I took my trip up north last New Years to the family cabin, and was saddened to hear (and of missed out on) there was just a cougar incident I missed out on with a bear dog being taken down in middle of the front driveway of one of the residents that lives in the same river valley we live in (the dog was owned and lost by a non-local bear hunter, who eventualy located it in a bush off to the side of said neighbors driveway). They called the neighboring Sheriff (couple weeks before he retired at the start of this year) who called the FnG warden (who both thought it looked like a cougar kill), who then called up the tracker, one of only a handful of people in the state that are contracted and certified and permitted to track/trap/hunt/kill cougars. This all happened just after the first good snowfall up there this year, so the tracker backtracked the blood from the found dog to dead front and center in the driveway. From there he backtracked and found this cougar has been wandering around the buildings on his place and others of his more imediate neighbors, so it was agreed from this to be a dangerous animal that came down looking for a meal and that didn't just stumble upon one while crossing through the valley. This neighbor of mine has dogs of his own, a teenaged daughter, as well as other animals cougars would love for dinner - was just random luck he had them all stabled or inside and this unfortunate stanger's lost dog came wandering out of the woods at the wrong place and wrong time.
While my neighbor was catching me up on this story he showed me a picture of the tracks in his driveway on his phone. I'm no mountain man or tracker by a good stretch, but I've spent enough time outdoors in my youth to see plenty of cougars, tracks and scat. My imediate reaction was "those are huge! that's not one of our girls, was it?", referring to a couple of lioness sisters that are the well-known local cats for the last ~6-7 years that are occasionaly spotted together crossing the valley or walking down the road on the way to the river or lake, smart enough to know where their place is and not to ever get "too" close to get into any trouble. They're both still relatively young and as lionesses go are of a healthy size and build but are obviously young still.
He replied no, that he hadn't seen the sisters since the first weeks of November, but he thinks he had a good idea why. He then showed me the picture of the killshot with the offending cougar and victorious tracker. It was the largest and darn-healthiest mature grown lion I had ever seen (go figure), weighing in at 328 pounds (with mind you, likely an empty stomach) and a bit larger than the 5'5" tracker. A shame though he was becoming a pest, just a gorgeous creature, it's very rare to get to see such large and well-developed lions and to have to put one down is nothing short of a sad loss to the world, especialy since their expanses of range and territory is many times that of the lionesses. He had tracked it down a few valleys over, on the other side of one of the mountains (and this is no small mountain, see: Bonanza King Mnt.). The lion was shot as it was traveling through a meadow away from a barn it had been snooping around, another distant neighbor of ours up there (retired couple, they have a few chickens, dog and a cat) was unaware until the tracker came walking out of the woods and knocking on their door asking to look around.
Most cougars I find are smart enough to avoid man, at their worst they may be on the edge with taking advantge of the lazy, fat and plump rabbits and deer that frequent our gardens, but they do go awry once in a while.
