RE: More Mountain Lions In PA Discussion
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