Cougar or yote
 

Hello I am a Texas deer hunter here to ask a question. On my friends property the area of the state has axis deer and whitetail and they found a young axis buck dead one morning after a snow about this time last year. The buck looked like it had been close to the fence line and attacked there. The carcass was about 70 yards from where the blood trail first started in the fence line, and there had appeared to have been a struggle. It looked like it had been dragged up the hill and was hidden by bushes. When it was found that snowy morning, a large portion of the hindquarters was missing, and also tracks around it, not coyote tracks with separation from the paw and nails, but what appeared to be feline tracks. My friend set up snares around the carcass should the animal return, but all he caught were raccoons.

This past summer, me and and another one of his friends were driving ATV's around, and we took different paths to get to a wheat field. When we finally met up, he had a worried look on his face and said that when he was going down the dirt path, a large cat (larger than a coyote) with no spots ran across the road from the hill to his left and disappeared into the forest.

Since then we have not noticed any remains, but still remain worried, because about 6 or 7 years ago, he shot at a mountain lion from about 400 yards while deer hunting and missed. We do not want to use dogs to track it, but I was wanting to know if 1) This seems to have been killed by a lion. and 2) If it is possible to bait the lion with meat or calls while hunting from a blind overlooking a large stretch of land on the ranch.

RE: Cougar or yote
 

The cougar tracks around the carcuss make it pretty conclusive that he would be the culprit...

RE: Cougar or yote
 

Cougar got it....

RE: Cougar or yote
 

Think it was a pouutty cat... It was, it was....

Mike
Pure Predator Calls
www.purepredator.com

RE: Cougar or yote
 

Cat all the way my friend! If ur wantin to kill it find a VERY VERY VERY thick area with just a lil open spots and bait and call there or maybe by a big bluff! Its likley to stay away from open areas due to humans and bein spotted...their smarter then that...

RE: Cougar or yote
 

My uncle called a cougar in with a rodent distress call, but he has seen only one like that. And, he has been hunting yotes for years. I don't think that the cougar is too big a problem unless you really want a cougar skin why bother with it. The best way would be dogs, but if there is only one in the area you have to locate it to some extent before you can set the dogs lose. If you have only found 1 kill in at least 6 years of the cougars presence then I would live and let die. Nature selects for the strongest and healthiest so if there is a cougar cutting down the weaker deer then you will have a healthier population. Look at the Kaibab deer disaster. After all the predators were killed of in there area the population thrived andthere were many deer cause the habitat supported could support a large number of deer, but then the pop. got so large the deer started to over eat the plants they needed to survive. Then the population dropped hard and almost all of the deer were thin and unhealthy for many years and a whole lot of them died. If there are too few predators it is just as bad or worse than too many. Now if you had multiple carcasses every year that you came across and the game numbers were bad then I would say call in the hounds and set up over the kills and drop the predator numbers so the deer can come back some, but 1 kill in half a decade and I would say you could do better things with you time for the deer than hunting down a critter that removes the weak and infirmed from their population.

RE: Cougar or yote
 

Also, odds are that was more than likely a cougar kill, and how often do you find 'yote kills? Just a though, but jaguars have been seen and confirmed in this country do you know if they have seen any in your are? I doubt there is any chance it is a jaguar, but I think it would be cool to see one in the wild.

RE: Cougar or yote
 

It's actually funny that you said that because in the city where my friend's ranch is located, they used to have a zoo back in the 40's or 50's, and when it closed down, there were rumors that some of the animal were released or lost in the wild out there. Some of the attractions were black panthers and jaguars. About four years ago, we spotted a black cat drinking from a pond from the ranch house, but passed it on as a house cat. AFter hearing about the zoo, I sometimes wonder.

RE: Cougar or yote
 

Could be, but house cats are way smaller than any of the big kitties, but they hate you and would run for their lives from a human under normal circumstances, but if they were in a zoo they might have somewhat be come accustomed to people. That would be pretty cool to have on your land, but I doubt that anything like that really happened. The only jaguar you are likely to see up here in the states is a solitary adult male and if you were lucky he might look at you before he bolted if he know you were there.