I have always been a skeptic. You know, from Missouri…you have to ‘show me.’ I spend as many days in the woods as anybody. Too many if you ask some… With squirrel, rabbit, deer (firearms, muzzleloader, and archery), turkey (spring and fall), fishing, gigging, and trapping seasons, it is not uncommon for a Missouri outdoorsman to spend well over 150 days per year outside in one fashion or another and if you really tried you could spend 200 (+) days outside. State trapping regulations require a trapper to check his traps daily and when you are a beaver trapper, trapping season alone is approximately 135 days long, so it is easy to see how much time one could potentially spend outside. That being said, I have a burr under my saddle – I’ve never seen a mountain lion. If I can’t see it, oft times in my mind, it isn’t real. One time in 35 years of hunting, fishing, and trapping, have I caught a glimpse of something of which I questioned the possibility of it being a mountain lion. I was deer hunting with my son Mitchell and we both saw it. To this day we are not sure what we saw.
Today, there is enough evidence to second guess my contention that if there are any mountain lions around, they are one in a million and just passing through. There are just too many stories, eyewitness accounts, and even confirmed occurrences from the Missouri Department of Conservation. The late Dave Hamilton, former resource scientist with MDC, wrote in 2004 that there had been 8 documented mountain lions in Missouri since 1994 and now, since Dave’s report there have been 2 more confirmed occurrences. Strangely enough 5 of the confirmed sightings state-wide were either adjacent to Dent County (Reynolds County in 1996, Texas County in 1999, and Shannon County in 2006), or one county removed (Carter County in 1994 and Pulaski County in 2001). Those confirmed sightings would surely lead one to think that a mountain lion in Dent County is not beyond the realm of possibility. Still, I spend a lot of time in the woods and I’ve never seen a mountain lion. Kind of a burr in my saddle, but I already said that didn’t I.
Officially, the Missouri Department of Conservation lists mountain lions as “extirpated.” That is a population that is extinct as a viable breeding population in the area, however it does not preclude the species from being present. Starting to cut hairs my dad used to say. As I mentioned earlier, despite hundreds of reports, there are only 8 documented occurrences in Missouri. In order to qualify as a documented occurrence the MDC must have hard evidence present such as photos, scat with cougar DNA, confirmed tracks, cougar carcasses or the like. As a trapper, I pay particular attention to tracks in my ongoing search for the big cats. A mountain lion track differs from a domestic dog or coyote track in several distinct ways. First, rarely do claw marks show in the print. Cats have retractable claws that generally are not protruding as they casually walk through the woods. Second, mountain lions have teardrop shaped toes as opposed to the oval shaped toes of dogs, bobcats, and coyotes. Third, the heel pad of cats has three lobes at the posterior side of the track as opposed to one indent for dogs and coyotes. Finally, a mountain lions track is 3 to 3.5 inches wide as opposed to less than two inches for their bobcat cousins. I’ve never seen a mountain lion track in Missouri…kind of bugs me that I can’t find a track.
Currently Missouri is missing physical evidence of a viable breeding population of mountain lions. However, Missouri does have mountain lions present in our wilderness. They actively search out dense cover and rocky terrain or swamps. Males have a home range of 90 to several hundred square miles while females stay within 50 to 75 square miles. An adult male mountain lion weighs 140 to 160 pounds and is 5 to 8 feet long, nose to tip of the tail. Mountain lions typically consume one deer sized prey animal per week. You would think a person could at least find one prey carcass during 35 years of outdoor experience…it just kind of gnaws at me.
Now, here comes the rub. I started my son Jason hunting when he was 12 years old and he is now 26. Fourteen years hunting and the first 4 years or so were spent by my side. He’s seen a mountain lion. I would love to chalk it up to a misidentification however he watched it in a road ditch for several seconds and only several yards from his truck under the headlights. Then, days later the publisher of this fine paper saw a mountain lion on his lake dam just a mile away from my son’s original sighting. Of course, neither had a camera and it was a particularly rainy stretch so there were no identifiable tracks. So, according to MDC these two sightings are not confirmed. That’s good enough for me. Therefore, officially speaking, my son and Mr. Dodd don’t have anything on me. That burr under my saddle is still bothering me…guess I’ll keep looking. Good luck, be safe, and get a big one.
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