I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods deer hunting and have never been fortunate enough to have seen a mountain lion. Now, it seems a lot of hunters have admitted to seeing lions–and the “alleged” black one too–but I am more than a bit skeptical when I hear most of these reports. Usually it is something along the lines of, “I saw something low and moving, and I couldn’t see what it was, so it had to be a mountain lion. It was big. It had to be a mountain lion.”
Case in point: It was back in 2009 that photos of a mountain lion dragging a buck it had killed surface. As it turns out, the photos were real and the buck was in fact killed by a lion on a South Texas ranch. So today I get an email from a guy with the exact same photo, but this time he claims the cat is in the Texas panhandle. Here you go:
“I have read a lot about this mountain lion. I can and will set the record straight. I live in Borger, TX 79007. This mountain lion, just a couple of nights ago, came upon a pen containing two prize goats over in Skellytown, a little community probably of 250 population. It is in Carson County. County seat in Panhandle, Texas. I have talked to the Sheriff and there and he tells me he has heard of this mountain lion, but no one has ever seen him. He travels at night and does his dirty work while it is dark then he will sleep and rest during the day.
My son-in-law has actually seen this mountain lion up close and personal. He drives a tank truck and was leaving a lease the other night, when out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something. He stopped and backed up and shined his light out into the dark and there stands an animal. He said it was too large to be a bobcat, so he knew then it was a mountain lion.
He actually got out of his truck and started to walk towards the animal. The animal stirred around a little and then just trotted off. When my son-in-law got home for the night and rested, and went back to work, he was telling this guy who he works with about seeing a mountain lion. This guy told him, you know the other night when I was down by one of the tank batteries I heard a growling noise. I looked up and sitting at the top of the tank was this mountain lion.
He said he dropped his tool belt, ran to his pickup, and got out of there. The next day he came back to get his tool belt.”
So I’m not going to claim to be a mountain lion genius, but it sounds a little CRAZY if you ask me. How is this old photo of a mountain lion with a dead buck in South Texas now the lion in the Panhandle? I don’t know what they are drinking up there, but it has got to be good. What do you think?