Mountain Lion Struck by Vehicle in Longview

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4999]

10 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

There wasn't documentation of a melanistic morph of a lynx until 2020. It is quite possible that there existed once for the mountain lion in the south where it would be advantageous. But those populations were estimated for the most part. 

*extirpated, not estimated. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26817]

19 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

We need roflbox or someone experienced in roofing to compare the width of a shingle to the length of the cat. 

I’m not an expert like @atxroofer but a shingle is about a foot wide, which would make that cat around 4’ long nose to the base of the tail, which is the size of a subadult cougar or an absolutely monstrous bobcat. 
 

19 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

Maybe it’s just a tiny ass house 

Man even the small houses up there have huge rooflines, like novelty foam cowboy hats.

[TwiceHorn 32044]

Nah, man.  You've fallen victim to your own measurement exaggerations.

Exposure on ridge shingles is about 8" and flat shingles about 5."  So that's maybe three feet long.

[Not a cat 5805]

I was at a dog park in Truth or Consequences NM a couple of months ago and a bobcat just casually strolled along the fence line.  It was big, but nothing like that monster on the roof in the photo.  Think of the biggest tomcat you've ever seen and add maybe 20%.

I have no doubt he'd have fucked my dogs up who were under the impression it was just a normal cat.

[956 Worldwide 35586]

On 12/13/2024 at 8:48 PM, hookem2010 said:

It seems unlikely in the late 20th and early 21st century that a jaguar, much less a melanistic one is wandering through Texas. And if melananistic mountain lions existed, I would think there would be some photographic evidence of that. 

I believe that's what 956W is stating, and I tend to agree. Also, people are really dumb when it comes to wildlife sightings.

Exactly. And jaguars in Texas and the Southwest are extremely well documented in the historical record until around the turn of the last century.  Some wandering individuals have popped up in the Arizona borderlands since the 1990s— and they’ve been captured photographically.  
 

I think a lot of this traces to being uncomfortable with how “un-wilded” we’ve made our world.  When I was a kid, I went multiple times down to the Laguna Atascoa refuge and they had a mounted Mexican jaguar on display.  It was part of their historical range.  And the ranger would disappoint me and every kid by patiently explaining that they just weren’t there anymore and why they couldn’t be. If they were we’d know it.  

But every kid had a story about an uncle or grandad who had seen one lurking on the deer lease or down by the river. And every time I went down there I hoped I’d see one and prove the ranger wrong.

The brush country is more fun and more wild with jaguars; and forests and hill country ranches are better if there’s a black panther stalking around.  But there aren’t any.  We know what’s out there. 

[956 Worldwide 35586]

22 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

There wasn't documentation of a melanistic morph of a lynx until 2020. It is quite possible that there existed once for the mountain lion in the south where it would be advantageous. But those populations were estimated for the most part. 

Kind of proving my point.  With lynx, no one was reporting sightings of melanistic animals and when this rare one did get reported, it was quickly documented. 
 

If these black panther stories were rare and isolated, I might believe that an odd one might be out there.  But thousands and thousands are reported every year, mostly in Texas and the southeast and mostly in places where cougars are either really, really rare, transitory, or non-existent.  At that scale one would absolutely either turn up— or it’s misidentification (see drone thread). 
 

There is even a blog on this, here’s a 2018 map of “Texas black panther” sightings. They pop up all over the eastern half of the state but almost none in the western counties where we know there are actually are lots of cougars. The same holds true in the southeast, people report black panthers everywhere the places in Florida where eastern panthers actually live.
 

http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2018/04/black-panther-sightings-distribution.html?m=1

[Brisketexan 106845]

Kind of proving my point.  With lynx, no one was reporting sightings of melanistic animals and when this rare one did get reported, it was quickly documented. 
 
If these black panther stories were rare and isolated, I might believe that an odd one might be out there.  But thousands and thousands are reported every year, mostly in Texas and the southeast and mostly in places where cougars are either really, really rare, transitory, or non-existent.  At that scale one would absolutely either turn up— or it’s misidentification (see drone thread). 
 
There is even a blog on this, here’s a 2018 map of “Texas black panther” sightings. They pop up all over the eastern half of the state but almost none in the western counties where we know there are actually are lots of cougars. The same holds true in the southeast, people report black panthers everywhere the places in Florida where eastern panthers actually live.
 
http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2018/04/black-panther-sightings-distribution.html?m=1

This. For all of the “sightings,” we’d have one that was 1) shot, 2) hit by a car, or 3) captured on camera. We don’t. There are no “black panthers” among mountain lions.
There are among jaguars (jaguar is my favorite big cat, because fuck yeah it’s a Texas native). But there haven’t been ANY jaguars in Texas in many decades (last documented jaguar was killed near Kingsville in 1948). The Goldthwaite jaguar of 1903 is a badass story: https://wildtexashistory.com/goldthwaite-jaguar-1903/

Maybe the northernmost encounter with a jaguar ever. I wish they would come back to Texas, but that is almost 100% unlikely. We do have a pair that move across into AZ from time to time form Mexico. Which is cool as hell. They’re one of the most beautiful animals on earth. And the power/musculature are otherworldly.

[Brian Fantana 6860]

When I was a teenager (90s) we had a deer lease down in South TX (northwest of Laredo, southeast of Piedras Negras) and we would regularly see [what I would later realize to unmistakably be] a jaguarundi there after I looked through a book of big cats. It had a weird gait and just looked strange overall. Once I figured out what a jaguarundi was it was very obvious. Of course, this was before the time of cell phone cameras, I wish I had been able to get a picture of it but I didn't think it was remarkable at the time. I had built a brush blind in one area that was pretty dense foliage-wise and would see it at least once a year for 4 years or so, usually from 50 yards away or less. One time it got as close as 15 yards. Didn't see it again after one year which was disappointing.

I wonder how shifts in climate have affected its range because I think they're rarely seen that far north.

[HenryJames 67288]

I once saw a Bigfoot petting a black panther.

[Brisketexan 106845]

I once saw a Bigfoot petting a black panther.

98% chance that is a Pornhub search that actually exists.

[pantone159 727]

7 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

I once saw a Bigfoot petting a black panther.

 

[Bozo_Casanova 26817]

3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Nah, man.  You've fallen victim to your own measurement exaggerations.

Exposure on ridge shingles is about 8" and flat shingles about 5."  So that's maybe three feet long.

I don’t take roofing lessons from no lawdog

[Hook1997 5490]

2 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Kind of proving my point.  With lynx, no one was reporting sightings of melanistic animals and when this rare one did get reported, it was quickly documented. 
 

If these black panther stories were rare and isolated, I might believe that an odd one might be out there.  But thousands and thousands are reported every year, mostly in Texas and the southeast and mostly in places where cougars are either really, really rare, transitory, or non-existent.  At that scale one would absolutely either turn up— or it’s misidentification (see drone thread). 
 

There is even a blog on this, here’s a 2018 map of “Texas black panther” sightings. They pop up all over the eastern half of the state but almost none in the western counties where we know there are actually are lots of cougars. The same holds true in the southeast, people report black panthers everywhere the places in Florida where eastern panthers actually live.
 

http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2018/04/black-panther-sightings-distribution.html?m=1

My dad swears he saw a black panther at his place along the river in Lavaca county.  He said the deer that usually came to the feeder stopped coming around for a while around that time too.  

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4999]

2 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Kind of proving my point.  With lynx, no one was reporting sightings of melanistic animals and when this rare one did get reported, it was quickly documented. 
 

If these black panther stories were rare and isolated, I might believe that an odd one might be out there.  But thousands and thousands are reported every year, mostly in Texas and the southeast and mostly in places where cougars are either really, really rare, transitory, or non-existent.  At that scale one would absolutely either turn up— or it’s misidentification (see drone thread). 
 

There is even a blog on this, here’s a 2018 map of “Texas black panther” sightings. They pop up all over the eastern half of the state but almost none in the western counties where we know there are actually are lots of cougars. The same holds true in the southeast, people report black panthers everywhere the places in Florida where eastern panthers actually live.
 

http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2018/04/black-panther-sightings-distribution.html?m=1

No one was reporting sightings of black lynx? I'm not sure I've seen that claim. A google search in this case is pretty useless, as pretty much all the results are going to be recent.

 

But, as I said earlier, I'm not saying we have any melanistic cougars now. I'm saying it's very possible that melanistic cougars may have existed once (among other explanations for black panthers). Whether or not the eastern cougar once existed as a subspecies of mountain lion has been debated for quite some time, but the simple fact is we have very little data to say either way. It is very possible that Gloger's Rule applied to populations in the southeast and there were melanistic cats before they became extirpated a hundred years or so ago. There are not just historic accounts of sightings, but accounts of them being killed. The reality is we have no way of knowing what existed other than going off of historic accounts. We have areas in Texas where melanistic deer are much more common. It is certainly possible that the same was true of mountain lions in the south. Unfortunately they were extirpated along with their genetic footprint. The current populations of big cats being seen are primarily western migrants, which wouldn't have the same evolutionary pressure to preserve any melanistic mutations in their gene pool. 

Of course, there are several other options for those historic accounts. Ocelots are known to have had populations extending into Arkansas and Louisiana historically. I believe fossils have been discovered in Florida. They are known to have a melanistic color morph. Bobcats are also known to have a melanistic color morph. One study in Florida encountered them at a rate of .5%. Either one of those could account for some of the stories of black panthers. Bobcats could also account for some of the sightings. But mostly it is probably a combination of a lot of things that lead to false sightings. People see what they want to see. 

As far as the claim of no documentation of melanistic or black mountain lions goes, the vast majority of biologists are not in fact historians. They don't read primary documentation, they just repeat what other non-historian biologists have told them.

Quote

A BLACK LION From Great Cats I Have Met - Adventures in Two Hemispheres by William Thomson (1896)
Author of On The War-Path With Kit Carson,

In 1843 I made a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile mule-back journey from the province of the Rio de Janeiro to the Carandahy River, and it occupied me, my two half-breed Indians and my pack mules, nearly three weeks. There was not a foot of railway in Brazil at that time. Our road for the whole distance was little more than a forest path. It was on this trip I met a very rare cat, such a cat as I had never before seen, and have never since a cat, indeed, whose existence has been and is still a subject of doubt to many naturalists.

One day we came to a small, sluggish river, only about forty feet wide, but too deep for wading. We knew we would have, to swim across. But as there were a number of big alligators lazily floating about within sight it seemed to me rather a risky proceeding. I concluded to take time for a cold lunch and to consider the chances. While we were sitting in the shade, about thirty yards away from the water s edge, silently eating, there suddenly waddled into view from the undergrowth on the opposite side of the stream a big capybara, a water hog. Just as it was sliding down its well-worn runway into the water, there descended upon it, like a thunderbolt, from an over-arching mimosa-tree, a jet-black beast, killing it in a second. With a gurgling scream of triumph, which somehow seemed familiar to me, the black creature stretched himself beside the capybara, to lap the hot blood from its torn throat. What could this new animal be?

My Indians would have fired at once, but anxious to make sure of the strange game I motioned them to drop their clumsy flintlocks, and took very careful aim with my rifle. The capybara's body shielded the black head, and I had to fire at the heart, though I knew that even with that organ pierced through and through the beast might struggle far enough away to effectually conceal himself in the dense bushes. My bullet struck just back of the shoulder. The astonished creature uttered an appalling human-like shriek, bounded high in the air, rolled over once, and then disappeared into the scrub. I ordered an instant crossing. We mounted and took the water abreast, each of us leading a pack-mule. With our six animals we made so big an array, and splashed so vigorously, that the alligators thought it best not to attack us. We scrambled out to dry land, and my Indians dismounted and crawled off into the thicket. Presently I heard a chorus of exultant cries, and in a few minutes they emerged, dragging what they declared to be a black lion, though they both confessed they had never before heard of, nor seen, such an animal! Still, it was a black lion, they said.

For a while I was sorely puzzled what to make of my prize. A cat it unmistakably was but of what species? The whole head, back and sides, and even the tail, were glossy black, while the throat, belly, and inner surfaces of the legs were shaded off to a stone-grey. I measured it carefully. The measures very closely corresponded with the well-remembered measurements of a North American panther to which I narrowly escaped falling a victim when I was a nine-year-old boy, and which was the only wild cougar, or puma, I had ever seen up to this time. The teeth, the claws, the shape of its head, the set of its ears, were like those of the Canadian cat. My Indians were right! All native Brazilians call the tawny-grey puma a lion, and the feline I had just slain was undoubtedly a black puma. Of this my own examination convinced me, and afterwards an aged Indian hunter told me that he had himself once shot a black lion.

 

[Jkwellborn 7024]

It seems unlikely in the late 20th and early 21st century that a jaguar, much less a melanistic one is wandering through Texas. And if melananistic mountain lions existed, I would think there would be some photographic evidence of that. 
I believe that's what 956W is stating, and I tend to agree. Also, people are really dumb when it comes to wildlife sightings.

That’s the same thing everyone always said when it came up about mountain lions in north east Texas. But there’d be pictures somewhere!!!

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4999]

And Gregg County is notable absent from the list of confirmed mountain lion sightings...

 

[Daichee Bell 3080]

Back in the 80s, my dad was one of the early plastic surgeons in central Texas. A kid got attacked by a lion in Big Bend, and dad ended up performing multiple surgeries on him, putting him back together. Heard that kid became a taxidermist. Bringing it full circle. 
 

[CHIEF 5221]

On 12/13/2024 at 5:55 PM, hookemATL said:

It’s a lifelong dream of mine to see one in the wild. From a decent distance I suppose. 

I've been lucky enough to see three. Two smaller ones and a "muy grande" sitting on the side of the road in a snowstorm south of Post, Texas. I was driving a small car, and his eye level was higher than mine. I have not seen the ones, here, in my neighborhood. But our Nextdoor page has probably a dozen photos of them that I do not know how to cut and paste. One of the photos is a big mountain lion sunning on one of my good friend's back porch, in the middle of the day. Someone took the photo of it from the 7th fairway.

CHIEF Jr. and one of his buddies used to hunt in some really rough country across the river from us back in junior high. They were young enough that his buddy's dad or myself would drop them off and pick them up. I picked them up after an evening hunt one day and asked them if they saw anything. CHIEF Jr. saw zip, but his buddy said he watched a mother mountain lion and her three cubs play under his stand for over an hour. I was really proud of him as he didn't want to shoot the mother and leave the cubs to starve. I told him that he may be the only person alive to ever get that opportunity in the wild.

I've posted this story before on another thread, but can't remember which one.

CHIEF

Edited Sunday at 06:48 PM by CHIEF
fucking autocorrect

[The Ace of Aces 5374]

On 12/13/2024 at 4:12 PM, Jkwellborn said:

I know several people that have seen them over the years in North East Texas.

Seen a lot of weird shit growing up along the Sabine River bottoms. 
 

One day a mountain goat showed up and ate all the garden. We ate goat stew for a few weeks. 

[Bevo 13847]

21 hours ago, Not a cat said:

I was at a dog park in Truth or Consequences NM a couple of months ago and a bobcat just casually strolled along the fence line.  It was big, but nothing like that monster on the roof in the photo.  Think of the biggest tomcat you've ever seen and add maybe 20%.

I have no doubt he'd have fucked my dogs up who were under the impression it was just a normal cat.

Yeah, when I was in Tucson, we had a bobcat that would sun on our covered hot tub. It was maybe 50% larger than our cat which is a runt. So 20% larger than a large tomcat seems about right.

[Bevo 13847]

3 hours ago, The Ace of Aces said:

Seen a lot of weird shit growing up along the Sabine River bottoms. 
 

One day a mountain goat showed up and ate all the garden. We ate goat stew for a few weeks. 

Fucking cross-river Cajuns. You eat nutria too?

[The Ace of Aces 5374]

7 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Fucking cross-river Cajuns. You eat nutria too?

I don’t remember so will say no. Did have squirrel fairly often. 

[Bevo 13847]

Just now, The Ace of Aces said:

I don’t remember so will say no. Did have squirrel fairly often. 

My mom is from the Mississippi delta and is a great cook. My brother and I would shoot rabbits and squirrels at our ranch and bring them back for my mom to cook. We would go frog gigging too and bring back bull frogs for her to cook. One day she just said no more and that was the end of it. 

[CHIEF 5221]

7 minutes ago, Bevo said:

My mom is from the Mississippi delta and is a great cook. My brother and I would shoot rabbits and squirrels at our ranch and bring them back for my mom to cook. We would go frog gigging too and bring back bull frogs for her to cook. One day she just said no more and that was the end of it. 

If frog legs are on the menu, my son is going to order them every time. We have access to a ranch with several large stock tanks on it, absolutely filled with huge bull frogs. He and the ranchers son don't use gigs all that much, but throw buzz baits and smaller frog imitations into the bull frogs territory which they attack. He brings them back, and I don't care how many frogs he has, will have his mom fry them up and eat the whole batch himself. I'm lucky to get one leg. If I make an online order to Cajun Grocer, I absolutely have to order frog legs as well.

CHIEF

[The Ace of Aces 5374]

19 minutes ago, Bevo said:

My mom is from the Mississippi delta and is a great cook. My brother and I would shoot rabbits and squirrels at our ranch and bring them back for my mom to cook. We would go frog gigging too and bring back bull frogs for her to cook. One day she just said no more and that was the end of it. 

Never did do frogs. We’d go to Caddo Landing and get them and gator there pretty often. 

[Not a cat 5805]

15 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

If frog legs are on the menu, my son is going to order them every time. We have access to a ranch with several large stock tanks on it, absolutely filled with huge bull frogs. He and the ranchers son don't use gigs all that much, but throw buzz baits and smaller frog imitations into the bull frogs territory which they attack. He brings them back, and I don't care how many frogs he has, will have his mom fry them up and eat the whole batch himself. I'm lucky to get one leg. If I make an online order to Cajun Grocer, I absolutely have to order frog legs as well.

CHIEF

For catching bull frogs, use a long pole, put a piece of red fabric on a perch hook and wave it in front of them.  They just launch at it.

I didn't believe the guy that told me that but it drives them nuts.  We didn't even have red fabric so we just used a starburst wrapper.

[Bevo 13847]

37 minutes ago, The Ace of Aces said:

Never did do frogs. We’d go to Caddo Landing and get them and gator there pretty often. 

Is there a Texas restaurant like the Boondocks in Winnie anymore?

[Daichee Bell 3080]

21 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

This. For all of the “sightings,” we’d have one that was 1) shot, 2) hit by a car, or 3) captured on camera. We don’t. There are no “black panthers” among mountain lions.
There are among jaguars (jaguar is my favorite big cat, because fuck yeah it’s a Texas native). But there haven’t been ANY jaguars in Texas in many decades (last documented jaguar was killed near Kingsville in 1948). The Goldthwaite jaguar of 1903 is a badass story: https://wildtexashistory.com/goldthwaite-jaguar-1903/

Maybe the northernmost encounter with a jaguar ever. I wish they would come back to Texas, but that is almost 100% unlikely. We do have a pair that move across into AZ from time to time form Mexico. Which is cool as hell. They’re one of the most beautiful animals on earth. And the power/musculature are otherworldly.

[Matuka 1320]

1 hour ago, Not a cat said:

For catching bull frogs, use a long pole, put a piece of red fabric on a perch hook and wave it in front of them.  They just launch at it.

I didn't believe the guy that told me that but it drives them nuts.  We didn't even have red fabric so we just used a starburst wrapper.

Summer before my freshman year at UT, the frat I eventually pledged had a bunch of guys come in to the hometown for a week to rush the recently graduated HS seniors and solicit donations from selected alums.  We decided to go frog “gigging” one night.  The plan was to load in 2-3 pickups and patrol the North Texas oil patch and ranch lands with varying degrees of permission, locate the stock tanks and then the frogs via spotlights and/or flashlights.  

So 3-4 of us were armed with .22’s and the others with spotlights and gigs.  The goal was to shoot the frogs, then gig the frogs before the snakes got to them. 

So picture about eight or so 18-21 year olds going out at 10 pm after drinking a few beers and continuing to drink while shooting firearms in the dark…at frogs.  It was chaotic at times as there would be some large tanks with several frogs…and several snakes.  The firefights were brief, but intense as everyone would be yelling and laughing pointing out frogs and snakes and those of us with .22’s firing at said frogs and snakes, doing our best to avoid friendly fire.  

Once, a frat rat from central casting from the middle of Houston approached a small tree hanging over a tank with his gig.  The tree was covered with cotton mouths; never saw anything like it before and hope to never see anything like it again.  Dressed in his starched plaid shirt, khaki shorts and topsiders, he acted like he was going to gig one of the water moccasins.  We went nuts, shouting and pleading with him to stop.  He stopped, I never knew if he was serious or not.

How we came out of that evening without tragedy was amazing.  But we harvested lots of frogs and the frog leg fry we had the subsequent evening was awesome.

Ahh, to be young again.

[High Plains Drifter 11185]

On 12/13/2024 at 9:38 PM, Izhmash said:

Wrong fucking day to read this thread. I'm headed to Longview to go hunting this week....and now I'm not feeling too confident in being the "hunter". Fuck me...this is shit of nightmares. Will definitely be carrying a high capacity magazine, lol.

 

I wouldn't worry about. Bipedal, 70+ kg animals are not a mountain lions prey. More likely to get in a car wreck driving out there, or to get shot by your buddy than to get attacked by a mtn lion. 

[RollLeft 5090]

I once saw one in Katy crossing Katy Hockley.  

[Bevo 13847]

52 minutes ago, RollLeft said:

I once saw one in Katy crossing Katy Hockley.  

At a bar?

[hookem2010 2700]

Katy was wolf country a century ago. Now its... Katy. Still some decent chunks of remnant prairie out there though.