Can you spot the stealthy mountain lion? A U.S. Fish and Wildlife photo offers a challenging task.
Mountain lions by nature are stealthy animals that will typically see you before you ever see them. The predators usually hunt at night and/or lie in wait for unsuspecting prey, and are usually invisible in the habitat in which they hide.
Take for example this photo taken by John Tull of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washoe County, Nevada.
The USFWS posted the photo on Facebook Wednesday and wrote, “Where’s Waldo: Mountain lion in Washoe County, Nevada, edition. Can you spy the big cat?”
Among the comments on Facebook:
“It’s just a photo of rocks, isn’t it?”
“I see the big cat now! You guys made it tricky for us!”
Though not as terrifying as the runner stalked by a mountain lion in Utah, another runner in California encountered a cougar on the trail, and the scary standoff prompted him to copy what the Utah man did to scare it away.
Though not as terrifying as the runner stalked by a mountain lion in Utah last month, another runner in California encountered a cougar on the trail, and the scary standoff prompted him to copy what the Utah man did to scare it away.
Carlos Vasquez, as he does four times a week, was on a morning run in O’Neill Regional Park in Orange County last week when he saw what he thought was a coyote coming up the trail, as he often sees in the early morning hours.
“Since I was running and looking around, I didn’t bother to really take a good look at the supposed to be a coyote, and as the video shows, there is a large tree that blocked my sight,” Vasquez told USA Today/For The Win Outdoors. “So, I slowed down. Thank God I did.”
Vasquez, wearing a GoPro while running, suddenly realized it was a mountain lion and stopped in his tracks.
“I thought about that mountain lion encounter in Utah for couple of reasons,” Vasquez said. “I was running those Utah mountains a week before and it could have been me, so when I saw the video, I asked myself what would I have done if it was me. Because he was so close, I thought that if he would have launched an attack there was not enough space for him to stop; it was going to be all or nothing. I also remembered that this runner in Utah talked to the lion a lot and that seemed to have worked. I tried the same thing and it seemed to have worked as well.”
On the video you can hear him say, “Hey little kitty, go away. Come on, get away.” Then the cougar sat down.
“When I saw him sitting, I thought that he was standing [his] ground and he wanted me to go away, and that is when I slowly started backing up…I remember stumbling a bit and he reacted to it, so I stopped and continued talking.”
Eventually, the mountain lion turned and walked away, much to Vasquez’s relief.
“I made sure he was not around anymore, and after calming down, perhaps a couple of minutes, I continued with my run, but then I told myself ‘Don’t press your luck Carlos,’ turn around and continue running a different trail.”
And so he did, and didn’t it again.
“It was scary due to the proximity and the fact that he stood his ground and didn’t back up and just sat down for a while,” Vasquez told For The Win Outdoors. “The picture is still clear in my head and I get chills when I think about it.”
Photos courtesy of California Department of Fish and Wildlife and ViralHog.
A 10-year-old boy escaped serious injury during a cougar attack, thanks largely to a border collie that sped to his rescue.
A 10-year-old boy escaped serious injury during a cougar attack Monday, thanks largely to a border collie that sped to his rescue.
The boy was one of four children hiking with two women on a trail outside a remote cabin near Marshall Lake in British Columbia, Canada.
According to a news release issued Wednesday by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, the boy had run ahead of the group when a cougar “suddenly dropped out of a tree and swiped at the boy, knocking him down.”
The cougar scratched the boy’s back and chest before a border collie that accompanied the group jumped onto the cougar’s back. The cougar, or mountain lion, fled into the wilderness amid screaming and rock-throwing.
The COS stated that the boy, after receiving first aid from a nearby road worker, was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The incident remains under investigation and the COS, as of Thursday morning, was still trying to track down the cougar.
The agency’s Facebook post about the incident generated nearly 400 comments, with the most popular comment reading, “That dog deserves a steak dinner! Glad to hear the boy escaped serious injury.”
–Generic cougar image courtesy of the USFWS; Marshall Lake image courtesy of the COS
A hard-to-spot mountain lion patiently waits for the right moment to attack an elk feeding in a gully at the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge.
A hard-to-spot mountain lion patiently waits for the right moment to attack an elk feeding in a gully at the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico in a photo posted by the refuge.
The elk was unaware of the predator’s presence, and at first glance one can understand why. The cougar is very well hidden. So much so, even many viewing the image on the refuge Facebook page admitted not being able to spot the mountain lion. (The answer is revealed below.)
The photo was captured by a trail camera as part of a monitoring project looking at the success of restoring arroyos at the refuge, located about 150 miles northeast of Albuquerque.
The Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge asked visitors to “share this and find out how many of your friends can actually spot this elusive predator.”
“That was tougher than I thought it was going to be,” one commenter wrote.
“Oh wow! It took me a long time, but I finally found it. Such amazing camouflage!” another wrote.
“Congrats to the person who was reviewing these images! I would have moved right on past!!” said yet another.
Other comments:
“I’d be dead since I still don’t see it.”
“I can’t find it even when I expand the size of the picture.”
“Found it but took about five minutes.”
Mountain lions are stealthy creatures, and typically they will see you before you see them. They hunt at night and often are lying in wait for prey or silently stalking it before pouncing from behind and delivering a lethal bite to the spinal cord, according to The National Wildlife Federation.
If you still need help locating the cougar, it’s circled in this photo:
So what happened to the elk?
“We are not sure,” the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge wrote on Facebook. “The elk moved on and the puma moved out into the open and towards where the elk was. We are not sure what finally happened.”
Photo courtesy of the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge.
A photographer has captured footage of a mountain lion trying to make sense out of a motion-sensor camera placed on a remote trail at night.
A Southern California photographer has captured video footage of a mountain lion expressing keen interest in one of several motion-sensor cameras placed on a trail at night.
In Mark Girardeau’s footage, captured this week in the Orange County wilderness, the female cougar initially appears bewildered by the bright flashes.
She then seems to pose, briefly, before cautiously walking around the tripod and placing her face to the back of the camera, as if to peek through the viewfinder.
Girardeau, a renowned photographer from Huntington Beach, told For The Win Outdoors that he had left seven cameras in strategic areas on private property in Trabuco Canyon.
“At the exact time the camera was capturing the images of the cat, I was at the indoor rock-climbing gym with some friends, 20 miles away,” Girardeau said.
Cookie the mountain lion, captured remotely via DLSR camera. Photo: Mark Girardeau
The mountain lion was named Cookie by the landowner. Four of Girardeau’s cameras captured footage of her as she hunted on one of her favorite trails.
“I’ve struggled for several years to consistently get mountain lions and finally have been getting a few in a couple different areas,” Girardeau explained. “When looking for camera locations, I look for game trails which are paths made naturally by the animals, and I also look for tracks of different animals.”
His footage reveals the stealthy, curious nature of these nocturnal hunters, and Girardeau is fortunate to have had multiple cameras in order to capture this scene.
“The last time I got a DLSR shot of one, I did not have a second camera recording the reaction on video, so this is cool because otherwise I would have had no idea that it was checking out the back of the camera,” he said.
More than likely, Girardeau acknowledged, Cookie was more interested in his scent than the camera or tripod.
–Video and images are courtesy of Mark Girardeau/Orange County Outdoors
A pheasant hunter in North Dakota relied on his law enforcement instincts when a mountain lion emerged from the tall grass and charged him. The frightening incident occurred Thursday afternoon in the Custer Mine hunting area near Garrison while Gary …
A pheasant hunter in North Dakota relied on his law enforcement instincts when a mountain lion emerged from the tall grass and charged him.
The frightening incident occurred Thursday afternoon in the Custer Mine hunting area near Garrison while Gary Gorney of Minot was on his cellphone, according to the Minot Daily News.
When his dog suddenly went on point, Gorney quickly put his cellphone in his pocket, expecting a pheasant to take flight. Instead, a mountain lion appeared and charged him.
“I dropped my dad’s 100-year-old double-barrel [shotgun], I don’t even remember doing that, and went for the sidearm that I carry with me underneath my jacket,” Gorney told the Minot Daily News. “My instincts as a military law enforcement officer took over. There was no thought process. It was self-defense.”
The attacking mountain lion was 10 feet away when Gorney shot the animal with a 9-millimeter handgun. Gorney’s dogs then went after the mountain lion. He said he wanted to pull the dogs off, “but I wasn’t going anywhere near that lion.”
“I bow-hunt the Badlands and I’ve been hunting the Custer Mine for 31 years and I’ve never seen a cat,” Gorney told the Minot Daily News. “I felt like I was in Africa hunting. The grass perfectly matched it’s coat.”
Gorney reported the incident to the North Dakota Game and Fish Department. Officials determined it was a female mountain lion that weighed more than 100 pounds.
Photo courtesy of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department.
