Posted on 04/17/2012 11:58:05 AM PDT by Red Steel
The ranchers in Indian Valley, Genesee and Taylorsville, Plumas Co. have had 7 mountain lions killed this year after they had lost pets and livestock. One after this one was killed. Alicia Knadler, Indian Valley editor, wrote the following story in the March 27 Lassen County Times.
"Blood and gore and the blank stares of his baby and adult goats greeted Genesee youth Paul Astles when he went to do his chores in the barn before school Monday, March 12.
"He discoved a full-scale slaughter of his kids and adults. (Heather Kingdon told me he lost nine head that night.) "It was a mess in there," said a fellow rancher who saw it.
"Astles is the same young man who lost several goats to mountain lions in late January.
"There were four lions together on that hunt, according to Heather Kingdon, the neighbor whose border collie puppy was snatched off the porch by a lion the day before. That lion was killed with the dog's body still in its mouth.
"Kingdon saw three lions that were probably a mother and her young, and another adult, a rather skinny female.
"She was afraid this new kill was another group hunt, unheard of in mountain lions, but a professional tracker doesn't think so. "I saw one track, a big one", she said, before preparing for yet another night hunt Tuesday, March 13.
"A lion's modus operandi is to partially bury its kill and return to feed at a later time, probably the next night. And that is exactly when the hunter met the biggest tomcat he'd ever seen in his life.
"It was a monster cat," he said.
"Estimates were that it weighed close to 200 pounds. Lions do not hunt in groups, that is one thing he and the experts at the Dept. of Fish and Game agree on.
DFG public information officer Andrew Hughan was emphatic about that and refused to validate the possibility of a group hunt by other than a mother and her young.
"There is no history, science or evidence to support that," he said. "Mountain lions are solitary animals."
"This makes the sixth mountain lion killed in Indian Valley since late January.
"The fifth one was killed in the Williams Valley area of Greenville in late February. To learn more and find safety tips, visit the DFG mountain lion information page at dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/lion .
"Heather Kingdon authored a guest post about this experience Thursday, March 15, on thebeefjar.com .
"Scroll down the page to see her story and pictures titled "Guest Post: Active Environmentalist." Heather wrote: "The few live goats that are left are locked in the barn where the mare and foals are housed. The bodies of the nine (9) dead are piled in one place, so the lion will come to a distinct area. A trick wire is placed on the top goat's carcass so when it is moved an alarm that the Tracker has, will go off. The waiting begins. At 10 p.m. the alarm is sounded. Our hound man gets his dogs and as he approaches the barn he see the lion emerge from the barn and leap over the 6'6" fence without touching, loping across the arena and heading toward the mountain. The hounds give chase and soon the lion is treed. It is huge. The biggest lion our tracker has ever seen in his many years. The lion is shot and falls, the wind is howling and the rain is here, coming down in sheets."
"Document the damage. Document the results. Document the loss. All are documented, all is legal. The depredation was a success; yet there is no celebration at the Walking G Ranch. The dead are counted and the living are being cared for by the young man, Paul, of 13 years of age who they belong to. The nannies that are alive have lost their young, the young that survived have lost their mothers. Each kid must be fed three times a day and the nannies milked, for they won't accept another's young at this point. Chores are a welcome distraction. The filling of water buckets, cleaning the stalls. Chickens to be let out. Horses fed."
No, I meant HIX. Just like I type Pix, Trix or Flix. And what is disturbing is the PHOTO. They are proudly displaying GOD’s creature hanging like it was a piece of garbage. It’s classless, disturbing, sick and cruel.
“You must live in a city and have never been stalked by a big lion.”
Right on. Everyone needs to live somewhere where they aren’t at the top of the food chain (other than Chicago), so they would know what it is like to REALLY live with nature. I’m not for wholesale slaughter when it isn’t necessary, but sometimes it just is. These cats aren’t just beautiful animals, they are killers, and they would get any of us in a heartbeat if they could.
That will make a nice hide. I’ve dealt with a few mountain lions, but nothing that big.
....just as i wish ever raccoon and pit bull on this earth were killed for my convenience and the death they cause me in my personal life, I would never be able to kill it for that reason....my convenience.
Oh, please! Quit while you’re ahead. You’re only making yourself look even more Left-wing and stupid than your initial comments.
They don’t look proud to me, just relieved.
I live in a very rural area. The incident happened in the predawn darkness at 5am in the parking lot where I work, I was taking out the trash and it made me aware of how easy it is to get taken out by a predator. I am now VERY aware of my surroundings when outside.
...and pertaining to this article, i understand something had to be done, but stringing it up like that and taking that pic....just wrong.
That is indeed a large mountain lion. It has obviously been on some very good feed to attain that size...
Exactly correct. After a cat has exhausted the supply of livestock, pets and other easy quarry, human children are next on the shopping list.
Would you also condemn a man having his picture taken while holding a large trophy fish?
No, I wouldn’t condemn him.....I would just think other things of him. DO you believe in canned hunting?
What is canned hunting?
That picture is called EVIDENCE for the DNR and for the Feds.
Not only do farmers and ranchers have to protect their livestock, they also have to protect themselves from city-dwelling, pasty, soft-handed government officials who think like you do.
You can't have even read the article. If you're feeling sorry for the poor widdle animals -- how about nannies and kids slaughtered in the barn, blood everywhere, discovered dead and dying by their young owner, orphaned kids crying for their mothers -- a border collie puppy snatched right off the front porch --
These are dangerous predators and they would stalk and eat YOU in a heartbeat. Get out there and ride fence with the ranchers, or hush about stuff you don't understand in the least.
Have you ever been hunting? Have you ever been hunted? Let me tell you sweetie, if I went up against a big cat and came out alive I'd be proud too. I'd hang the thing on my wall to but for the fact that morons like you have made it illegal.
Mountain lions are not scarce; hell, they're overpopulated thanks to people like you. The pressure of territorial competition is so intense in these mountains that young males come down into the city as far as the food court at the Capitola Mall looking for food. Try growing up and facing reality: wildlife, as a whole, are better off if they are managed. If some have to die to make that happen, so be it. That's the job GOD gave us in Genesis 1:28.
That’s the fastest way to document it. Hang it off a calf scale, next to a man the size of whom you know.
You’re so obviously a city girl, it’s pretty funny to those of us who have to deal with these things. You oughta see how we drop the guts out of deer or elk, then jerk the hide off them.
Of course you have no concern at all that the young boy could have been killed by that lion as well. Just let the lion do what it does.
I work outside, restoring native habitat nearly every day. That means weeding, lots of it, most of the time bent over on terrain too steep to reasonably carry a weapon. If I didn't have a dog to warn me, I could be in real trouble.
Against wolves I wouldn't have a chance even if I was armed.
Feeding aggregations such as in your attached photo respond well to 1080, antifreeze, and lead injections.
Those two “hicks” were protecting what they own. What if the young boy had walked in on the lion killing the goats? What would you think the lion would do to him?
Take your animal rights bleeding heart someplace else.
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