Cougar Sighting in Leander

[TwiceHorn 31707]

4 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Come on now there's a difference. Obviously cougars are most likely going to keep their distance, but cougars killed 2 adults in the PNW last year. There's only been one confirmed adult fatality due to a coyote ever.

Yeah, cougars can approach 200 lbs, bobcats are 20-40 lbs, coyotes about the same.  Unless they are starved or sick, a cougar is pretty unlikely to fuck with you, though.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Yeah, coyotes are very common. They have been seen in Jersey Village. I saw one along Cypress Creek in NW Houston as a teenager. The last one I saw was crossing a road down around Cuero.

Y’all remember this one, right? Bobcat in a downtown Houston parking garage.

http:// https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chron.com/neighborhood/heights-news/amp/Bobcat-caught-in-downtown-Houston-garage-1718822.php

[deadshank 24653]

10 minutes ago, HouTex said:

My 82 year old mother swears she saw a cougar in far western Fort Bend County last year. She should be able to tell a cougar from a bobcat or other midsized wild feline.

As for coyotes, they are common along Buffalo Bayou throughout Houston. And a friend recently photographed a bobcat in Tanglewood.

Another friend was hiking in Big Bend in the late 00’s and came across a black bear.

I’m waiting for a wolf to make an appearance in the wild in Texas. That would be cool.

Have seen a few coyotes in Briargrove Park.  Mostly around Buffalo Bayou on the north end and on the street that backs up to Rivercrest.  I once saw 2 coyotes in the right  side rough along the 15th hole at  Memorial Park GC.  

[Hate 20167]

I've seen a coyote at Windrose GC in Spring.  If I'm up late enough at night I can hear them howling as well.  

[bluto 4947]

1 hour ago, Zepol87 said:

Kimbrough had a lot of Sunnyvale people so she was probably a slight step up from Mesquite women

Nah, Sunnyvale had its own JH, no way we'd mix with the poors unless required. Poteet HS had a handful of Sunnyvale folks though, and kimbrough fed into poteet, but those days are long gone with Sunnyvale HS in place. 

[Zepol87 9263]

1 minute ago, bluto said:

Nah, Sunnyvale had its own JH, no way we'd mix with the poors unless required. Poteet HS had a handful of Sunnyvale folks though, and kimbrough fed into poteet, but those days are long gone with Sunnyvale HS in place. 

Poteet had all the hoes. It was awesome

[gecko 1104]

About 20 years ago in The Woodlands a neighbor of ours tried to catch what she thought was a stray cat.  It was a bobcat.

[ztejas 43787]

I want to see a Zepol/Cougar cage match so he can back up his word. 

[Zepol87 9263]

3 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I want to see a Zepol/Cougar cage match so he can back up his word. 

lol I was more implying the fox people in frisco are pussies

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Zepol87

[Brisketexan 105791]

Mountain lions are cool as shit.  25 years ago, hunting at Tejas camp on Lake Georgetown, we were walking down the San Gabriel and crossed at a big sandbar.  Lots of turkey tracks....interspersed with some BIG cat tracks, clearly mountain lion.

Oh, and for critters that USED to roam this area, my favorite is the jaguar (also my favorite big cat).  Here's a story of the last one killed around here, in Mills County: http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/Tiger-Hunt-in-Mills-County.htm

Quote

In South Texas, many called it “El Tigre,” Spanish for the tiger. More scientifically, the name is Panthera onca. But its best-known name is jaguar.

Jaguars have beautiful, spotted furs, move with stealth and grace and in modern times have had luxury cars and football teams named after them. They are also the largest cat found in North America, wide-ranging carnivores equipped with powerful jaws and long, fierce teeth capable of crushing the skull of a soon-to-be meal.

Not surprisingly, early Texans did not think Texascovered enough square miles to accommodate both man and jaguar. 

The last time one of the big cats is known to have been killed in state was in 1947 in the Rio Grande Valley, but even four decades earlier, the animals had become scarce in the Lone Star State. The reason is that they had a bad reputation, whether deserved or not. Seeing the cats as a threat to livestock and humans alike, jaguars had a figurative target on their hides just like bear, wolves, mountain lions and venomous reptiles. 

“It stirs the imagination to recall that this terrible jaguar once roamed plentifully throughout Texas,” wrote J.G. Burr in 1930 for the “Year Book on Texas Conservation of Wildlife 1929-30,” a publication of the old Game, Fish and Oyster Commission, now the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “This tropical beast, though receding before the advance of civilization, may at any time cross into Texas from Mexico, where it persists in considerable numbers.” 

Whether jaguars are truly terrible is debatable, but they do grow larger than any other cat in the Western hemisphere, including the much more common mountain lion. In fact, the jaguar is the only member of the tiger family on the continent.

The Depression-era state report features a photograph of one of the big Texas tigers killed near Goldthwaite in 1903 – the last of the species ever reported in the interior of the state. The image shows two men with rifles posing with the dead jaguar outside the Mills County courthouse. Also in the photograph are two of the dogs that sniffed out the cat. 

One of the men participating in the hunt was Homer Brown, who described the event in a letter to a friend. The letter had come into the possession of H.P. Attwater, a wildlife biologist from Houston who shipped the jaguar’s skull and hide to the Smithsonian. Burr got access to the letter from Attwater and excerpted it in his report. 

Whether the men who took the big cat had any intention of seeking a jaguar is not explained in the letter. More likely, they were hoping to jump a much-more-common mountain lion. All Brown said by way of explanation was that an acquaintance named Henry Morris came to his place to go hunting, which they did on the night of Sept. 3, 1903. 

With a boy named Johnnie Walton, the hunters had supper at Brown’s place and then “started for the mountains three miles southwest of Center City.” At dusk, their baying dogs enthusiastically took up a trail. 

“We ran him about three miles and treed him in a small Spanish oak,” Brown wrote. “I shot him in the body with a Colt .45. He fell out of the tree and the hounds ran him about half a mile and bayed [cornered] him.” 

The .45 round, despite its man-killing punch, must not have hit the cat in a vital area because Brown sent Morris hurrying to Center City for “[more] guns and ammunition.” Ninety minutes later, Morris returned leading a small posse of well-armed Mills County men.

“We commenced the fight with 10 hounds, but when we got him killed there were three dogs with him, and one of them wounded. He killed one dog and very nearly killed several others. He got hold of Bill Morris’ horse and bit it so bad it died from its wounds,” Brown wrote.

The standoff ended with the cat’s death about midnight. 

The jaguar measured 6 feet, 6 inches from nose to the end of its short tail and weighed 140 pounds. As large as the animal looked in the photograph, that is only a modest size for a jaguar, which can reach 300 pounds or more. 

Apparently not bothered that a species was coming close to extinction in Texas, in the item he included in his report, Burr seemed more interested in how the hounds fared than the demise of a magnificent animal. 

“One must admire the courage of the 10 hounds that brought the animal to bay and especially the three that remained to the end of the battle and the one that gave up his life,” Burr wrote. “To be perfectly fair, we must admire the good judgment of the six [dogs] that retired to safety from an unequal combat with a beast so terribly weaponed – the greatest of North American cats.” 

[TwiceHorn 31707]

Interesting story, but cringey as hell from the perspective of hunters just doing whatever the fuck they feel like.

[bluto 4947]

11 minutes ago, Zepol87 said:

Poteet had all the hoes. It was awesome

Haha! There was definitely some cross pollination with the poteet whore corps 

[TwiceHorn 31707]

Most outdoor types will tell you by the time you have spotted a cougar, s/he has spotted you a dozen times.

[4th&Five 41729]

We get plenty of foxes and coyotes in our neighborhood (sw pkwy and wm cannon).  a cougar would freak me out though.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

1 hour ago, Hate said:

We're going to need a bigger spiral staircase.

I think for cougars you need an escalator.

[Armybrat 41048]

6 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I think for Steiner Ranch cougars you need an escalator.

Fify

[Dennis Taylor 19107]

there was a bobcat sighting in Greatwood in Ft Bend County last week. Some of you might be interested in a particular cougar in the video as well

 

https://www.click2houston.com/news/bobcat-spotted-in-greatwood-neighborhood    

[TwiceHorn 31707]

13 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

I think for cougars you need an escalator.

Cougars got mad hops (20-40' standing vertical), they don't need no stairs.

[Brisketexan 105791]

27 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Interesting story, but cringey as hell from the perspective of hunters just doing whatever the fuck they feel like.

Yeah, I know.  Different times, man.  That's how you have to look at these things.

Hell, I'm a hunter, and I have no interest in killing a predator like that - mountain lion, jaguar, bear.  I'm just pumped to be out there on the same turf with them.  If I ever saw a jaguar in the wild, it really would be a life high point.  I mean, presuming that he wasn't in the act of jumping my ass and killing me.  That would be a downer.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Brisketexan

[MAROON 445]

https://neighbors.ring.com/n/qadx4?fbclid=IwAR1k_wqiQY0Q7FSNkURMMZ41XjczZn-D1YOARgJUD9MJKzO3HzquvB3k2gY

 

Video of the cat.  probably a small female.  Not that big, but pretty cool...unless you're the neighborhood roaming tomcat.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

10 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Cougars got mad hops (20-40' standing vertical), they don't need no stairs.

The escalator is for you. Usually in the form of Viagra or something similar.

[GreenspointTexas 9883]

Not sure why people are shocked about seeing cougars and black bears in Texas

 

lol

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

Not sure why people are shocked about seeing cougars and black bears in Texas
 
lol

Oh yeah professor?

[TwiceHorn 31707]

10 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, I know.  Different times, man.  That's how you have to look at these things.

Hell, I'm a hunter, and I have no interest in killing a predator like that - mountain lion, jaguar, bear.  I'm just pumped to be out there on the same turf with them.  If I ever saw a jaguar in the wild, it really would be a life high point.  I mean, presuming that he wasn't in the act of jumping my ass and killing me.  That would be a downer.

I mountain bike because it's an easy way to get outside and into some urban wilderness (I have been surprised how rugged some "greenbelts" in Dallas actually are), because I don't get into the "real woods" often enough for my taste.

The highlight pretty much of my mountain biking thus far was on a trail in Addison about where the George Bush crosses the Tollway.  I saw some movement over to my left, thought it was the usual bunny or squirrel, and a bobcat came loping out of the brush, got on the trail ahead of me and I "chased" it for about 20 yards before it went off into the brush again.  It was cool as hell.

[Dennis Taylor 19107]

48 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Mountain lions are cool as shit.  25 years ago, hunting at Tejas camp on Lake Georgetown, we were walking down the San Gabriel and crossed at a big sandbar.  Lots of turkey tracks....interspersed with some BIG cat tracks, clearly mountain lion.

Oh, and for critters that USED to roam this area, my favorite is the jaguar (also my favorite big cat).  Here's a story of the last one killed around here, in Mills County: http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/Tiger-Hunt-in-Mills-County.htm

Jaguars are not to be trifled with. 

 

[TwiceHorn 31707]

36 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

We get plenty of foxes and coyotes in our neighborhood (sw pkwy and wm cannon).  a cougar would freak me out though.

Where are the kids?

Edited January 30, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Chad Fuck 17915]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Interesting story, but cringey as hell from the perspective of hunters just doing whatever the fuck they feel like.

Ridin' in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim,

Those were different times.

[HouTex 1902]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

Interesting story, but cringey as hell from the perspective of hunters just doing whatever the fuck they feel like.

I wouldn't shoot a cougar now, but that would have been my ultimate prize as a hunter when I was a teenager and into my 20's.  They are not endangered and they are not protected.  See https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/mountain_lion/

Ranchers shoot them at every opportunity.  Some (all?) cougars will kill livestock seemingly for spite and not just for food.  

[ztejas 43787]

58 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

I mountain bike because it's an easy way to get outside and into some urban wilderness

 

[DCA_HORN 725]

Who was it that had a picture of a bobcat they shot as a kid? I wanna say cajun or pescado?

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4980]

Think that was cajun. It was a pretty glorious picture.

[Fondren & Main 6782]

Countdown to this thread moving to IPIHB.

[Kennythetiger 9514]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Yeah, I know.  Different times, man.  That's how you have to look at these things.

Hell, I'm a hunter, and I have no interest in killing a predator like that - mountain lion, jaguar, bear.  I'm just pumped to be out there on the same turf with them.  If I ever saw a jaguar in the wild, it really would be a life high point.  I mean, presuming that he wasn't in the act of jumping my ass and killing me.  That would be a downer.

I'm a rancher, and I'm not even sure I could shoot something like that.  Probably just have to sacrifice a calf to the badass predator gods.  

[TwiceHorn 31707]

28 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Think that was cajun. It was a pretty glorious picture.

It wasn't a bobcat.  It was a mountain lion.

[TwiceHorn 31707]

52 minutes ago, HouTex said:

I wouldn't shoot a cougar now, but that would have been my ultimate prize as a hunter when I was a teenager and into my 20's.  They are not endangered and they are not protected.  See https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/nuisance/mountain_lion/

Ranchers shoot them at every opportunity.  Some (all?) cougars will kill livestock seemingly for spite and not just for food.  

Yeah, I know.  But with respect to the jaguar, which seems to have been extirpated in the US, es no bueno. 

I am no longer an active hunter, but have in the past.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-hunting in any way, shape, or form.  Particularly now

A jaguar escaped its enclosure for under an hour at the New Orleans zoo not too long ago (another google app story) and murdered llamas and other things solely for sport apparently.  They didn't euthanize, though, said "jaguar gonna jaguar."

Cats seem to have hunting so hardwired into them that hunting behavior is play to them as well as survival.

Edited January 30, 2019 by TwiceHorn

[Digdogger 1345]

I passed 3 bobcats about half a mile from 183 in Leander about 3 weeks ago, they looked basically full grown, I guess they were about to outgrow being siblings

[Bigbend1812 12978]

4 hours ago, 3shot said:

You sure that's not a gray fox?  

That Red Dead 2 trapping skills paying off.

[deadshank 24653]

1 hour ago, HouTex said:

Ranchers shoot them at every opportunity.  Some (all?) cougars will kill livestock seemingly for spite and not just for food.  

A guy east of us in Zavala County has 2 Bengal tigers in a very large enclosure.  He traps feral hogs to feed the tigers.  The  hogs are kept in a  large pen with forage and water.  Apparently there was quite a ruckus one day as the pigs were squealing and going crazy.  He goes out to see what the to do was all about and a mountain lion had somehow got into the pen and slaughtered all of the pigs.  All the while, the tigers sat and watched.  

Snitches get stitches.

[TwiceHorn 31707]

17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Yeah, I know.  But with respect to the jaguar, which seems to have been extirpated in the US, es no bueno. 

I am no longer an active hunter, but have in the past.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-hunting in any way, shape, or form.  Particularly now

A jaguar escaped its enclosure for under an hour at the New Orleans zoo not too long ago (another google app story) and murdered llamas and other things solely for sport apparently.  They didn't euthanize, though, said "jaguar gonna jaguar."

Cats seem to have hunting so hardwired into them that hunting behavior is play to them as well as survival.

I left off or somehow lost the part about "intelligently controlled willdlife populations, where hunting is a big part of it."

[wood 11642]

Re: that fox, back during the worst part of the drought there was a mama fox that used to come up from the small green belt down the street, and just lay in the front yard, chilling out. She'd just lay there, even with kids playing outside and in the street. I'd open the front door and sit on the porch watching her, not 25 feet away, and she didn't seem to mind me at all. It was crazy. She was also keeping her babies down closer to the woods in a neighbor's yard, in a hollowed out tree in the front yard. 

[Reagan1k 3026]

33 minutes ago, deadshank said:

A guy east of us in Zavala County has 2 Bengal tigers in a very large enclosure.  He traps feral hogs to feed the tigers.  The  hogs are kept in a  large pen with forage and water.  Apparently there was quite a ruckus one day as the pigs were squealing and going crazy.  He goes out to see what the to do was all about and a mountain lion had somehow got into the pen and slaughtered all of the pigs.  All the while, the tigers sat and watched.  

Snitches get stitches.

My only possible encounter was in Llano during bow season.  Right at dusk I was walking to my truck from the tripod and heard the most horrific screaming and squealing from a hog for about 5 seconds and then another 5 seconds of guttural groaning and then dead quiet.  There were 4 of us hunting in the same general area and when we all got back to camp,  Everyone was quiet and looked a little peaked.  After a couple of minutes I said "Y'all heard that too?"  Everyone nodded.  If it wasn't a cat that had gotten a hog by the throat, I don't know what it was.  It was a tense walk back into the tripod the next morning.

[wood 11642]

49 minutes ago, deadshank said:

A guy east of us in Zavala County has 2 Bengal tigers in a very large enclosure.  He traps feral hogs to feed the tigers.  The  hogs are kept in a  large pen with forage and water.  Apparently there was quite a ruckus one day as the pigs were squealing and going crazy.  He goes out to see what the to do was all about and a mountain lion had somehow got into the pen and slaughtered all of the pigs.  All the while, the tigers sat and watched.  

Snitches get stitches.

Fuck me.

Pleasepleaseplease don't ever let those tigers escape. Got damn. 

[wood 11642]

1 minute ago, Reagan1k said:

My only possible encounter was in Llano during bow season.  Right at dusk I was walking to my truck from the tripod and heard the most horrific screaming and squealing from a hog for about 5 seconds and then another 5 seconds of guttural groaning and then dead quiet.  There were 4 of us hunting in the same general area and when we all got back to camp,  Everyone was quiet and looked a little peaked.  After a couple of minutes I said "Y'all heard that too?"  Everyone nodded.  If it wasn't a cat that had gotten a hog by the throat, I don't know what it was.  It was a tense walk back into the tripod the next morning.

Saw what looked like a mountain lion run across the highway way out in west Texas a few years ago on a late night run to Ruidoso to go skiing. We joked that it might have been a chupacabra. At the time we didn't think mountain lions were a thing in that area, but now I think it probably was one.

[Brisketexan 105791]

2 minutes ago, Reagan1k said:

My only possible encounter was in Llano during bow season.  Right at dusk I was walking to my truck from the tripod and heard the most horrific screaming and squealing from a hog for about 5 seconds and then another 5 seconds of guttural groaning and then dead quiet.  There were 4 of us hunting in the same general area and when we all got back to camp,  Everyone was quiet and looked a little peaked.  After a couple of minutes I said "Y'all heard that too?"  Everyone nodded.  If it wasn't a cat that had gotten a hog by the throat, I don't know what it was.  It was a tense walk back into the tripod the next morning.

We're in NW Hills, and hadn't been in our house but a couple of months, and one night we were having heavy rain.  Probably around 11:00 pm, after we'd gone to bed, I wake up to godawful screaming in the greenbelt behind the house.  Took me a few seconds to realize what it was, and I put my head back down.  At which point my wife bolts upright, and jumps out of bed heading for the door.  "Where are you going?"  She says "there's a child screaming down in the greenbelt!"  Ummm, that's not a child  It's a fawn.  Something's killing it.  "Well....we have to do something!"  "No, we don't...it'll be over soon."  I doubt it was a mountain lion -- probably a bobcat or coyote -- but it was the first time my wife had heard an animal's death screams.  She did not take it well.

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

My only possible encounter was in Llano during bow season.  Right at dusk I was walking to my truck from the tripod and heard the most horrific screaming and squealing from a hog for about 5 seconds and then another 5 seconds of guttural groaning and then dead quiet.  There were 4 of us hunting in the same general area and when we all got back to camp,  Everyone was quiet and looked a little peaked.  After a couple of minutes I said "Y'all heard that too?"  Everyone nodded.  If it wasn't a cat that had gotten a hog by the throat, I don't know what it was.  It was a tense walk back into the tripod the next morning.

Do you even Sasquatch?

[wood 11642]

2 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

I mountain bike because it's an easy way to get outside and into some urban wilderness (I have been surprised how rugged some "greenbelts" in Dallas actually are), because I don't get into the "real woods" often enough for my taste.

The highlight pretty much of my mountain biking thus far was on a trail in Addison about where the George Bush crosses the Tollway.  I saw some movement over to my left, thought it was the usual bunny or squirrel, and a bobcat came loping out of the brush, got on the trail ahead of me and I "chased" it for about 20 yards before it went off into the brush again.  It was cool as hell.

Yeah as a mountain biker myself, this shit might have me rethinking some of the sounds I hear when riding that I usually dismiss as squirrels, etc. Big cats have been known to (rarely) go after MTBers iirc.

[wood 11642]

2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

We're in NW Hills, and hadn't been in our house but a couple of months, and one night we were having heavy rain.  Probably around 11:00 pm, after we'd gone to bed, I wake up to godawful screaming in the greenbelt behind the house.  Took me a few seconds to realize what it was, and I put my head back down.  At which point my wife bolts upright, and jumps out of bed heading for the door.  "Where are you going?"  She says "there's a child screaming down in the greenbelt!"  Ummm, that's not a child  It's a fawn.  Something's killing it.  "Well....we have to do something!"  "No, we don't...it'll be over soon."  I doubt it was a mountain lion -- probably a bobcat or coyote -- but it was the first time my wife had heard an animal's death screams.  She did not take it well.

Yeah the wife doesn't take too well to predators doing what predators naturally do, and always thinks we need to step in and protect the prey...even when our cats attack lizards, etc. LOL.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11830]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

We're in NW Hills, and hadn't been in our house but a couple of months, and one night we were having heavy rain.  Probably around 11:00 pm, after we'd gone to bed, I wake up to godawful screaming in the greenbelt behind the house.  Took me a few seconds to realize what it was, and I put my head back down.  At which point my wife bolts upright, and jumps out of bed heading for the door.  "Where are you going?"  She says "there's a child screaming down in the greenbelt!"  Ummm, that's not a child  It's a fawn.  Something's killing it.  "Well....we have to do something!"  "No, we don't...it'll be over soon."  I doubt it was a mountain lion -- probably a bobcat or coyote -- but it was the first time my wife had heard an animal's death screams.  She did not take it well.

Reminds me of a ruckus on my Austin neighborhood Nextdoor a while back.  There's still a small existing ranch south of us near Manchaca that has cattle.  One evening a calf was bawling bloody murder (could hear it a mile away).   Someone posted "COW IN DISTRESS!!" and much handwringing, calling of 911, 311 and Hays animal control, it turned out the rancher was just separating some calves from their mommas overnight to work them the next morning.

[Dennis Taylor 19107]

8 minutes ago, wood said:

Fuck me.

Pleasepleaseplease don't ever let those tigers escape. Got damn. 

maybe i misread it but my takeaway from that was the mountain lion was the alpha there

[Patricio Swayze 17058]

maybe i misread it but my takeaway from that was the mountain lion was the alpha there

Nope. Those tigers would kill that mountain lion. I am pretty sure the take away is, build a better enclosure for your hogs or they get eaten before they are fed to the tigers.