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Too many mountain lions yet?

L

Liberty Belle

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 10, 2005
Messages
1,818
Location
northwestern South Dakota
Last week a mountain lion was seen inside Bismarck, ND city limits. Tuesday SD GF&P took care of this one that was found in a tree across from an elementary school in Rapid City.

When will we be allowed to hunt them like we do coyotes? A coyote is hardly ever dangerous to a human but to one of these big cats a small child would just be a snack. Thank goodness Kintigh was there to take care of this one and it didn't eat anybody before it could be killed.

Lion too close for comfort
By Ryan Woodard, Journal Staff Writer

RAPID CITY -- Game, Fish & Parks Department officials have killed another mountain lion that came too close to Rapid City residents.
GF&P officials tranquilized and eventually killed a mountain lion that had perched himself in a tree Sunday across the street from Canyon Lake Elementary School.

The lion, a healthy 100-pound male, stayed in the tree even after a crowd had gathered and GF&P officials showed up, according to regional supervisor Mike Kintigh.

"We did respond immediately," Kintigh said.

"I was the first Game & Fish person there. The lion was lying in the crotch of the tree and didn't seem excited about anything."

Kintigh said the report came in about 8 p.m. Sunday, although the lion may have been in the tree longer.

"The reporting party found it in the same spot we found it, just reclining in the crotch of the tree," he said. "The owner of the home told us her dog had been barking (at the tree) for two days."

However, Kintigh said, it wasn't likely the lion had been in the tree for two days.

"I'd be a little surprised if a lion would stay in a tree for two days and not feel the need to get water," he said.

GF&P officials shot the lion with two tranquilizer darts - to bring it down faster and to make sure it didn't run away.

The lion was then attached to a rope, lowered to the ground and taken to the GF&P regional office Sunday night, where Kintigh said he made a fairly quick decision to euthanize the creature.

His decision was made easier considering the lion's age and that it didn't have any kittens. It may also have been a risk to return to the neighborhood.

"Once we did have it down, we determined it was a young male in relatively good condition," he said. "We didn't have a good place to relocate an animal that sex and age that wouldn't likely be a problem somewhere else."

He said that the lion's vicinity to the elementary school "added to the situation a little bit."

But Kintigh said he wants to be appraised of a lion in town no matter where it is.

"I want to know immediately if there is a lion in town. That's an elevated risk to the public," he said. "I certainly want to be able to respond with equipment and men before anything bad happens."

Kintigh said the last lion caught in Rapid City was a 49-pound kitten that wandered into an area near Carriage Hills Aug. 19 and took a house cat in front of a little girl and her father. The lion was euthanized by a GF&P officer shortly thereafter.

Contact Ryan Woodard at 394-8412 or [email protected].
September 6, 2006
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/09/06/news/local/news04.txt
 
There has been sightings of Mountain Lions here (100 Miles east of Denver) on the plains. There was one seen a mile from my house. I'm not real big on checking cows this winter with mountain lions out there.
 
There have been several sightings down here too. They shot one by a school in St Paul and another near Omaha. People see alot of tracks on and by the Platte river. I used to take my colt to the river in the summer since it always dries up and makes the best sand arena you ever saw. I don't anymore since too many horses spook down there. The ambulance went by our place Labor day to pick up an 18 year old girl that came off and broke her collar bone and hit her head. People say that the GF&P are turning them loose around here. :roll: I don't know if it's true or not, or if they are just breeding. Neighbor saw a cat with 2 cubs too. I don't like them however they are getting here. We already have alot of coyote and bobcat to deal with. :evil:
 
We have them come through the place.... Really messes up the livestock for a few days and the cats are fuzzed up and jumpy all the time... And everyone sees them too....... Oh yeah but ask SH about them, and you have to have tracks..... Then what????
 
Last March a visitor to our place said that a mountain lion ran out in front of their car on their way into the ranch. :shock: I know when i rode through the heavies the tree lined calving lot kinda freaked me out. :shock:

Two days later an elderly neighbor said a mountain lion ran out in front of her car on the highway about 12 miles down the road.

There also has been a mountain lion spotted at Ashby and Bingham Nebraska too.
 
They can mess things up for more than a few days. When my colt was 2, he was a fizz bomb. At 3 something spooked him out grazing in the pasture really bad. At 4 he became the only horse left here now. He wouldn't even go to the pasture to graze. He would stand up here behind the feedlots by the calves and starve if I didn't feed him hay. I couldn't even ride him in the pasture safely. He was a ball of nerves. I live close to the Platte. We have deep canyons, and a lot of draws and they are full of cedar trees. I am pretty sure I even saw a cat walking along a tree line for a quick second one morning about 4 years ago. One night I went for a walk in the pasture hills and he followed me. we got out about 100 yds to the 1st draw where there was good grass because he would never get that far on his own. while he was grazing like mad, I walked up around and came right back down and he was gone. I thought he followed me. He didn't, he was back by the feedlot shaking. Took off like a shot once he realized he was alone. He's not buddy soured either, because he wouldn't go even after the calves were gone.

They say a male lion has a territory of 300 square miles and a female has 150 square miles so we are bound to see them.
 
Faster horses said:
A big one was hit by the train between Mildred and Fallon, Mt.
There was a picture of it in the Glendive Ranger-Review.
Folks in that area said many times one had been spotted,
but how do we know it was only one...?
Click to expand...

My son did a bunch of runs on that track down there and he said they saw a mountain lion lying up on a tree limb next to one of the sidings in that area a couple of times...Said that once in a while when you were out switching cars or checking something in the middle of the night at that siding you had the feeling someone or something was watching you...

We haven't heard of any spottings lately of the cat that was covering our north area...Wife almost had kittens the other day when she hit a coyote with her new pickup about 200 yards from the house.....Turned out good- dead coyote- no damage to new pickup.....
 
Ot, I feel for ya.... I smacked a deer a week ago on the way two work. Broke the fog light on the bottom and pushed the grill back. Didn't break any of the tabs on the plastic bumper though.........
 
Well, they're definitely expanding their territory. We've got them around here, too. There's the odd sightings and a couple have been shot around squatterville. We've got one at least in our pasture, we've seen the tracks and a friend of ours has found a deer kill hanging in the trees when he was walking in our pasture. One night a few years back, I was checking cows and I found fresh tracks in some newly fallen snow, a cat walked down the road right out front of our place.
 
A friend of ours, a law enforcement officer from the Hills, told us a scary story about his son who was bow hunting for elk this week and was stalked by three full grown lions. Scared to death and armed only with a bow and arrow, he shot an arrow at the closest one, but the arrow was deflected by a branch before it hit the cat. The cougar was wounded and took off up the trail. The other two mountain lions watched the young hunter for awhile before they turned and went back up the trail that he had to follow to get back to his vehicle. It was a loooooooooong trip back to his pickup...

They told the state trapper about the incident, but no one has been able to find the wounded lion, although there was a long trail of blood to follow.

Another young man, who is in a wheelchair after being crippled in a rodeo wreck, used to hunt with this guy, but those hunts are going to have to stop. He usually pushes his friend's wheelchair near a waterhole and leaves him there with a crossbow in his lap to wait for game to come to water while the first hunter goes off into the woods on his own hunt. Now they realize that leaving the wheelchair bound hunter alone in the woods is like leaving bait for the cats.

The other sad thing about this story is that the young hunter worries about getting in trouble for shooting a cat that was threatening his life. Do you see several things wrong in this whole mess?
 
Evidently there are too many lions, at least in South Dakota. I copied this off the internet tonight:

More 'problem lions' are seen, killed in area this year, says GF&P
By Tom Lawrence, Black Hills Pioneer
September 12, 2006

Griffin, who was sitting in his pickup writing a report, jumped out with a rifle and shot and killed the 32-pound female lion. It's an example of how lions are coming closer and closer to people and raising the risk that a human being will be attacked by a mountain lion, he said. "These are the ones that really concern us," he said of the mountain lion.

Griffin had been called to the home when a woman who lived there came home on Monday, Aug. 21, and was startled when a lion ran out of her garage. She discovered two dead house cats inside.

Griffin went to the home the next day and found a third dead cat. He surmised the lion was back, found it in the area and chased it off.
But while he was in the garage and then writing his report, the lion, having discovered a food source, returned and hid under the front porch, a few feet from the front door of the home. A young girl who had seen the lion the day before was home and almost assuredly came within a few feet of the lion more than once.

30 dead lions so far

More than two dozen lions have been killed or found dead in the Black Hills so far this year, according to the Department of Game, Fish & Parks. One was killed Sunday, Sept. 3 after it was spotted in a tree in the home of a Rapid City woman.

Shelley Spicer called authorities after she saw the two-year, 100-pound male in a tree. Spicer had noticed her dogs were upset.

The lion was tranquilized and taken to Rapid City GF&P headquarters, where it was euthanized.

Several of 30 lions known to have died as of Aug. 31 were "problem lions" that were killed by GF&P staff after they were seen in populated areas, said Mike Kintigh, regional manager of the GF&P office in Rapid City. See the chart for a breakdown on what's killing lions.

"I think the number of 'problem lions' is increasing," Kintigh said during an interview in his office last week.

It's an inevitable problem as the population of both people and lions increases in the Black Hills, he said. As people encroach upon lion habitat, there will be more lion-human encounters, Kintigh said.

When human-lion encounters happen, GF&P has made a decision to aggressively pursue lions and usually put them down, he said. Griffin said there is "no tolerance" for lions in city limits.

Kintigh said there is a good chance a person may be attacked or even killed by a lion at some point. There has never been a lion attack on a human being in state history, at least not one that left the person in need of medical treatment, Kintigh said.

But as people and lions share the same space, it's more and more likely, he said. "I can say nothing but yes," said Kintigh. "I would be an idiot if I didn't say yes."

He said even if there was only one lion in the area, and game experts knew where it was at, there would still be a risk. Lions are predatory animals who kill to eat and survive, Kintigh said.

There are about 200 lions in the Black Hills right now, he said. That's up from 140-150 lions in the area last fall, Griffin said, and well up from a low of 40-50 lions in 1997.

Griffin said he feels that's double the amount of lions that can safely co-exist with people in the Black Hills.

He said this has always been mountain lion habitat and the animals are reclaiming their ancestral land. Warm, dry winters have keep the deer population high and the number of lions and deer are directly linked.
Griffin said with a strong prey base, good habitat and prime conditions for them, lions are increasing in number fairly rapidly. Perhaps more female lions have come into the area in recent years, he said.

A female can have one to six kittens, although three to four are more common. About 60 percent of kittens survive into adulthood. And it's not just a South Dakota issue.

"There's just more mountain lions everywhere in the United States," he said.

As the number of lions grows, so do the number of attacks upon humans,
Sickly or injured lions, or young ones that are struggling to establish a hunting zone of their own are the ones most likely to attack a person, Griffin said.

Pringle lion treed, killed

On Aug. 2, GF&P staffers treed and killed a lion near Pringle. The radio-collared lion had killed a goat a few weeks earlier and then returned to the area and killed and buried a dog, planning to feed on it later.

Griffin, 42, said the lion was missing a front paw and a toe on a back foot after being caught in traps. That made it less capable of hunting for food and more likely to enter upon populated areas.

Most lions avoid people at all costs, Griffin noted, since we are at the top of the food chain and are the most successful predators in South Dakota. But a lion in search of food will take chances and take chances to survive.
"A lion's an opportunist and going to take the easiest thing," he said.
Usually, that's a deer, although lions also hunt porcupines, elk and small game. Most of the thousands of deer killed by cougars in the Black Hills each year are hunted and killed by the predators but some die of natural causes, usually in the winter, and lions devour the carrion. In the winter a lion may feed on a deer carcass for a week; in hotter weather, with the meat rotting, it may be devoured much sooner.

A 'grocery store for lions'

Kintigh, 42, is a veteran GF&P employee who started with the department as a wildlife conservation officer in Madison in 1989 and came to the Black Hills in 2001.

He said the lion population in Rapid City has likely never been as high as it is right now, despite the best efforts of the city to control the animals. It's a natural spot for lions to come to as they follow their primary food source: deer.

"Rapid City is built over a deer wintering area," Kintigh said. "This is the grocery store for lions."

He and his staff have studied serious and fatal lion attacks in other states. Most lions that attack a person are sick or injured, Kintigh said.
That's why when there's a report of a lion acting strangely, or of one that's been struck by a vehicle, GF&P workers hustle to the scene to find the lion and make a decision on whether to kill or remove it from the area. "We, as a department, have taken a pretty aggressive stance on that," he said.

Both men favor the lion hunts that were held last year and the one scheduled to run from Nov. 1-Dec. 31 this year. The lion population is simply too high and needs to be reduced, they said. If anything, the number of lions killed is too few, they said.

Kintigh is disdainful of people who say they have a "pet" lion that lives in their neighborhood. A male lion has a 200-mile circuit it patrols and females move through a 40-mile area, Griffin said.

Even if a lion is seen spending a lot of time in a neighborhood and it appears docile, they are wild and dangerous creatures, he said. A book entitled "The Beast in the Garden" tells of the fatal consequences when Boulder, Colo., allowed lions to live in the city limits. Kintigh said he hopes such a tragedy doesn't happen in the Black Hills, but with lions moving through the area, it's always a possibility.

Griffin agrees. He said he's afraid it's no longer a question of if a lion will attack a person in the area - it's a matter of when. "There's always a possibility if you've got lots of lions and lots of people," he said. "It's very possible."

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17183754&BRD=1300&PAG=461&dept_id=156923&rfi=6
 
This is the first year in at least the past 10 we haven`t heard of any sightings. The SDGFP have always down played the amount of cats out there.
 
I know as we were coming and going from JingleBob's this summer, we'd stop here and there along the way for gas and snacks, etc and I'd find someone to talk with for a bit and Mtn Lion was the main subject of the locals.

( I didn't talk to any of the bikers...I found the local folk to chat with!)
 
Just shoot 'em and leave 'em where they fall. Don't brag about it or even tell anyone about it.

Unless they fall in your front yard or something. In that case, wait til no one's around and toss 'em in a ditch.

If an animal threatens me or mine (including my livestock), his animal rights end at that point.
 

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