Mountain Lions, Facts and Fantasies

It is now legal, under certain conditions, to shoot a mountain lion in Oklahoma. You can't legally hunt them, but you must possess a valid hunting license and fishing & hunting permit if you kill one. You are not instructed on what to do if you don't have a license. The regulations read like this:

Dates & Open Areas

"Mountain lions can be taken year-round when committing or about to commit depredation or when deemed a nuisance, safely or health hazard."

Surely the intent is domestic depredation, since the cat's very existence depends upon its ability to capture prey. Just when would you feel safe, or not be concerned with your health and well being if you encountered a mountain lion in close quarters? To be legal, if a person kills one he must immediately contact a game ranger or a member of the wildlife department.

However, don't expect the state-wide kill to skyrocket. The fact remains, Oklahoma just doesn't have suitable mountain lion habitat. These large carnivores are notorious for inhabiting some of the most rugged, inaccessible areas on earth. The Wichita Mountains near Lawton afford the only terrain that remotely resembles mountain lion habitat. Two lions were reportedly killed near there, but that was prior to the Civil War. Another big cat was killed more recently in the Oklahoma panhandle, about ten miles from New Mexico.

You may have heard about the mountain lion carcass that was found near a railroad track in Oklahoma. It had been outfitted with a tracking collar in South Dakota. The last known signal received from the sending device was from Wyoming. The cause of death could not be determined and the world record jump from Wyoming to Oklahoma is also a mystery.

Some other big cats roaming in Oklahoma have resulted from unscrupulous individuals releasing them form captivity. Steve Matthes, author of "BRAVE", and a world renowned lion hunter from California, said there are captive mountain lions, but no such thing as a tame mountain lion. I'm sure this is pretty much true with all wild felines and Siegfried & Roy have helped to prove it. One African Lion that escaped from captivity had to be hunted down and killed in Love County, Oklahoma. All too often the cute little babies of the wild capture the fancy of people who possess absolutely no forethought. These cuddly little fur balls grow up to become unmanageable, vicious beasts. Releasing them back into the wild is the most asinine act a person could commit. Actually, a global dilemma exists in this area, when reptiles enter the picture, but that's another story.

Mountain lion sightings are reported on a regular basis in this part of Oklahoma, but so are Bigfoot sightings. If you believe everything you read there are about 75 of those mythical, homo-erectus, hairy creatures living in the Sulphur area. The state enters every reported lion sighting into a data file, but refuses to investigate a report if it was stated that the creature was black. The name "Felis-concolor" was ascribed to this big cat and it means "Cat: all of one color". According to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, there has never been a black mountain lion documented anywhere in their range, encompassing all of north and South America. Even though certain individuals claim to have such evidence, most refuse to share their photos with the general public. The occasional picture that is presented as verification usually exhibits the same definition as the pictures of Bigfoot and the UFOs. I did get to actually view a picture of a black panther taken by a trail camera in October 2008. It was nothing more than a big bobcat and it certainly wasn't black by any stretch of the imagination. Its tail was about ¼ the length and about 1/5 the diameter of a mountain lions tail.

There are two large cats on planet earth that occasionally appear with a black shaded coat, but the mountain lion is not one of them. One is the African Leopard and the other is the South & Central American Jaguar. Even though they sometimes possess a melanistic (black) coat, it is the result of a hereditary genetic mutation, and the spots on these two large cats will still be evident. A breeding pair of black Leopards or black Jaguars will usually produce some normal spotted offspring.

In Yellowstone National Park there is an ongoing mountain lion study that was started more than 10 years ago. The purpose of the endeavor was to determine the impact of the re-introduction of timber wolves into that eco-system. Sixty-five mountain lions were treed with hounds, tranquilized, and fitted with radio tracking collars, five of which were GPS 24-7 type. Even with the researchers' ability to precisely pinpoint the location of each cat, sightings are rare. The facts remain that the mountain lion is solitary, secretive, very alert and amazingly elusive. The big cats are nocturnal hunters and lie up near their kill for possibly a week, but they vanish like a vapor when the location is approached by man in the daytime.

The carcasses of their pray however have now become very accessible because of the GPS collars and much has been learned about the kill tactics. The big cats are said to leap onto the back of a deer, elk or other large animal, sink its cuspids into the neck and then hook its claws across the nose. One powerful jerk often breaks the animal's neck. (I chose the word cuspid because I couldn't bring myself the say canine teeth in describing a feline.)

As to the re-introduction of the timber wolf that too is a farce. Instead of re-introducing a genetic descendant of the original Yellowstone timber wolf they actually introduced a Canadian wolf that may be crossed with Husky dogs. This animal is much larger and more powerful than the original wolf. It is capable of killing and preying on any animal, domestic or wild that it encounters in the area.Should you by chance ever actually encounter a mountain lion or other large carnivore in the wild while un-armed it is advisable to make it appear that you are larger than life. A coat can be unzipped then the bottom can be grasped with the hands and swung back, out and up. The cat won't know what he has encountered, but it just might scare him away because you have suddenly jumped from five or six feet up to about eight feet tall with a three feet wide head. This is one of the suggested deterrents to a mountain lion attack.

Few people know the difference in a cat track and that of a dog. It's amusing that two major newspapers to the north and south, both on I-35, one in OK and the other in TX depict a cat's paw print in their dog ads in the classified section. (Neither paper has a clue as to their ignorance in this matter.)

A dog's paw print along with that of other members of the family canidae such as the coyote and wolf will always be symmetrical. Also, the toe nails prints will normally appear in the track.

A cat's foot print will never be symmetrical. If you tuck your thumbs under your palms and look at the nails on your fingers you will have an idea of how a cat track will appear. None of the pads are actually opposite of each other. Another fallacy is the claw marks in a cat's track. A feline, big or little, use their claws for climbing and to capture their prey. (The cheetah is probably the lone exception.) The cat's claws are retractable and are normally extended only when it uses them for one of the two state purposes. I often hear "They extend their claws while running." Any person making such a statement has no idea of how running with extended claws would chip and dull a cats claws. They would be incapable of climbing with them our capturing prey with them.

For some strange reason I have studied mountain lions for most of my adult life. I finally got to go on a four day hunt for them with Tommy Vinson in February of 2003, near Kingman, Arizona. We were fortunate to have Joe Bennett and Leo Fisher of California as our guides. Between the two they had treed several hundred mountain lions and black bear with their ell trained Walker hounds. We were traversing some of the most rugged, inhospitable mountain I had ever seen. On the fourth day, after a long, arduous climb through a maze of cacti and thorn bushes I was standing under a pinion tree with a mountain lion in the branches above and five baying hounds on the ground below. That was quite a thrill, maybe the thrill of a lifetime. The lion would curl its lips, snarl, or hiss at the hounds, but the sound was so low key the video camera failed to record it. We lead the hounds away and left the beautiful wild creature up in the tree. When I got nearly out of sight of the cat, I paused for a bit and took one last look at a sight so few people are ever privileged to enjoy. Here I was, a man who grew up as a boy in Dark Corner, OK, home of the mythical black panthers. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream that I would be privileged to witness such a sight. This was no fleeting glimpse of some wild creature that must have been a black panther and it certainly wasn't black. It was reality, filmed and photographed, documented. Nothing imaginary about this. I t was a sight to feast your eyes upon, enjoy, observe and a chance to learn. It was an opportunity to acquire knowledge. Did I say enjoy?

Most of what the general public knows about mountain lions has come from movies, all of which are recorded inside and enclosure using captive lions. The screams are added for sensationalism, a product of Hollywood, not reality.

Anyone with a computer connected to the www can access a wealth of information on mountain lions with a few clicks of a mouse. However, don't expect to find anything concerning black panthers that scream like a woman. A free-roaming polar bear will be photographed or filmed in Oklahoma before anyone captures the image of a black panther. The polar bear actually exists and is not just a figment of the imagination.

We do have an occasional young male mountain lion wander through Oklahoma and so do several other states. The old males run the young males out of their territory and the young cat will leave in search of a mate. However, they usually return to more suitable habitat after searching in vain for a female cat where few if any exist. Hunters have the state criss-crossed with trail cameras and only a very limited number of mountain lion pictures have been captured. We have plenty of deer in Oklahoma to sustain the big cats, but we don't have the rugged high altitude mountains that they prefer.

A bear season was held in Oklahoma for the first time in the fall of 2009. There were 19 black bears killed by people who were willing to pay $100 for a license.

Mountain lion season has been open 27/7/365 since 2006 to all of the hunters in Oklahoma and only two confirmed kills have been made, both in Cimarron County, the most western county in the Oklahoma panhandle.

I once here a politician say, "I know you think you heard what I said, but I'm not sure if you realize that what you think you heard is not what I meant."

I know you think you saw a black panther, but I'm not sure if you realize that what you think you saw doesn't really exist.