Posted on 05/18/2008 10:43:27 AM PDT by george76
Confronting Lion Was Breathtaking Experience.
“I was walking this trail I had made, hunting for mushrooms, when I came across a deer carcass which hadn't been there before,” said Ron Olson...
“I kind of looked around and didn't see anything. When I turned around, just to my left, there stood a mountain lion.”
The lion sighting was officially confirmed Friday by officials from the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. It is the state's first confirmed sighting in four years.
About 90 minutes after they set up the camera, four shots were taken of the mountain lion eating on the carcass. Johnson also believes the animal was still very close in the vicinity when they set up the camera.
The Game, Fish and Parks Service has had sightings reported from all over northeast Nebraska but nothing really concrete to confirm the animal's presence is a reality.
Migration of the mountain lion to northeast Nebraska probably comes from places like the Black Hills of South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado where mountain lions are plentiful.
Mountain lions can be dangerous to other mountain lions and will kill each other. Within the species, they are very aggressive. The lions seen in Nebraska are young males that have probably been driven out of older cats' territories up north.
(Excerpt) Read more at yankton.net ...
President Bush’s fault, plus global warming
A college bar near my house is reportedly full of cougars every weekend.
In case they didn’t know, a cougar was recently shot by police on the North Side of Chicago. I think that qualifies as a “confirmed sighting.”
Just because mountain lions are sighted occasionally does not mean there is a reproducing population in the region.
It’s called: “Nature.”
The standard line of the anti-hunting econuts is that the only reason for increased attacks on humans and pets by cougars (and coyotes and bears) is that we are expanding into their territory. The fact is any preditor will expand it’s range until it is either killed off by other preditors (humans), or has insufficent food and water to support itself. Coyotes, used to be only in the southwest, are now nationwide. Black bears and cougars are moving into populated areas where they had been eliminated for decades due to huning bans (eg. bears in New Jersey, cougars in CA). Hunting (optimally with dogs) both reduces numbers and creates a healthy (for both the animals and humans) fear of humans and dogs in the critters.
PETA anti-hunting, eco nuts are everywhere.
They offer up every lame excuse...
A special mountain lion season has opened on a portion of Fort Berthold Reservation for the second time in two years.
Tribal Game and Fish Director Fred Poitra says the move was prompted by a high number of cougar sightings and their proximity to people. In one case a cougar followed two people for a time...
http://www.kxmb.com/getArticle.asp?s=rss&ArticleId=238899
It had wandered nine hundred miles from the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The lions seen in Nebraska are young males that have probably been driven out of older cats’ territories up north.
I agree with the points made at the website. I'm out in the true wilderness a lot, yet I've only seen three lions, and all three fled. To see a mountain lion in the wild is a magnificent thing, and to think that any encounter with this animal should result in its shooting death is extraordinarily short-sighted and, well, cowardly.
HOWEVER... all mountain lions that act aggressively toward humans (and this is mainly happening in near-suburban settings) DO need to be hunted and put down.
I would like to think that there is a place in the wild for this magnificent beast — but not in suburbia.
Same old story, George. When cougars are protected or hunting methods curtailed, the increase in numbers drives them into rural populated areas creating incidents with livestock, pets and man.
The state F & G agencies know this but bow to the emotional cries from enviro nutjobs and polititions and initiatives passed by city people. Of course some of those enviro nutjobs now work for those state agencies.
Lions are also going into city settings : not just Chicago...
In Boulder, the DOW has been doing the catch and release thing almost every week.
Watch the populations of these indigenous creatures to explode in the next couple of years.
You are correct. Mountain lions that live in suburban or rural populated areas have been forced to live there by their over population, thus they lose their fear of man and those are the lions who become problems.
The only practical way of hunting lions is with hounds and if hounds are allowed to be used in those areas it solves the vast majority of lion problems.
I have hunted deer and elk over forty years in prime cougar country in three states and not once have I had the privilege of seeing a cougar. In that type country they've not lost their fear of man.
The liberals will blame us
Yeah, the catch and release thing is ridiculous with cougars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve caught the same one more than once. That’s a prime example of enviros working in those agencies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.