Matt / PA

Trytan,
That wasn't an attack.......it was an OMG you may have had a Mt. Lion in your hands and didn't personally hand it to someone.[:-][:-][:-]
Not an attack at all......I didn't say I didn't believe you only that if you are offering it as proof you need to have it documented for the state to see.
I'm actually dissapointed that you possibly could have had the hard evidence that I've been waiting to hear and see but left it by the side of the rd. Bummer that's all.
The point I guess I was trying to make is the possibility that it COULD be some degree of wild big cat and like Doug said a Mt. Lion isn't something you see lying on the road everyday. That would be news even if it was a confirmed escapee.

Barnes,
Yeah the sailfish in the Delawareis probably a better analogy but I couldn't think of a parallel off the top of my head. Either way that sailfish would be a pretty darn big story in it's own right and is a good comparison.
(You have to admit the tone of a lot of the Mt. Lion reports resemble Bigfoot though)

DISCLAIMER: Not attacking, and certainly not offended......I'm hoping (I think?) to see one hop in front of my truck someday until then I keep wanting to actually see an actual official confirmation that they exist.
I'm not against the idea, the case for such is just not presented very well.

livbucks

The prudent thing to do would be to call a major TV news station before anybody else and have them meet you at the scene. Once the GC takes the body, it no longer ever existed. I would call WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh or WJAC-TV in Johnstown/Altoona markets. They have helicopters and satellite trucks and WILL get the story and if they do smell a cover-up, look out. The main thing is to get them there FIRST! Let the GC hear about it on the news..HAHAHA!!

mlo3135127

Good postsMatt / PA.I agree, if someone has proof in their hands don't throw it away.

Big Sky Scott

Yes,but they certainly don't continue to bed down or feed while letting a "hog" rip them up with their tusks . Even fly bites will make a horse "bolt". Maybe their being attacked by "Flying pigs". Just a little levity.

chuckclear2000

2 years ago there was a cougar in my area. It was on the news several times with 50 eyewitnesses and one guy had filmed it. They called it the Conway cougar. However, the game commission tried to trap it and had no luck. Peoples pets started to disappear. It was determined to be a released pet. It was even rumored that it escaped from a conrail train down in conway yards. Anyhow, it seemed to be here for one fall and then just vanished. I imagine if it was someones pet it didn't survive the winter. Definetly not a wild cat in everyone's opinion.

livbucks

That is the exact incident I related some time ago and everyone told me I wasmaking it up. I wish you could have corroberated my story then.

Windwalker7

I have an idea.
Call the PGC and ask them if it is OK to shoot a ML. ( you have to tell a lie here) Tell them taht you and a buddy have been seeing one when you'v e been out scouting. Tell them you've seen it several times.

Now if they honestly believed there are no ML's they say" yeah, their protected, but go ahead and shoot it, cause there ain't no ML in PA"


See how many questions they ask you. Where? When? No don't shoot.


If the PGC honestly believed there were none, they wouldn't ask questions.


Several years ago. An old Girl friend saw one cross the road in front of her car while on her way to work. Us guys at work laughed and made fun of her all day. She described the orangish color and long tail. She knew what it was, she knows the difference betwen bobcats and ML. I showed her several pictures of each ( even some pictures without visible tails) and she always got it correct without pausing to think about it.


Anyway, I decided to call the PGC and report it. They ask several questions and seemed interested. The guy on the other line ask a couple times where this sighting was I had to give directions basically.

After I gave him the info he said it was probably an escaped pet. Then we hung up with each other.

Speculate what you want, but that happened.

DougE

What is there to speculate?I know a few WCO's and they've investigated many reports of mountain lions but they've always came up emty.I'm sure they'd all like to finally see hard evidence just like the rest of us.

i used to think most people would know the difference between a bobcat and a mountain lion but past posts on thismessage board proved that isn't the case.

R.S.B.

I personally do not know if there are any wild ranging mt lions in PA but I can tell you that our wonderfull PGC loves to cover up any real prove of any being let go or what not. Last yr I was driving to Ridgeway PA in Elk county and it was late and I saw what I thought was a deer dead laying on the road. So as I normally do when I see deer stay laying in the path of the road I stopped to drag it off the edge. I am not Mt lion expert and not claiming to be but what I dragged off that raod wasn't a bobcat and sure as heck wasn't a deer. It could sure of been someones pet that was either released or escaped I don't know but I called the PGC and told them where it was excatly even marked a branch with a glow eye and layed it ontop of the cat. The next day i was courous so I called the PGC again to ask if they found the owner of the cat and this is what I was told.

" It was a yearling deer and I shouldn't be making up lies about mt lions being in PA"

Now this makes me wonder about anything that the PGC got to say. I might not be a expert but I sure do know the diffrence between a yearling deer and a big cat. On the same lines I hunted Elk county in the same mts for close to 15 yrs and nobody in my cabin every seen/heard or even noticed coyotes before. Then about 1 yr all of a sudden every member of our cabin first day of archery we all seen them. PGC claims not to be putting them into the forest also but I have trouble beleiveing the packs grew so large and visibale in 1 yrs time without there help. As already stated I am no expert on this but I don't know. PGC wouldn't surprise me with anything they would do.

Trytan


I get every Game Commission incident that occurs in the Lake City or the Ridgway area and I can tell you with complete certainty that is incident never happened. No one call to report a road killed mountain lion and no lion was ever picked up or covered up.

I have been getting and handling mountain lion sighting reports for my entire 29 years with the Game Commission and not one time has anyone ever been able to produce a picture, a track in the mud or the snow, a lion kill, any lion scat or any other ever so slight evidence of a mountain lion.

Nor do we have people with lions in captivity in that area that we do or don’t know about since anyone with a lion is required to have a bunch of permits and pen requirements before they can even bring one into the state legally. I also have a very good network of informants so I am pretty darn confident no one is sneaking lions into the district without my finding out about it.

What has happened is that as the bobcat populations have increased, and they have increased substantially, the mountain lion sightings have increased.

Lions don’t hibernate or den up for the winter so they would be leaving tracks, yet there are no tracks. A lion would make about one or two large animal kills per week, including farm stock, yet none have been observed or reported. Fishers, which almost no one ever sees, often get hit on the road yet mountain lions, that all these people are seeing, never get killed on the road.

During hunting season we have almost 1 million hunters a field trying to shoot a deer. Those hunters shoot other hunters wearing orange in mistake for deer. They have even shot vehicles driving down back roads in mistake for deer, yet not one hunter has ever shot a mountain lion though they are the same size and color as a deer.

I don’t doubt for one minute that people have seen what they were 100% convinced was a mountain lion. I believe they are 100% convinced of what they saw because I personally stood there and listened to a turkey hunter telling me about watching a gobbler approaching for over 200 yards. He watched it stop and go into full strut with its head changing from white, to red and to blue on three occasions. When it finally got into 97 feet he shot it. It then scared the he!! out of him because he didn’t know turkeys could scream. He had just shot another turkey hunter that he was 100% sure had been a turkey for several very long minutes and almost 200 yards prior to his shot.

I work with a principle of the need for evidence, in my line of work, on a daily bases. All I ask is that someone shows me some evidence of a mountain lion, yet in my 29 years not one person has been able to show me any evidence.

I can also assure you that no one called to report a mountain lion being hit in Lake City in the past 20 plus years that I have been in this district. I can also promise you that I have never been a part of any cover up of anything.

I have no evidence nor the slightest hint of any evidence that any free roaming mountain lions exist anywhere in state and I am darn sure there is no evidence of any having been in Lake City and anywhere else in Elk County during our life time.

Dick Bodenhorn
WCO, Elk County

Windwalker7

I think that maybe the PGC should not be protecting nonexistant ML in PA then.

Heck, you could probably sell tags for them.

I have a question for Mr. PGC.


What is the fine for killing a mountain lion in PA?

Since the PGC denies they exist and could possibly be escaped pets, then I'd think shooting one would be legal since, it wasn't wild.

If they are just escaped pets, then shooting them should be encouraged. Those "escaped pets" could pose a threat to children or live stock, because they wouldn't be as fearful of man.

So what is the fine? And, would you personally fine a guy that shot one?

Maybe if the PGC would publicly announce, that it would not fine anyone that comes forward with a ML kill, they made in recent years, we might get the evidence we need.

I've heard of a few that were shot. Maybe those guys would show where they burried it.