Mt. Lion encounters?

[desertcj]

I had what I think is probably a once in a lifetime experience while hunting in the wilderness yesterday! I'm sure many of you have seen a lion while hunting. Who has seen a lion attack or kill something?

 

[svivian]

I was 16 hunting by myself after school up a basin I was pretty familiar with. I was following some fresh elk tracks and walked about two miles when I spotted some deer which I snuck around in case they spooked and bumped any elk in there. A few hundred yards later I heard crashing followed by a shriek I've never heard before. About a 50 yards away those same deer were booking it up and over when I saw the mtn lion on one of the does rear ham. I quickly put one in the chamber and started hauling ass out of there. When I got about a mile back from the encounter I looked down at my boot prints and there were mtn lion prints on top of them. Those deer saved me from being lunch and I have never hunted up there again.

 

[COlineman78]

I have never actually seen one while hunting. Seen one once while driving in at 5am once. See fresh tracks all the time where I hunt though. Sometimes they are in our tracks that are less than 20 minutes old.

I also wonder, does anyone know how many animals per year approximately a mountain lion is taking out if it isn't really moving outside the area? I don't think anyone has ever hunted them where I elk hunt and we see fresh track every year so it can't be moving far.

 

[541hunter]

A little over a week ago, I sat down on a rock in a bend on a trail and a very large cat came around then bend at 15ft from me. As we stared at each other I came to full draw, anchored and begin squeezing when it bounded into deadfall and reprod. I finished the last mile back to camp with a knocked arrow.

The worst part of it was the fact I had walked through that same spot hours earlier well before daylight with no headlamp.


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[Felix40]

Saw one on a fresh deer kill in the willows along the Yampa river a few years ago. We all saw the deer but it took us a minute to realize what we were looking at. It let us float right by.

 

[mlob1one]

Spotted one this year for the first time while hunting with my 8 year old. Late afternoon and he was sunning himself on top of a little rocky outcrop about 1,100 yards away.

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[ColoradoBackpackHunter]

Yesterday I sat next to a pile of cat poo and that was close enough for me.

 

[aggieland]

Saw one in SW Utah one year and then a pair that watched me from 200 yds as I crossed a large field in Taylor Park Res area. Didn't realize at the time I was walking a mountain bike trail. Those folks might want to watch out ..

 

[desertcj]

This happened 30yds in front of me! Heard some crashing and thought I'd just bumped some deer. That's when I noticed the deer stumbling around with the cat on it's back which quickly turned into the cat hanging on from underneath with all claws sunk and the deers throat in it's mouth! I nocked an arrow and pretty quickly decided that it would be a good time to leave...lol.

 

[Roy68]

3 years ago my brother and I had not 1 but 2 step out into the trail about 150 yds in front of us. We didn't stick around to see if they killed something. BTW my younger in better shape brother is slower than mep. In all seriousness they went the opposite way before we even turned around.

My wife has seen 2 within a mile of our house in central KS. A month ago one went through a neighbors backgrounding lot and in the morning he had a 100 head of feeders scattered for miles.

 

[jtw]

Ive seen two hunting and it was like seeing ghosts. Never seen one attack anything. I have been followed by them. I was behind my dads place and could hear something following me. I detoured by his neighbors and later that night the neighbhor sent photos 2 mins apart of me walking by then a big tom from his game cam.

 

[desertcj]

I have never actually seen one while hunting. Seen one once while driving in at 5am once. See fresh tracks all the time where I hunt though. Sometimes they are in our tracks that are less than 20 minutes old.

I also wonder, does anyone know how many animals per year approximately a mountain lion is taking out if it isn't really moving outside the area? I don't think anyone has ever hunted them where I elk hunt and we see fresh track every year so it can't be moving far.

I've been told that a lion will kill a deer every 7-10 days on average. I don't know how that would apply to elk?

 

[wncbrewer]

I've been told that a lion will kill a deer every 7-10 days on average. I don't know how that would apply to elk?

I've heard 50-60 deer a year so this aligns with that perfectly.

 

[COlineman78]

I've been told that a lion will kill a deer every 7-10 days on average. I don't know how that would apply to elk?

Since this area has far more elk than deer I assume they are taking a mix. Fairly low altitude, 8500 ft with a lot of farm and ranch land. Sheep are also grazed in the area even over winter so I'm sure that they get picked off too. Interestingly enough the tracks I saw this year were almost always right in with elk tracks; obviously you can't know temporally if it was following them or not, but I am assuming so as both sets of tracks were less than 24 hours old and saw this on 2 occasions (in almost the same spot).

 

[Mischief209]

Last year i went to check a camera i had about 400yrds up the hill off a main trail. The camera was about 15/20yrds off a well used game trail. I started walking up the mountain right before last lite. I made it about 3/4rds the way up the hill when it hit pitch black so i flipped on the headlamp and continued walking up. About 5 mins later im nearing the camera and im scanning around,kinda checking out the game trail to my right. Spidey senses were tingling. I spot 2 glowing eyes staring at me when i looked up the trail a bit. They were lower to the ground and wide apart. Something similar to a cat kneeling down staring at you. At this point im 15yrds from the camera, i can see it about the same elevation as the cat. Im going back and forth from camera to cat and wondering if its worth it. I yell,stand tall do whatever i can and that thing doesnt budge. I believe if it was a coyote it would have taken off by now. Im beaming my light on it and the eyes just glow as bright as a 100w light bulb. After i determined the cat wasnt going anywhere. I backed down the hill,backwards for the most part with my light shinning up. I seen the eyes 1 more time before i made it out as he/she followed me down. Ive never jumped in the truck so fast. Following day i got the camera pics and had 2 different cats on it,1 bear and no dear or coyotes.. Didnt get a pic of the action the night before due to dead batterys but it would have been real shitty to get attacked and have it filmed on your own game cam.

 

[tipsntails7]

Last year i went to check a camera i had about 400yrds up the hill off a main trail. The camera was about 15/20yrds off a well used game trail. I started walking up the mountain right before last lite. I made it about 3/4rds the way up the hill when it hit pitch black so i flipped on the headlamp and continued walking up. About 5 mins later im nearing the camera and im scanning around,kinda checking out the game trail to my right. Spidey senses were tingling. I spot 2 glowing eyes staring at me when i looked up the trail a bit. They were lower to the ground and wide apart. Something similar to a cat kneeling down staring at you. At this point im 15yrds from the camera, i can see it about the same elevation as the cat. Im going back and forth from camera to cat and wondering if its worth it. I yell,stand tall do whatever i can and that thing doesnt budge. I believe if it was a coyote it would have taken off by now. Im beaming my light on it and the eyes just glow as bright as a 100w light bulb. After i determined the cat wasnt going anywhere. I backed down the hill,backwards for the most part with my light shinning up. I seen the eyes 1 more time before i made it out as he/she followed me down. Ive never jumped in the truck so fast. Following day i got the camera pics and had 2 different cats on it,1 bear and no dear or coyotes.. Didnt get a pic of the action the night before due to dead batterys but it would have been real shitty to get attacked and have it filmed on your own game cam.

I don't like cats for this reason. They never seem to be scared because they know they are the baddest thing out there. Tuff to be confident in a situation like that.


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[focker34]

I've had the fortune of 2 separate encounters with very different lions. The first was in northern california while hunting blacktails with my wife. I caught movement about 200 yards away in some thick brush. As soon as that movement cleared the next bush, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The cat couldn't have weighed more than 75 lbs and looked like it was all skin and bone. It never knew we were around and that was alright by me.

The second encounter was this year as I was scouting for mule deer in northern nevada. I had located a small bachelor herd and was sitting on a ridge-top in fairly open country. I heard the nearby trees explode with obnoxious bird chatter. I turned to locate the source of the commotion and saw a cat that must have doubled the size of my previous encountered feline. I was frozen as it appeared to float through the trees and disappeared over the next ridge, never getting closer than 100 yards and never showing any acknowledgement of my existence.

 

[paleraider]

I don't like cats for this reason. They never seem to be scared because they know they are the baddest thing out there. Tuff to be confident in a situation like that.

An associate of mine was a mountain lion biologist in YP for many years. They actually stated cats are quite timid and are pretty much pansies. They will not, as a general rule, go after humans unless they are very old or sick. In fact it was a common theme for the cats to get ran off their kills by bears, who would simply follow the cats around the park. They estimated that most of the meat bears were consuming was actually killed by cats.

That aside I did have a few encounters with them while growing up in Arizona. I was about 9 years old quail hunting with my dad NE of Skull Valley outside of Prescott. As we were walking to the water tank we saw a cat sunning itself on a large rock outcropping. It was, at the time, quite scary for me, but seemed not to phase my dad in the least as we continued to walk right past it. As soon as we got parallel with it it bounded off. That was, in hindsight, a pretty cool experience. I only say that as it was sunny out and I had a shotgun. Not so sure I would enjoy said experience as much at night with a bow.

 

[PMcGee]

I saw one this year. I came around a bend to walk out a fence line on a ridge to glass. The lion was walking along that same fence line about 50yds away. It had no idea I was there.

 

[charvey9]

Good timing. I've been living in Oregon for 11 years, and it was not until this year that I saw my first Lions in the wild.

The first time was this past February when my buddy and I were out shed hunting. We had sat down on a ridge and were glassing the opposite draw, when my friend says "Holy $hit their is a mountain lion!" He had popped up on a little crest in the draw about 70 yards from where we were sitting, and quickly dropped down into some brush when he saw us. Armed with nothing but pistols we crept up toward the edge of the brush and both caught movement about 30 yards in, and determined there were actually 2 cats hiding inside. They took off out the opposite side, and we got a couple shots off but nothing came of it.

My second encounter was 8 days ago while elk hunting in Eastern Oregon. I had been sitting on an active wallow all day, cow calling occasionally. About 45 mins before dark I got up to hunt my way back toward camp. I did my best to keep quiet, but certainly made enough noise putting my gear away and shouldering my pack to alert an animal in a 100 yard radius. I started back toward camp, got about 30 yards away from where I had been sitting all day and glanced up the hill to my right. Still hard to believe what I was saw, but there was a cat belly crawling in my direction. I had caught her mid step, left foot out in front, and quartering my direction. Eyes were wide and staring right at me. There is no question she knew I was there, but hard to say what her intent was. Its possible she was still trying to figure out what I was, but definitely was not scarred yet. I knocked an arrow, ranged at 24 yards, drew and put one right behind her left shoulder. She did a backflip, rolled around a few times, and fell dead about 6 yards from where I spotted her. Whole thing was over in about 30 seconds. When skinning I determined the arrow cracked her spine, rattled around inside a bit, but passed through and came out her rear right quarter.

I was 9 miles from the truck and didn't have any measuring implements, but guess she was about 100-110lbs. It was on my bucket list to take a cat with a bow, and always figured I would have to go someplace and hunt with hounds, so this was like a dream come true.