Time to get my lion tag as several have been spotted in the last week. They seem to drift in and out of town and two of these sightings are on my fitness hiking trail. Saw none this morning,darn.

We ran Rt. 50 through Nevada last year...sign said loneliest road in the country, or something of that sort. It was interesting to see the small towns along the way; Austin, Eureka, Ely...as opposed to the bareness, if you will of the countryside. I would enjoy traipsing about some of that territory with a quiver of arrows and a good bow.

George: Skip lives on the other side of the state, the part with 5 lanes of interstate going the same direction.

Bob

A tag in the pocket is always best. You never know. Now to have the bow in hand and the lion in the same spot......! Good luck and be careful! Matthew

Better at least have a pointy end on your hiking stick, eh?

So tell me how your going to get a Lion without dogs? LOL

Fake news.LOL

Here kitty kitty.

A boy from the northeast can only dream of such things. Good luck, be safe and have fun, StikBow.

I hear Poodles and cats are good bait.

Bob, I can hike the mountain behind my house into California-away from the freeways from casinos to Sacramento. Plenty of wild as city folks tend to stay in the valley. GEORGE, roving is expensive here as everything that looks soft, hides a rock Cat, they have been seen by hikers in my workout canyon twice in 2 days and I believe in luck. I do have a friend with dogs. You do not always have to be an a** and your comments are fairly ignorant considering where you are. Sarcasm based in ignorance is laughable. Keep it to yourself

I didnt detect any sarcasm

Anything can happen. Actually on trail cam threads sometimes when guys from western states post pic mountain lions walking by often during daylight hours?! Creepy damn things. I am in the west once a year. Have not seen one yet.

Skip: I do realize you have plenty of space in the area you live, but not compared to Ely, Eureka, & Austin!! If you remember I cut my teeth in the East slope if the Sierra's

Bob

Best eating you can get!!!!

...How bout' bobcats? Pig hunting with Matt Napper ( Tradman strings...is he still around?) in Denton TX, he killed a bobcat that was foolish enough to look at him.

25 minutes West of Chicago, Illinois...just in the last 5 years, we've had (locally) multiple Cougar and Grey Wolf sightings. Now there's scads of Coyotes, slews of whitetail, but only a couple of Black Bear sightings, but that's how it starts. Having lived in the suburbs of Chicago, I'm still surprised by all of this. Growing up, all I ever saw or heard about were squirrels, raccoons, Opossums, rats, etc. As the ever sprawling urban blight of new homes, subdivisions, townhouses, condo's and gated communities has increased, you wouldn't think that these long gone animals would want to come back. After all, the further you move west of the city of Chicago, it's mostly farms to the Ohio River. The Coyotes have rapidly adapted to the all of this, even living in the older, gentrified communities. I'm amazed by this. I won't even go into the Bigfoot sightings here. ^(_)^

In NW Iowa we have had three, that I know of, in our hunting areas. One was shot by a farmer, one by the game warden when it wouldn't back off of a deer kill, and that is still roaming the upper Little Sioux river valleys. If you have a house cat, look at its poop. Last weekend we found some have buried scat. Yes, they use their claws when they do that, think of your cat's poop times ten, with deer hair in it. I hope it is running a 50 or more mile loop or is on a straight line to somewhere else.

Most all the lions killed in Eastern Oregon are without dogs (it is illegal to hunt lions and bears with dogs in Oregon). most are killed during hunting season by tag holding hunters who don't pass up the opportunity to take a cat when seen.

Many an elk hunter have called in lions too. I personally know of more than one archery hunter who have called big cats into about 10 yards before the hunter saw he cat and visa-versa.

Someone musta got get their skirt blown up.LOL

Prove it without dogs thats all.Like I said fake news.

Stand out in the sun a little and harden up if you get blown up from this! LOL

Got em here in south-central Wisconsin.

Plenty of the early season archers shoot Mtn. Lions from a blind over a water source. Have seen tons of lion pics from trail cams looking for elk. Have jumped one lion on a creek with a shotgun in hand chasing ducks. A few chukar hunters have walked up on lions being pointed by their bird dogs. Hounds are great, but far from the only way to kill a Tom. Matthew

Always wondered if Mtn lions go after bird dogs? When I come West in the summer I usually hike with my Britany off leash.

For those that question whether Mtn. lions can be taken without dogs. The West in particular California's Sierra Nevada Mtn. is kind of unique. 35-40 years ago the animal rights people had placed on the ballot Prop. 287 that outlawed the killing of Mtn. Lions forever in that state. Interesting add on, it also provided 30 million tax payer dollars a year for 30 years, (900 million) to buy habitat for the lion. And the DNR is unable to account for the money, but that's getting off track. There are more Mtn. Lions in the Sierra Nevada Mtn. than anywhere in the lower 48 states. There have been hikers mauled, some killed. Lions are showing up in areas of the state that hasn't seen them in over a 100 years, including the San Francisco bay area and the Los Angles basin. In the 1990's a family dog treed a lion in down town Chico, in a residents back yard. If Lion's can be taken anywhere without a dog, its in the area that Skip is referring to. And yes Ryman Cat you were out of line!!

Bob

South central WI,...farmers in my hunting area of Sauk County in the last two years have seen mountain lions and black bears. Three reported sightings of the cats!

They have expanded everywhere out here. Pretty easy to get one to come right in with just a few cow mews. Like this one--

Casekiska...I'm in Sauk county. A neighbor got one on trail came behind his house, and several sightings in the "Hogsback" running from Baraboo, thru Reedsburg, and towards LaValle.

Been sighted in Lower peninsula, Michigan too. lots of bears. No Sasquatch, because they do not exist :>)

rick allison - PM sent -)))))---------->

those things are everywhere here in California on the 4th of july one jumped through a womans bedroom window and landed on her bed at about 5:30 AM and somehow she got it to go out her back door there were 2 good pics from the parkimg lot cams of it there were also 6 different cats in 7 days on a trail cam north of Colusa and one had 3 cubs the Sacramento river and other jungle creeks have tons of deer that's why theyre here now

I live in lion country in Northern Colorado and I am always looking for animals, but I have only seen four lions in 25 years. I've seen their tracks many times and seen them on neighborhood security cameras several times. My home is built into the side of a mountain and we've had a lion walking around on our roof a few times. If you ever hear a lion screaming in the middle of the night you'll never forget it.

Back about 20 years ago, a young boy was taken by a lion when he wandered away from a church outing on a hiking trail not many miles upriver from me. They did not find the boy's skeletol remains until years later. Another child disappeared from a hiking trail just a mile or two from my home a couple years before I moved here.

I usually carry a sidearm when afield because it can get real lonely real quick when I wander off the trails and up into the rocky areas where cats live. Smelling cat up there is something else that stays in the memory bank.

Mountain lions make a living by killing, so I am cautious. Not scared, but cautious. Much more dangerous to me are the fast and reckless drivers on the canyon highway and the idiots on the interstate highway.

I've gotten a lot of trail camera pictures of lions going by my tree stands.I haven't had the opportunity yet.In early bow season,elk hunters usually kill a couple here and sometimes wolves too.It's worth buying a tag.

Here is one.

"Always wondered if Mtn lions go after bird dogs?"

Under the right circumstances, sure they will. Less likely on a close ranging dog, like a spaniel.

rymancat , ditto! LOL!!

Ok alright ya shammed me into it. I'm sorry, shoot them however ya want or can for that matter. The sun hardens skin though. Who don't get out of line at times we should all just be feed up with so much BS that gets said everywhere all the time and it was a rough day. That's no excuse I know.

I should not have been that hard on anyone if it really was? Getting testier these days so with all this fake news just adds to it all.

On another note game departments that say they don't have Lions in their states but others say they have seen then. So now if they aren't in some of these states then how are they being seen I wonder?

Couple thoughts the person who seen the alleged Lion got into mushrooms and hallucinated. A light colored house Cat went ferrel and dug into someones trash can and got into a bottle of steroids that were thrown out or some other far fetched thing.

See how easy fake news gets started. Lion can be shot with gun, baited, trapped, ect.as well as pointed out. But if your looking for the success to collect a Cat then get to it and then talk about it not before ya even have a tag!

If you are an archer then it gets even harder don't ya think to get close enough.

Los Gatos Creek Trail last week. Aptly named. Twasn't fer the bunnyhuggers they'd be more fraidycattish. But, no Californy cat hunting. Stupid.

We can probably ignore comments from flatlanders who have no chance of seeing one. The mountain above me has more than a few when the winter pushes deer down. Fresh tracks are daily occurrences-sometimes in my tracks from the day before. California forbids killing them, so those animals follow the deer down, adding to our residents cats. There are several thick groves of trees the deer use as cover from the cold. Normally the deer are found in small groups of 5 or so, until winter arrives, then they are herded up in two groups of 40. In previous years the cats circled the deer herds almost daily-based on their tracks. Winter is coming. A fawn call just might work at dusk. They are very nocturnal creatures and getting in quietly in the morning would be difficult.

What would the goid Doctor do?

Ryman: The problem is no one was talking about the percent of success a hunter would have without dogs, the point was in the area of discussion cats are so numerous the chance of an encounter are fairly high and without a tag that's all it is an encounter.

Bob

Speaking of success, years back when I still lived in Southern Nevada a friend of a friend called a cat in and shot it. Seemed like a dozen or so acquaintances ran out, bought tags and tried their hand at calling. A few coyotes bit the dirt, but no cats. Definitely gotta be in the right place at the right time. Matthew

With in the last year or so, trail camera pictures have proven that we have lions in West Tennessee. TWRA made it official. My brother and his family saw one about 20 years ago within 25 miles of Memphis.

Murray

Ditto Murray. Friend of a friend has trail cam pics of two cats in his yard in the southern ADKs and its not a hallucination brought on by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I saw the picture. Yup, two cougars. NY DEC says they are not here but they are lying. They are. I heard one scream on Buck Hill north of Rome a few years ago. This flatlander has seen five in the wild and came very close to several others (in the west - MT, OR, and WA). Found several half buried deer and elk carcasses, one as fresh as the previous night that made my hair stand on end - bull elk kill. I chanced taking the ivories and then made haste getting away from it. My wife had one scamper up on a stump 20 yds from her, crouch a few seconds then turn and run off into the woods, in WA while she was walking up the road in the Gifford Pinchot. We've both heard them scream and we know the sound. It was the same sound we heard on buck Hill. They are here, not many but a few. Other credible reports have been made in NY. The attached url of an article in Wildlife Society tells of a set of interviews conducted in NY in 2013. This study was going on when we took a drive to the Dacks that year. When I got interviewed in Old Forge at the grocery store, I asked the gal if anyone had said they'd seen them. She said yes, and she also believed that DEC was not being truthful when they claimed none were present in the mountains of the state. Someone else I recently spoke to said they saw a black one in southern NY. I have no reason to not believe her. She described it accurately and what it was doing. It could be... Getting one with a bow without a dog treeing it would be a rare event IMO. Calling a cat in may be a very thrilling thing to do if you have only a stick bow. I'd try it again. When I did, nothing came, but there was fresh sign in the area (WA, Indian Heaven).

http://wildlife.org/mountain-lions-not-just-a-tall-tale-in-adirondacks/

Here is the article site. Interesting.

Very timely, my boss ran the Peak (Whiteface Mt) to Brew (FX Matt Brewery in Utica, NY) Relay this past weekend. Their team, and others (the alert went up less than 100 miles into the race) saw a Mountian Lion on the course cross the road. Confirmed sighting of the cat in the 'dacks. Pretty cool I say...

Predator call ok I got it and the challenge would be over the top. But I don't think I'd want to have a Cat on me coming into a call especially any big Cat. I'd much rather have dogs tree them plus without dogs that's the whole experience alone is the trill of the chase also that might be missed.

I know a little while back there was claim to seeing a Cat in DE. and I believe that's possible for Cats to be in any state just like a Bear or other animals for that matter.

wow...now I remember why I don't come around here much anymore... good luck on the cat StikBow

Its somthing, mOre cat out there then you think. I live in King County WA. Plenty of cats prowling. NO use of dogs so more cats then ever. gotta have sothing to harrass the growing wolf population in Wa

This one was trying for a house dog. Killed it on the porch. His wife took a picture through the kitchen window.

For years the very nice small town of Doon, Iowa had articles about lions that the editor spotted and attempted to get photos of. It was a fun area joke for most. The DNR flat out denied any possibilities of an area lion. Then one was spotted by a law official and folks started thinking that he was nuts too. That changed when one was shot near Sioux City. That same year a farmer saw one that routed through a country cemetery right past his cattle yard on several occasions. That was a quarter mile from where I hunted. Personally, I thought he saw a bobcat. But that changed for me one day, when I saw a group of turkeys bust up and out of cedar thicket with a lion coming up and taking an aerial swipe at one. My knees were shaking so bad, I could barely walk. A couple days later I went into the larger trees on the cedar covered hill and found large piles of duff here and there. Inside those piles was turkey feathers, some odd stuff and what looked to be the hide of a white cat. The next week a farmer shot one, but wanted to keep it a secret, he didn't want anyone to know. it was a young male lion. The next year a big one was shot between Doon and Rock Valley by the same game warden that declared that there were no mountain lions in the area. Folks had a different opinion of the Doon newspaper editor after that.

Even though lions are not protected in Iowa, personally would not shoot one given the chance, unless I felt threatened by it. The real problem around here when odd game sightings are made is the guys riding around with loaded high powered rifles and quite often warm beer to go with it, trying to be the local hero. We get the occasional moose and a couple of years ago there were two untagged cow elk in a public hunting area. The moose and the elk are protected by law, but there were still those that were trying to get them. The game wardens went out and killed both elk. I disagreed with that, since they did not have ear tags and appeared to be wild. The DNR has released a statement that lions should be left alone, unless they are presenting a clear danger, I agree with that, but they should make it official, to prevent some of the beer drinking rifle riders from getting carried away. The more beer one drinks the more everything way out there is going look like a lion. I am pretty certain that one is running the Little Sioux valleys, but I hope I never see him. I hope no else sees him either.

Got this picture yesterday.One of my bowhunting spots.

Not seen a swamp panther around here since I was young....but I have a huge bobcat that if it had a long tail would swear it was a swamp panther due to size.

Uploaded video but not approved by Bowsite yet so here is screen capture.

keep em sharp,

ron herman

Funny how when some have limitations in their abilities,,they assume everyone else has them as well....

Or they just like to talk out their sitter...

Not to many years ago one of them cats turned up at the drive thru McDonalds in Escondido, CA. in broad daylight. He wanted fries with his Happy Meal.

My grandson cut fresh lion tracks in the snow last winter, followed them into the rocks, and called it in and shot it with a .30-30. It was close enough he could have taken it with his longbow, but the lion was very cautious and he figured it would have caught his movement. I tracked a young tom into an overhanging ledge before he stood up, looked at my son and me, and then jumped between us and was gone. I also saw a female with three kittens that went off a kill I stumbled onto. All the rest of the lions I have seen were up trees or blow downs ahead of the blueticks I ran. Plenty of photos, but never bothered to arrow or shoot one, or let anyone else. It just didn't seem like I needed to. The next guy or gal could.

Lions are much more numerous in this part of the West. I suspect it is from the increase in hound hunting and killing of the older toms, who self-limited the populations somewhat by killing kittens and going after younger toms. Lots of lions around, but you would be hard pressed to find an adult male over 140 pounds.

Over the years I've been much more concerned about the sheep outfits' guard dogs than any lion in the mountains! Or the drive home for that matter...:)

Or the drive home for that matter...:) Ditto - far and away the most dangerous situation we encounter (hundreds of times every day - combined speeds of 120 mph going four feet away in the opposite direction and few think much of it).

A lion from South Dakota was road-killed in Connecticut in 2011. DNA confirmed it matched lion DNA from the SD area. I guess its GPS was malfunctioning.

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