged by a critter moving through the short brush, directly at me. My eyes strained for a second to see what was coming and then I made it out. A groundhog! I was flabbergasted. I didn't know what to do. Should I shoot or should I laugh. I didn't know, I froze. I couldn't believe I was being charged and about to be attacked and mortally wounded by a groundhog. I stood dead still. I thought surely he will turn, he must see me, he knows I'm here, but he kept coming. He was running at full speed, all of 10mph, when suddenly he disappeared right at my feet, not a foot from me. Turns out, I was standing, almost straddling his hole, hidden in the brush. I still laugh about that to this day. Almost killed by a charging groundhog.
Just two years ago in the same area, five miles from our ranch, one of our neighbors ran a black bear up the tree and got he and the bears picture in the paper. He under the tree and the bear still in the tree. Guess the bear didn't get the word either, just like the cat.

 

[SOLANCO]

LOL Cabra is goat..cabron is something else altogether in daily usage. Most mexicans will use chivo or chiva. Most spaniards use cabra when they talk food.

If they had cabron on the menu, they were really being tongue in cheek!

Do a translation search....... I wouldn't eat a cabron, but I have dated a few cabronas

LOL At that place and time (I am 75 now but was 19 then) cabron on the menu meant baby goat. Maybe a local distortion of the language?

 

[oldwood]

Good story. Thanks.

 

[SOLANCO]

Cougars are very territorial and, except for mating, are loners. They are afraid of humans. It has been said there are many more cougar sightings of humans than there are human sightings of cougars. The cougar is, somewhat surprisingly, not an apex predator. They are known to surrender a kill to black bears, wolves, and dogs.
Here, we are seeing more black bears. There is a point when mama bear runs the yearling cubs off to find their own range. The consensus is we see them passing through in search of a home. I do not know if mama cougar does that with her offspring. But a settled down cougar will dominate a range of 50 to 150 square miles. Depending, I suppose, on how rich the area is in his food. They are not animals that travel in packs and they are afraid of us. Given all of that, I think that if there is a cougar in your neck of the woods, he will know about you and you may well never guess that he is there.

 

[chorizo]

LOL At that place and time (I am 75 now but was 19 then) cabron on the menu meant baby goat. Maybe a local distortion of the language?

Cabron, in direct translation without the slang meaning means castrated male goat, so it could have been somebody doing an uninformed direct translation. But in daily usage, it has as long as I, a native speaker, have been around the word for 67 years, means what you looked up unless you were in the animal business and specifically talking about that one thing.

Periodically, in the smaller little places and especially in food trucks, you will see "tacos al cabron" It is almost always a joke on "hueros" (or as some mexicans spell it guero). It should be "tacos al carbon" Just one little letter shift takes it to a whole new meaning in that play on words.

The Mexicans are mischievous and love to play jokes on gringos (hueros). I love their sense of humor and their very tongue in cheek view of life.

That is why I got a chuckle

 

[Dale Lilly]

Game commission told us there were cats living it northern New York and they migrate down into Pa. Every now and again Looking for food. That came from a full fledged uniformed officer. Not from one of the volunteer deputies. I know there are supposed to be none in the east but there are. Could be escaped pets but I don’t know anyone that has one as a pet.

When I was in college, in Idaho, my dad's barber had a pet Mt. Lion that spent the day on a shelf above the chairs, eerie feeling to sit under him. He never caused any trouble. Bobbie loved that cat.

 

[Buckskinquin]

I was chased out of the saranac river near Lake Placid NY, by a black bear. Don't know what he had in mind, but I didn't stick around to find out, and he didn't pursue me very far.

On the cougar subject, I saw a juvenile cross the road in front of my car 2 years ago. Rural upstate NY. The state says they're not here, but I beg to differ. I'm. Not prone to exaggeration and nothing else looks like a cougar. Too big for a bobcat, with a tail that would have touched the ground had the animal not had the tip curled up in a J shape

My friends and co workers didn't really believe me, but that fine.

Fortunately, I've never been stalk by a cougar.

I had a Lnyx cross Route 3 in front of me just east of Cranberry Lake 20 years ago. It ran up on a hill next to the road and stopped long enough for me to slow down and get a good lock. Didn’t appear to be in the best of shape, but I was told, while in rut, they can get pretty scraggly looking.

 

[Jim K]

This happened to one of my taxidermy customers a few years ago about three miles from my home. He was deer hunting in a climbing tree stand when this sow with 4 cubs came in to his tree. He had laid a trail cam at the base of his tree with intent to put it on the tree when he got down.

He had some history with this group earlier. He said the mother wasn’t right. Anyhow, one of the Cubs came up the tree and when he started telling it to get down it got scared and fell out of the tree. The sow went nuts and came up the tree. Matt was pounding it in the head with the cam of his bow.

It would go down and come back up. He shot at it straight down and due to excitement just grazed it. Up she came again. More pounding in the head with his bow. Down she went. Finally after 5-6 times, he shot her and she ran off.

I talked to the game warden about it later. I said it was good he had the video huh? He said yes but if you could see how she shredded that tree going up and down, his story was believable.

Video is about 2 minutes long. A rather exciting evening of bow hunting

 

[rabbit03]

Tasted lion one time....kind of like rabbit. Didn't make a habit out of it, especially when I had thousands of lamb chops at my disposal.

Old Spanish saying: "Gato por libre" (cat for rabbit) Means when somebody is trying to pull the old switcheroo deception on you.

Gato por libre would translate to ‘
cat for free’

 

[chorizo]

My hunting buddy had a just liberated from momma, young bear climb up his tree while he was in the stand to look at him. He poked it in the nose with an arrow. It fell off the tree and hauled arse howling the whole way!

 

[chorizo]

Gato por libre would translate to ‘
cat for free’

Thanks for pointing that out! You are right. Sorry, I fat fingered typing and misspelled it. What I meant to type was "Liebre" "Liebre" is literally translated to "hare" in Spanish, but as we don't commonly use that word in American, the translation would be "Rabbit" Dar gato por liebre" .... the idiom, translated to english means "To be had" or literally "To give cat for hare/rabbit"

 

[CZMark]

The guys claiming wandering male cougars East of the Mississippi are spot on. Even the Wisconsin DNR admitted cougars in the state after this:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2008-04-15-0804140895-story.html

 

[Carl.allen934]

Where ever I go in the wilds of town , or the wilds out of town I always am armed. There is not a single wild creature that lives in the area that I do that I'm afraid of. The domestic human is a different story, they can't be trusted to leave a person alone.

We live in different times now. When I was a child we could leave our cars and our house unlocked we didn't need to carry a gun. I grew up in Oregonia Ohio all we saw was a bob cat once in a while if we saw a deer it was an exciting event now there all over the place.

 

[wganz]

Hey Colonial just ask the Game Commission there are no cougars, mountain lions, or pumas in Pennsyltucky!

none in Louisiana either per the folks in that tall building in Baton Rouge, but that was sure one big 90# "kittie kittie" on the back porch, will go back to see if I can get that pix from the security camera

 

[Pukka Bundook]

Solanco,
Most cougars are afraid of people. Shy may be a better term.
Up this way a few people out jogging and such have got chewed up bad or killed by them.
We cannot generalise and get it all right.
A mother had to beat one off her child last year.
Afraid doesn't mean hightail it.

There was a family reunion just west of us, the usual thing, group photos back of the house.
When they looked at the photos afterwards, here is a cougar laid on a branch above their heads.
It looked very relaxed really! They are cool customers, not scared as in run away in a panic. More cold and calculating. Not like bears.

all best,
Rich.

 

[Dale Lilly]

Here in Pa. , in the 1990's, we had too many credible folks seeing mountain lions , for there not to have quite a few here. I was out on the road every day doing my employment ,and to break the daily trips up , took back roads through the Central Pa. mountains , and woods. My travels of 600 miles a week ,allowed me to see 2 mountain lions w/ my own eyes. I circulated among many people , daily , and listened to their lion encounter stories . Our State Blame Commission adamantly denied , the lions were there , in the Pa. woods. That's when I began to completely distrust that govt. agency. The lions have always been here in Pa. , but not in the numbers we were seeing in the 1990's..
The good news is , mountain lions won't stay in an area , unless there is a good population of deer for them to eat. They migrate to new hunting grounds , which is what they did here. Now a days , they are seldom seen by anyone. We figure they just got hungry and left.

some years ago, at our cabin in Idaho, my wife took our poodle for a walk. Out the window I saw her flying down the street with Bridgette in her arms. I rushed outside to see a large mountain lion chasing them. Just as I got near, the cat went by her like a .. well like a running cougar. He was not interested in her or the dog. He was chasing a doe down the road. My dear wife shook for an hour. Later, it was a great story for her to relate.

 

[Rawhide67]

I had a Lnyx cross Route 3 in front of me just east of Cranberry Lake 20 years ago. It ran up on a hill next to the road and stopped long enough for me to slow down and get a good lock. Didn’t appear to be in the best of shape, but I was told, while in rut, they can get pretty scraggly looking.

NYS DEC did release several lynx with tracking collars into the high peaks area in the 1980"s. One of the few things they admitted to. Don't think any of the lynx made it more than a year.