A San Diego County motorist unintentionally spoiled a mountain lion’s attempt to take down a deer this week by pulling up to capture the scene on video.
A San Diego County motorist unintentionally spoiled a mountain lion’s attempt to kill a deer this week when he stopped to capture the scene on video.
Buddy Wilkerson of Alpine told NBC that he first saw just the deer on the side of Japatul Road, then realized he had stumbled upon a mountain lion predation attempt.
“All I saw was the deer. It was a big deer,” Wilkerson says in the footage. “And as I got closer, I saw the mountain lion.”
Wilkerson said he did not intend to frighten the mountain lion, which is seen releasing its grip on the deer’s throat and sprinting into the wilderness, allowing the deer to escape.
“He was just trying to eat,” Wilkerson acknowledges in the video. “I wasn’t trying to, you know, interrupt or anything. I just wanted to see him and as I got a little bit closer, I guess it spooked him.”
–Generic mountain lion image courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A South Dakota resident has captured dawn footage showing a mountain lion attempting to cross a busy street and narrowly escaping oncoming traffic.
A South Dakota resident has captured dawn footage showing a mountain lion attempting to cross a busy street and narrowly escaping oncoming traffic.
“I just saw it dart across the road on my way to work,” Dan Tiede said of the March 21 sighting in Rapid City, miles from the more cougar-friendly Black Hills. “I was pretty positive I knew what I saw, so I turned around to see if I could grab a photo or video.”
The rare footage shows the mountain lion pausing in Tiede’s headlights, then attempting to cross Jackson Blvd. in building commuter traffic.
“Look out kitty… lookout kitty! No, no no!” Tiede says, nervously, in the footage.
Tiede then express relief when the cat changes direction after almost being struck and bounds toward a quieter part of town.
“Hopefully it found its way safely out of the city,” Tiede said, adding that he notified a local ranger about the sighting.
Mountain lions, or cougars, were listed as a state-threatened species in South Dakota in 1978, and removed from that listing in 2003. A limited hunting season is now allowed in the Black Hills.
Derek Wolfe is a licensed hunter who followed the Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s regulations for harvesting a mountain lion.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnm8rzyPS7r/?hl=en
Former Denver Broncos defensive lineman Derek Wolfe went viral last week after posting a photo of himself with a massive mountain lion that he killed outside a “rural neighborhood” in Colorado.
Wolfe said the large cat had killed two dogs and had been living under a porch. He tracked it with a guide last week and shot it with a bow and arrow.
The hunt left some fans asking, Is that legal?
In Wolfe’s case, yes.
The Super Bowl 50 champion, an avid outdoorsman, has a license and completed a course to become certified to hunt mountain lions, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed to 9News last week.
With his license, Wolfe was eligible to harvest one mountain lion during the fall hunting season, which runs from Nov. 28-March 31.
Wolfe, 32, played for the Broncos from 2012-2019, totaling 299 tackles, 81 quarterback hits, 33 sacks, 15 pass breakups and one interception in 108 games. He played one final season with the Baltimore Ravens in 2020 before retiring in 2022. Wolfe now works for 104.3 The Fan in Denver.
A cougar nicknamed Uno because she has only one good eye was caught on a trail camera recently proving why she’s still a super mom.
A cougar nicknamed Uno because she has only one good eye was caught on a trail camera recently proving why she’s still a super mom.
The nighttime footage, captured by cameras monitored by Nathalie Orozco and Mark Girardeau, shows Uno dragging a deer carcass through the Southern California wilderness with two cubs in tow.
As viewers can see, light from the infrared camera reflects from only one of Uno’s eyes. Biologists believe she’s partially blind in the other eye, perhaps because of an old injury.
But it’s clear that she’s able to fend for herself and her offspring.
On Tuesday, Girardeau shared the footage to his Orange County Outdoors social media pages.
“Uno scored a nice meal!” he exclaimed on Facebook. “Every animal in nature has its role: deer graze the grass and spread seeds while mountain lions keep the deer population under control to prevent overgrazing.
“After bears were extirpated from Orange County, mountain lions are the only animals left to play this vital role as the keystone species that they are.”
Girardeau told FTW Outdoors that he has been monitoring Uno’s habitat with trail cameras since 2019. Biologists from UC Davis put a tracking collar on Uno a year ago. The mountain lion is cataloged as F312.
“This is a decent sized deer as you can see Uno struggling to move it to a safe place before retrieving her kittens to feed with her,” Girardeau continued, adding that Uno’s cubs are about 7 months old.
The father of the cubs is believed to be Toro (M313), who also appears sporadically in trail-cam footage.
Nighttime footage captured via trail-cam shows a mountain lion pursuing a coyote into darkness on a Southern California trail, and audio hints at a successful hunt.
Nighttime footage captured recently via trail-cam shows a mountain lion pursuing a coyote into total darkness on a Southern California trail – and audio hints at a successful hunt.
The eerie scene appeared on a motion-sensor camera placed by photographer Nathalie Orozco.
Her footage begins with a lone coyote trotting rapidly down the trail, and the mountain lion, or cougar, in a cautious pursuit that turns into an apparent ambush after both animals vanish into the blackness.
In the Facebook description Mark Girardeau, who runs Orange County Outdoors, urges viewers to turn the volume up because it reveals how this likely ended – with the coyote crying out while under attack.
Girardeau writes: “The coyote was trotting along as they usually do and unaware of the mountain lion which just happened to be walking along his normal route.
“Just before entering the frame, the mountain lion noticed the coyote and went into action to secure his next meal. Notice how the mountain lion pounces quietly rather than sprinting.”
Girardeau explained that mountain lions are ambush hunters that rely on stealth to capture prey.
“After checking the area, we noticed lots of coyote fur but did not locate a kill so we’re uncertain of the outcome,” the photographer continued, noting that mountain lions often drag kills off-trail. “Our guess is that the mountain lion was successful based on other nearby cameras which showed him hanging out in the area for the entire night afterwards.”
The mountain lion, a young male nicknamed Toro, is scientifically cataloged as M313. Girardeau said Toro might be the father of kittens recently born to Uno, who occasionally appears before Girardeau’s cameras.
The footage was captured on private property in the Orange County Wilderness.
A man who built a tree swing in the woods hoping to videotape bear cubs captured adorable footage of a mountain lion instead.
A Colorado man who built a tree swing in the woods hoping to videotape bear cubs captured cute footage of a mountain lion turning into a playful kitty instead.
Thaddeus Wells recorded the video in early September near Black Hawk, about 40 miles northwest of Denver, according to The News & Observer.
The mountain lion had been feeding on a deer nearby and was sleeping under the swing when it discovered the swing by hitting it with its paw.
“When I saw this reaction to the swing I laughed and fell in love with her. Who wouldn’t?” Wells told McClatchy News. “You can see her mind at work. She seems surprised to find that it moved at all and then surprised to see it swings so far as to hover over her. She really focuses her attention on it for some time.”
“It’s edited to remove stuff like her tasting and biting the swing,” Wells said, adding that the cougar looked bigger due to a swollen jaw. He suspects the deer might have kicked it in the face.
A fisherman returning from a lake in Olympic National Park encountered a cougar on the trail, and fortunately he had survival training.
Correction & clarification: A prior version of this story misidentified Bart Brown.
A fisherman returning from Lake Angeles in Olympic National Park in Washington encountered a mountain lion on the trail, and fortunately he had survival training for such an incident.
Bart Brown told KIRO 7 that “something just told me to look over my shoulder, and there was a cougar right there…on the edge of the trail.”
Brown came upon the cougar as he was walking back from his favorite fishing hole, Lake Angeles, in the Olympic National Park. https://t.co/z14hp3roX7
“She was about to attack me. I’m serious. I’m dead serious,” he told KIRO 7.
“It’s one of them life or death situations and I felt like I was going to die.
“Like I was prepared to die. I’m going to fight this cougar and I know I’m not going to win, you know. But I’m going to try.”
Jason Knight, owner of Alderleaf Wilderness College, told KIRO 7 that if a cougar isn’t running in the other direction to get away from you, “the appropriate response is to be aggressive towards it.”
“It was going to be me or her, right?” Brown told KIRO 7. “And so I charged her. I charged the cougar.
“She gets down and she looks at me and I look at her, too…We’re in a death stare. I’m like, here we go. I muster the courage. I charged her again. We played chicken and I won. And she took off down the mountain.”
KIRO 7 has a short clip of the Aug. 20 encounter in its video report.
Cougar attacks on humans are extremely rare. In Washington state, the first fatal cougar attack on a human was reported in 1924. Since then, state authorities have recorded 19 other cougar-human encounters that resulted in a documented injury, including a second fatal attack in 2018.
Generic image of a cougar courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday challenged followers to spot the mountain lion stalking an elk in the accompanying image.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday challenged followers to spot the mountain lion stalking an elk in the accompanying image.
“The rules are simple. Find the mountain lion in this picture,” the USFWS instructed via Facebook.
If the image looks familiar, FTW Outdoors featured the photo, and a more revealing photo, in a quiz post early last month. (The answer is provided in the accompanying links.)
Photo: USFWS
The images were captured in 2019 by a motion-sensor camera overlooking an arroyo at Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.
For the answer to a quiz the USFWS titled, “Where’s Lion-o,” click on the USFWS link or the FTW Outdoors link (cougar is circled). Both provide more details but neither reveals what happened to the elk.
The USFWS stated: “The outcome of what happened between the elk and the lion remains a mystery, but it’s a good reminder that nature is amazing and sometimes a little sneaky.”
Can you spot the mountain lion stalking the elk in a trail-cam image captured at Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge?
Travel Guide Book on Saturday shared an image showing the hind portion of an elk and, somewhere in the arroyo, a predatory mountain lion.
Research reveals that the image was captured by a motion-sensor trail camera in October 2019 as part of an arroyo restoration project in New Mexico’s Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge.
Rio Mora shared the image as a quiz for its Facebook followers in July 2020. It’s a difficult quiz and the answer is provided near the bottom of this post.
A common theme in the Travel Guide Book comments section: “It took a while.”
Can you spot the mountain lion?
Several Rio Mora followers struggled to locate the mountain lion and one used a magnifying glass to achieve success.
Understandable, considering that mountain lions, or cougars, are ambush predators that rely on stealth to catch prey.
Rio Mora, a week after its original post, shared more images captured by the same camera during a two-minute span. It includes the image used for the quiz and one that shows the mountain lion, clearly visible, following the elk (posted below).
Mountain lion after it had emerged from hiding
The images, which would be helpful if you haven’t already spotted the mountain lion, provide a clearer picture of this predator-prey interaction.
Stated Rio Mora in its description: “The entire photo series is over a two minute period. Unfortunately, it does not tell us the final fate of the elk, but it may answer questions a few of you had.
“You can see that based on the size and antlers it is a male juvenile Rocky Mountain elk that is stalked by a stealthy mountain lion.
“We have asked people who have worked with mountain lions to see if they could tell us anything more about the sex or age of the mountain lion. It is difficult to say for certain, because mountain lions do not have very distinctive features between sexes, but it could be a young adult male.”
Mountain lion in stealth mode
Some followers were stumped even after viewing the image series. Among the comments was this from Judy Hammond:
“And that’s why we have our 6th sense, that gut feeling that we’re being watched or stalked. Always pay attention to your surroundings, especially if the hair on the back of your neck goes up.”
–Images courtesy of Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge
A woman who stopped alongside a California highway to walk her dog became involved in a harrowing ordeal in which she and the dog were attacked by a mountain lion.
A woman who stopped alongside a California highway Monday to walk her dog became involved in a harrowing ordeal in which she fought valiantly to try to save her dog from a mountain lion attack.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife late Tuesday issued a news release explaining that the attack on the woman and dog occurred along State Route 299 in Trinity County.
The unidentified woman had pulled over near a picnic area and had begun to walk on a path, with her Belgian Malinois just ahead of her, when the mountain lion, or cougar, swiped its paw across her left shoulder.
The woman screamed and the dog returned to confront the mountain lion, which bit the dog’s head and maintained a vice-like grip despite the woman hurling rocks at the cougar.
“The woman attempted to throw rocks, tug and pull them apart, and even attempted to gouge the eyes out of the lion, to no avail,” the CDFW stated in the news release.
The woman ran to the highway and flagged down a motorist, who sprayed the mountain lion with pepper spray. But that did not work.
When the mountain lion began to drag the dog from the trail, the woman and the passerby struck the cat with a PVC pipe, and the cat released its grip.
The dog was treated by a veterinarian and as of Tuesday night the extent of its injuries was unclear. The woman drove herself to a hospital in Redding, where she was treated for non-life-threatening bite wounds and scratches.
The CDFW stated that while “appropriate samples” were still being analyzed, interviews with the victim, passerby, veterinarian and physician appeared sufficient for officials to treat their investigation as a “legitimate attack.”
