# anyone see any mountain lions



## jimbob_walker (Jul 22, 2012)

this year 2 good friends and my grandpa have all seen mountain lions in and near the state game lands near conneautlake pa. i was on another forum and was reading about the same topic and most guys didnt believe there were any in the area and said if there was one would have been hit by a car or caught on a game cam. but how many chickens do you see by the road and how many have you ever seen hit on the road? ive seen thousands by the road and never seen one dead. and i am a hunter and i set my game cams to take pictures of deer. i have corn and other food deer like in front of it. so what is the chances a mountain lion is going to check out a deer feeder.


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## jimski2 (Jul 23, 2010)

I have seen a black panther several times in Western New York and saw pictures of him. They were reported around in the 1970's but the Game officials deny their existence. Maybe it is good as then we do not have some "got to kill it" types chasing around for it. Never have we had a person or livestock incident with them, so let them be.


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## bkr43050 (Apr 5, 2004)

I would say they would not be checking the feeder to eat the grain anyway. Perhaps they would venture through checking to see what else may be there.

Every now and then there are reports of sightings so I do believe that there may be one here and there. I do know that with the trail cam pictures there have been a few bogus pictures posted in recent years. They were pics of actual mountain lions but they were not taken in Ohio so that makes it more difficult for folks to believe the stories they hear.


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

This is what&#8217;s been missing, another big cat thread.  
No one has ever said that there has never been the occasional cougar wondering through, especially &#8220;pets&#8221; that have gotten out. But a viable population is sort of laughable. Most sightings are nothing more than house cats. Some idiot around here went as far as contacting the news paper and having his &#8220;proof&#8221; published. It was a trail camera picture, of a house cat. 
Speaking of laughable&#8230;. Not only have all &#8220;game officials&#8221; denied the existence of black cougars, so have scientists and biologists. Never in history has there been a black cougar, except those seen by drunken neighbors.


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## Snakecharmer (Apr 9, 2008)

bkr43050 said:


> I would say they would not be checking the feeder to eat the grain anyway. Perhaps they would venture through checking to see what else may be there.
> 
> Every now and then there are reports of sightings so I do believe that there may be one here and there. *I do know that with the trail cam pictures there have been a few bogus pictures posted in recent years*. They were pics of actual mountain lions but they were not taken in Ohio so that makes it more difficult for folks to believe the stories they hear.


What do you mean bogus?


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## bkr43050 (Apr 5, 2004)

Snakecharmer said:


> What do you mean bogus?
> View attachment 63514


Of course it is bogus. he obviously didn't see a mountain lion. That was a tiger.


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## jimbob_walker (Jul 22, 2012)

M.Magis said:


> This is whats been missing, another big cat thread.
> No one has ever said that there has never been the occasional cougar wondering through, especially pets that have gotten out. But a viable population is sort of laughable. Most sightings are nothing more than house cats. Some idiot around here went as far as contacting the news paper and having his proof published. It was a trail camera picture, of a house cat.
> Speaking of laughable. Not only have all game officials denied the existence of black cougars, so have scientists and biologists. Never in history has there been a black cougar, except those seen by drunken neighbors.


there is always that guy,huh? the one who has to say, if i didnt see it no one did. as for them being pets, there has been more sightings around here than just the 3 i mentioned. the two my grandpa saw one was and adult and one was what looked like to him was a young one. so of course it must have been pregnant when it excaped. and to say most sightings are nothing more than house cats you have to be just as dumb as the guy in your story.try re-reading the begining of my tread. it says have you seen one. im guessing you havent so id rather not waist my time reading or writing back to what you have to say.


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## PapawSmith (Feb 13, 2007)

jimbob_walker said:


> there is always that guy,huh? the one who has to say, if i didnt see it no one did.


I'm beginning to think Mr Magis is the site skeptic, . It is funny how many people totally discount the possibility, at all, that there may be sustained populations of these animals anywhere in the Eastern US, no matter how small these populations might be. I have seen one myself in a U.P. Michigan area where ALL the locals KNOW they exist but the State says no chance. I was fishing in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan two weeks ago, another area where the state says no way, and on the information boards at the public ramps on the small inland lakes it says quite clearly "Warning you are in Cougar country" and goes on to explain how to watch out for them and how to avoid them. And their official position is they do not exist in this area. Funny.


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## reo (May 22, 2004)

M.Magis said:


> This is whats been missing, another big cat thread.
> No one has ever said that there has never been the occasional cougar wondering through, especially pets that have gotten out. But a viable population is sort of laughable. Most sightings are nothing more than house cats. Some idiot around here went as far as contacting the news paper and having his proof published. It was a trail camera picture, of a house cat.
> Speaking of laughable. Not only have all game officials denied the existence of black cougars, so have scientists and biologists. Never in history has there been a black cougar, except those seen by drunken neighbors.


Why be a naysayer? As the bigfoot population increases so will the mountian lions.


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## reo (May 22, 2004)

PapawSmith said:


> I'm beginning to think Mr Magis is the site skeptic, . It is funny how many people totally discount the possibility, at all, that there may be sustained populations of these animals anywhere in the Eastern US, no matter how small these populations might be. I have seen one myself in a U.P. Michigan area where ALL the locals KNOW they exist but the State says no chance. I was fishing in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan two weeks ago, another area where the state says no way, and on the information boards at the public ramps on the small inland lakes it says quite clearly "Warning you are in Cougar country" and goes on to explain how to watch out for them and how to avoid them. And their official position is they do not exist in this area. Funny.


Cougars can most often be found in Hotel Lounges........


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

jimbob_walker said:


> there is always that guy,huh? the one who has to say, if i didnt see it no one did. as for them being pets, there has been more sightings around here than just the 3 i mentioned. the two my grandpa saw one was and adult and one was what looked like to him was a young one. so of course it must have been pregnant when it excaped. and to say most sightings are nothing more than house cats you have to be just as dumb as the guy in your story.try re-reading the begining of my tread. it says have you seen one. im guessing you havent so id rather not waist my time reading or writing back to what you have to say.


Check your attitude before you start a silly topic like this. You haven't seen any either, so your opinion is no better than mine. And again, most sightings are *proven* to be house cats. Does your mommy know your on the internet?
The only thing I discounted entirely are the so-called black cougars people see. I also discount the possibility of seeing unicorns and griffins.


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## dstiner86 (Jun 5, 2012)

jimbob_walker said:


> this year 2 good friends and my grandpa have all seen mountain lions in and near the state game lands near conneautlake pa. i was on another forum and was reading about the same topic and most guys didnt believe there were any in the area and said if there was one would have been hit by a car or caught on a game cam. but how many chickens do you see by the road and how many have you ever seen hit on the road? ive seen thousands by the road and never seen one dead. and i am a hunter and i set my game cams to take pictures of deer. i have corn and other food deer like in front of it. so what is the chances a mountain lion is going to check out a deer feeder.



In regards to your chicken comment.. I've seen three.. My car killed two and who knows got the other.. And as for mountain lions.. Last one i seen outside of a zoo was in someone garage..well that was until it got loose .. From there well who knows. 
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## ErieRider (Mar 23, 2010)

My big question concerning this topic is how in the world is this related to lake erie and why is it in the erie general forum??? Just curious


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## trapperjon (Mar 11, 2008)

M.Magis said:


> Check your attitude before you start a silly topic like this. You haven't seen any either, so your opinion is no better than mine. And again, most sightings are *proven* to be house cats. Does your mommy know your on the internet?
> 
> 
> WOW..... lighten up and to the comment about cougars in the hotel loung e, would you mind being more specific on which hotel's. LMAO


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

trapperjon said:


> WOW..... lighten up




Me lighten up? When someone makes a posts and asks for opinions, they shouldn't get pissy when they get one that doesnt match theirs.


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## Gills63 (Mar 29, 2012)

Thanks guys, one more thing for me to worry about walking to my treestand at 6 AM.

But on a serious note, in the more hilly areas of Ohio its completely possible that a small population could trickle over from a neighboring state with an established population. Most big cats are solitary so even in areas with know populations, people aren't tripping over them. 

People and coyotes don't eat shelled corn but they do turn up on trail cameras.

Some of these threads are getting ugly lately..Some folks need to take comments with a grain of salt and other folks need to stop looking for fights. If you are one of these people, turn the computer off and go fishing.

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## jimbob_walker (Jul 22, 2012)

M.Magis said:


> Me lighten up? When someone makes a posts and asks for opinions, they shouldn't get pissy when they get one that doesnt match theirs.


im not pissy at all. i asked a simple question, not an opinion. your not even in the same area as i am. i was wanting to see if anyone else in the area has been seeing mountain lions. the people i know are not city folk that would mistake a house cat for a mountain lion. my friends who have spotted them dont even know each other and once again it was spotted 5 miles from where one was seen last night. there is the possibility they might have broke out of somewhere but there have been sighting for the last 2 years and i figured something would have been done about it by now if that were the case. black bear is another that has been showing up in the last few years. multiple sighting and my mother, whom you had to bring up for some immiture reason, has pictures of a 300lber in the tree beside their house. i also had a deer feeder tore apart by something big so im still trying to figure out if that was a bear or bigfoot. im just not sure wether bigfoot eats field corn or not. it just worrys people such as my self when i have 2 young kids i take in the wood on a regular basis. its a new danger wether it is a pet and hungary or wild and hungary. and by starting a "big cat tread" if 2 people see cats in different areas at the same time 30-50 miles apart then chances are they arent loose pets. this is a source to communicate with others that you normaly wouldnt have the chance to. i didnt get on here to argue with anyone. i dont really like posting debateable topics like such because plain ingorance to the topic with the need to just say something puts the topic where it is right now.


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## hunt-n-fish (Jun 19, 2007)

Is this thread in the right forum? Isn't this a sub-forum for lake Erie fishing reports, which is under the category for Ohio fishing reports? Monitors?????


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## Lundy (Apr 5, 2004)

jimbob_walker said:


> i also had a deer feeder tore apart by something big so im still trying to figure out if that was a bear or bigfoot. im just not sure wether bigfoot eats field corn or not.


I'm almost sure it would have been bigfoot. There is one bigfoot around me that my neighbors say really likes polenta.

The bigfoots in Mongolia are documented to have kept mountain lions as house pets, so after reading everything you have posted it is all starting to really come together, everything you have said makes complete sense to me.


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## reo (May 22, 2004)

Lundy said:


> I'm almost sure it would have been bigfoot. There is one bigfoot around me that my neighbors say really likes polenta.
> 
> The bigfoots in Mongolia are documented to have kept mountain lions as house pets, so after reading everything you have posted it is all starting to really come together, everything you have said makes complete sense to me.


Ahhh. All it takes is a little common sense and logic to put it all together
Thanks Lundy!


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## KaGee (Sep 8, 2006)

Gills63 said:


> ...
> Some of these threads are getting ugly lately..Some folks need to take comments with a grain of salt and other folks need to stop looking for fights. If you are one of these people, turn the computer off and go fishing.
> 
> Outdoor Hub mobile, the outdoor information engine


Somebody gets it! 



M.Magis said:


> Me lighten up? When someone makes a posts and asks for opinions, they shouldn't get pissy when they get one that doesnt match theirs.


Pot meet Kettle.  The pissing contest began with your initial post. You can disagree without the hostility. It's not what you say, it's how you say it.


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## ezbite (May 25, 2006)

I saw Bigfoot with a cougar in his mouth at the red roof inn.lol


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## sbreech (Jun 6, 2010)

ezbite said:


> I saw Bigfoot with a cougar in his mouth at the red roof inn.lol


I had went to the bar to get her a drink. I wondered where she went.


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## M.Magis (Apr 5, 2004)

KaGee said:


> Somebody gets it!
> 
> 
> 
> Pot meet Kettle.  The pissing contest began with your initial post. You can disagree without the hostility. It's not what you say, it's how you say it.


Please point out where I directed anything toward the original poster or resorted to calling him names? If you read again you'll see I did neither. In fact, I clearly said it was possible.


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## spikeg79 (Jun 11, 2012)

Cougars/Mountain Lions, Wolves, Buffalo, Bobcats & Lynx, Coyote's etc... used to be seen all over this great country... till we showed up [email protected] . If people are starting to see them again in places where they were eradicated that's good news  .


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## Mr. A (Apr 23, 2012)

I have a real close buddy that shot this when his daughter was trapped in a shed by it. It was in a tree right outside the shed and appeared to be waiting on the kid to come out. He's seen a whole mess of these cats since and thinks he's got a 10 to 15 cat population on his prolperty alone. About a 10 acre plot near New Lexington Ohio.








It's a bobcat and there is no doubt about it as it was reported to the game warden the day it was harvested. What is debatable is if this is what bigfoot keeps as a housecat or if they actually keep mtn lions!

A

Wishin' I was fishin'


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## eatinbass (Aug 6, 2012)

I ran across several Bobcat tracks in Zaleski last summer. I keep wouldn't question of someone spotted a puma.


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## BBO Ohio (May 7, 2012)

Just like how ppl around central (Madison County) Ohio say there's no bears here. Even though we've got a lot of corn doesn't mean that there not here. I had to prove that bald eagles were at Madison lake by filming one. Saw the same bird the other day at the Madison county game and fishing asso. So it's possible that there here, it's like the bears and the eagles, if you see them it's a rare thing around here


"friends don't let friends fish alone....... Good call!!!!"


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## AverageJoe82 (Nov 7, 2011)

I hunt down in Monroe County by Sardis, Ohio. I have seen with my own eyes a mountain lion and all of the tracks that surround the 150 acres I hunt. I'm also sure because of the cubs that were traveling along with the obviously female lion. Look, ultimately they are sparse but in some places like where I hunt they are there. I'll try to dig up the trail cam photo of the lion. Not a little kitty, bobcat or could be mistaken for a coyote. Definitely a mountain lion. 


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## Lewis (Apr 5, 2004)

Wasnt there a mountain lion,confirmed with a radio collar, that crossed several states including Ohio? I think this happened in the last year or two.


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## IGbullshark (Aug 10, 2012)

M.Magis said:


> This is whats been missing, another big cat thread.
> No one has ever said that there has never been the occasional cougar wondering through,


there are a lot of cougar in my neighborhood. actually, one lives next door. now that i think about it, i don't think we're talking about the same thing...


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## buckeyebowman (Feb 24, 2012)

bkr43050 said:


> I would say they would not be checking the feeder to eat the grain anyway. Perhaps they would venture through checking to see what else may be there.
> 
> Every now and then there are reports of sightings so I do believe that there may be one here and there. I do know that with the trail cam pictures there have been a few bogus pictures posted in recent years. They were pics of actual mountain lions but they were not taken in Ohio
> so that makes it more difficult for folks to believe the stories they hear.


Would one of those be the famous "Mountain Lion dragging a dead buck past a tripod feeder" picture? Yeah, that one seems to make the rounds every couple of years! It was a game cam pic that, in its last incarnation, was supposedly taken in Ohio, PA., Maryland, Virginia, or a dozen other states! Someone tracked it down and found out it was actually taken in west Texas. 

Are there mountain lions in PA., or Ohio? I honestly don't know, but I believe the odds are a little bit north of 0%. After all, there was a time, not all that long ago, that anyone in authority you cared to ask would tell you that there were absolutely *NO* black bear in Ohio. Then, a few years back, we had a bear scare here in Liberty Twp., just north of Youngstown. A young male that had been kicked out by its mom was roaming through residential areas. It eventually was killed by the Mahoning Cty game protector and Liberty Twp cops, and Oh!, what a hue and cry ensued from the local tree huggers! 

So, the state of Ohio got a little more serious about training its game protectors in bear confrontations, and came up with some money for some culvert traps. It wasn't long before one was needed. Another local claimed that they had seen a "large, black bear" roaming through their back yard. The culvert trap was baited and set, and, sure enough, they caught it. "It" being a large black LAB!! So, the post about some of these "sightings" being nothing more than overgrown house cats also has some validity. You gotta remember that many of these reports are generated by city folk who couldn't tell a bluebird from a blue jay from a badger!

Yet, I find strange the attitude taken by many in the law enforcement, game protection business. My friend has a hunting camp near Cook Forest. We asked the local game protector if he had heard of mountain lions in PA. He gave us the usual spiel, "No! There are no mountain lions in Pa." Then, he followed up with an unusual qualifier. "But, if you see one, don't shoot it or you'll be in big trouble. It's a protected species.! HUH? We asked him how we could possibly shoot an animal that supposedly doesn't exist in the State, or, how could the State assign protected status to an animal that supposedly doesn't live there? He just stared at us, and then turned and walked away.

I think that they are kind of between a rock an a hard place. They certainly know things that many of us don't, and if one of those things is that there are definitely viable populations of mountain lions in remote parts of a state they don't want to engender a public panic or crank up, as another poster termed it, the "gotta kill it" crowd.


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## FisherPro (Sep 15, 2011)

M.Magis said:


> And again, most sightings are *proven* to be house cats.


Most DOCUMENTED sightings are, in fact, proven to be house cats. Although, most sightings are UNDOCUMENTED. Therefor, when considering all sightings (documented and undocumented), very FEW are actually PROVEN to be house cats. No disrespect. No attitude. Just logic.


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## creekcrawler (Oct 5, 2004)

Sure, mountain lions.... . 

What next, a black bear in Bedford?


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## AlanC (Jun 16, 2010)

Count me and the wife as a couple nuts that claim to have seen a Cougar in Ohio. Monroe, County to be exact. ODNR never replied to the sighting. Mentioned it to our Vet a couple months later, and she mentioned a lady had brought in a couple Cougar kittens a couple years ago. Could be her pets grew too big and she let them loose? Maybe. And just maybe there is a resident population. Lots of stories around these parts about big cats.


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## buckeyeflyguy (Jan 22, 2009)

I do not know whether Pennsylvania has a mountain lion population. I was told by a Pennsylvania Game Commission employee, however, that they could not afford to acknowledge a population of them because of the expense of the required endangered species study.


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## Bassbme (Mar 11, 2012)

I don't know about mountain lions in Ohio, but I do know there was, and still may be mountain lion in the area of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. We used to go bow hunting for deer in that area. My dad was out on his evening stand, and had one within bow range. He said about 40 yards. He was ready to shoot it if it got much closer, but it just kind of slunk away. He said he was a little nervous coming out of the woods once it got too dark to shoot. When we came by and picked him and my brother up, he was pretty excited about it.


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## streamstalker (Jul 8, 2005)

Tigers take to the night in order to thrive among humans
A new study suggests that endangered carnivores and humans can share habitats. http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/tigers-take-to-the-night-in-order-to-thrive-among-humans/


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## EnonEye (Apr 13, 2011)

I think this is similar to UFO's, those who've seen them believe and those who haven't think it's bunk. Count me in the 2nd group AFA UFO's but... Ravenna, Ohio, 1969, 12 midnight, I and my best bud at the time saw a huge mountain lion cougar cross the road right in front of the car my bud was driving. We were moving slow, maybe 25mph because of the snow on the road and when it crossed he put on the brakes, we looked at each other, got out and looked at the tracks. This cat had to go well over 175 to 200lbs. I'm certainly no expert but I can testify, they are here. And by the way, neither of us partook of alcohol or drugs in those days. My vote is a thumbs up that they're here in Ohio.


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## vc1111 (Apr 13, 2004)

When hunting in Wyoming I came across large numbers of tracks while bow hunting elk. I asked the landowner about them...


Turns out he was really and I mean REALLY into hunting mountain lions and the property had a very hight density of them. (He actually paid a crazy price for a "dry tracker" which is a dog that can trail them over paved roads, dry areas, etc.)

During our conversation he told me that most of the locals who've lived there all their lives had never seen one during the day or at night...that is how elusive they are. 

I can believe that they could be here in our more remote areas and go unseen for a long long time.


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