Scott, I saw that yesterday but hadn't gotten around to posting it because my computer was acting up a lot yesterday.

I still think that based on the photo, it could go either way. We have had a bobcat "visiting" us for about 9 months now that is the biggest bobcat I've ever seen....it is huge. Had I not repeatedly seen this big bobcat at our house, I'd say a bobcat couldn't get "that big". I have noticed, too, that the bigger the bobcat, the more bold it is. This big one likes to sit on top of the chicken coop and shows very little fear of humans. Occasionally, we fire a bullet into the ground near it to scare it off. It isn't a worry for us as far as the chickens go because it cannot infiltrate their sturdy fenced/roofed outdoor chicken run, but it is big enough it could take one of our two small cats though probably not one of our really large, fat cats.

One problem I have with trail camera phots is the lack of context in most of them. If you are seeing a wild critter in front of you, you can gauge its height and length compared to surrounding trees, shrubs, fence, etc. With a random shot of a wild animal prowling through grassland, it is hard to have that same kind of context for comparison's sake. Is the wild thing mowing through grass that is 18" tall? Three feet tall? Five feet tall? If you don't know the area, you can't extrapolate an accurate animal size in your mind.

I still expect we'll see more reports of animals believed to be mountain lions caught on trail cameras or seen by hunters this deer season.

For a couple of years now, I've watched increasing reports of cougars and bobcats (but significantly fewer reports of coyotes and I don't know why) in some of the newer exurb communities north of Dallas and southeast of our place....especially in the Frisco and Anna/Melissa areas. There have been quite a few caught on camera (usually on cell phone cameras from a distance, so not good, clear photos) and I can look at those photos forever and still not have a firm idea of what they are. In one city park with hiking trails, the city is talking about putting up signs to warn hikers of the bobcats and/or cougars being sighted in the area.

It sure seems like we're seeing more and more contact between the wild things and the humans who continue to move in and occupy formerly undeveloped land.

Dawn

I think what we are seeing is more that there is much less killing of wild predators these days combined with so many people managing acreages for wildlife now.

Up until 10 or 20 years ago almost all land outside of developed land was either farmed or ranched, so the owners had no desire to have dangers to their income out there. Now there are 40 to 160 acre "refuges" everywhere (including mine) that nobody traps or hunts and that are actually managed for wildlife to a certain extent.

Not just around here but in all the western states there is a big expansion of predators into more dense human populations because the predator numbers have increased. Mountain lion populations are as big in the west as any time in the last 100 years or more. They have hunting seasons in the northern plains in places that did not have any lions at all just 20 years ago.

In the DFW area it is also a little bit the other way around since the developed area has expanded so much, but for the most part around the west it is the predators that are expanding.

I agree about the trail cameras. If the camera is not moved and if there are multiple images of other animals on the pictures, then it is a lot easier to figure out size. The wildlife guy seems to be willing to come out and re-create the image if desired, so that will help a lot.

I saw a bobcat two weeks ago. It was small, like all the ones I have seen in person in the last 10 years, and it was trying to get away me as quickly as possible. On the other hand, the one photographed in a friends yard 1 mile from here was huge and sat on a tree branch in the yard for a long while with the friend in sight the whole time.

Scott, We had the little bobcats around last year, and they tended to be atypical. Many had darker tails that I'm used to seeing.

This year, they are large and are more typical-looking ones. They seem to be feasting on poultry. Many people here don't have enclosed chicken runs or coops....the poultry free-ranges during the day and spends the night sitting up in a small to medium-sized tree, or in open pole-barns. With that much poultry available and essentially unprotected, predators are going to show up big-time, and so they have.

One of our neighbors, just about a half-mile north of us, has lost 70 chickens and had one dog injured, although it survived. We lost about 6 chickens before we stopped letting them out of the chicken run to free-range for a portion of each day.

The sightings in Frisco could be bobcats or could be cougars. Perhaps even coyotes. Who can say? There has been so much development in that area in the last decade as new subdivisions and the accompanying commercial retail have just raced across the once rural prairie.

Here's the link on the park sightings, and I haven't seen anything lately that indicates if Texas Parks and Wildlife People have made a determination either one on what folks are seeing there.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Cougar Sightings At Frisco Commons Park

It's probably a mountain lion from the Rio Grande area trying to escape the drug violence.

Seriously, though, it is strange that it would hang around and be sighted multiple times unless it had a kill nearby. I'd guess 50% chance it is not a lion, 30% chance it is a released or escaped on, and 20% chance it is a wild one.

The Texas population in the far SW and south seems to be the one population west of the Mississippi that is not increasing, so they don't seem to be expanding their territory from there.

lol That would be even funnier were the situation in Mexico not deteriorating so rapidly....look at the Falcon Lake incident, and the recent supposedly-unrelated murder/decapitation of the commander in charge of finding the Falcon Lake suspects....or the victin's body. It makes you wonder about who is in control on that side of the border.

As for Texas, well, there's a whole lot of 'out yonder' there, especially in the west and southwest. I would think there would be lots of room in Texas for the wild things to roam without encountering a lot of humans.

When we took DS's Boy Scout troop on a weeklong hiking/camping trip in the Big Bend area in the late 1990s, we didn't see so much as one cougar track although we were repeatedly warned to be careful and watch out for them, especially while hiking in the back country. We did have wild pigs run through a gully at a state park campground one night, and on our return trip, some coyotes came through while we were 'sleeping' and they were so close you could hear them breathing. That was kind of cool.

I've seen so much more wildlife here on our own property than we ever saw on a billion camping trips....except that on our trip to the Philmont Scout Ranch we encountered a moose in the wild (that was really something special) and some friends of ours (I'm grateful we weren't with them at the time) encountered a bear there that same week.

I love wildlife, but there's just certain specific wild things I don't want to see in our yard or garden, or sitting on our porch.

How can you be a gardener and not enjoy the wildlife in general? To me, they're all linked together....up to a certain point.

In a 4 year stretch in the middle to late 90s, one single trapper removed about 40 cougars from that area, including about 2/3 of the ones collared and being studied there. That didn't go over to well with certain groups. It kind of makes me mad still.

I don't know if or when that stopped, but it had to take a while to build those numbers back up. Maybe the law has changed since then, but at that time you could kill them for any reason at any time and any age.

On my one and only trip to Philmont, a bear decided to raid the apple tree that was two tents down from us just after we had gone to bed. We had an assistant District Judge in our group and it was just outside his tent. They found other sleeping quarters for he and his son that night. It was a very small bear and came down from that tree, only to climb another.

A few days later, we had to walk a very large circle around the dining hall and come in through the back door so we could have breakfast. That time it was a good size bear in the big tree just outside the front door.

Scott, Why would they remove them? If the whole point of going there is to get a backcountry experience, then shouldn't we let it be a true backcountry experience? Although I don't like having certain wild animals in my yard looking at me, I don't think humans should move into a 'wild area' and just kill or otherwise remove every wild animal that crosses their path. Even with the chicken predation problems we have here, we just try to scare off the bobcats or, when we see them, the coyotes.

Carol, What wonderful Philmont memories! lol

If I'd seen a bear in the tree, I think I would have skipped the dining hall for the rest of trip and lived on junk food....or snuck into town to eat. I suppose that small bear was probably more afraid of the people than they were afraid of him. Of course, if by 'small bear', you mean 'young bear', then we know he presumably had a mama someplace.

Personally, walking around a bend in the hiking trail and seeing the moose (uh oh, since we were in the southwest, I bet it was an elk and not a moose) there in the middle of the wilderness was one of the most exciting and memorable parts of the trip.

Dawn

I have seen lots of moose in the woods. The military bases in Alaska have plenty of those so it wasn't unusual to see them by the road near my work, or even in my yard when I lived in Wasilla. We always warned the children about any animal with young, and especially the moose. One day my husband looked out the window to see our youngest son with his arm around the moose calf, and the mother headed their way. She licked the calf, then licked Eddie in the face from chin to forehead. At that point he let go and she took her calf and left. It was if she knew that he was someone's young also.

The bear at Philmont didn't seem to be afraid of us at all. They had warned us when we got there that they were having an unusual year for bear in camp (2002, I think). We had just gone to bed and started hearing shouting and several people yelling and beating on pots and pans with wooden spoons. It was all of the camp staff trying to scare the bear out of the tree. The Judge's young son was fascinated by the bear and we all kept grabbing him and pulling him back into a safer area. We didn't have to pull the Judge. LOL Anyway, he was plenty glad to move away from the apple tree for the night. We didn't see Mama Bear that night.

I didn't stay to watch them get the big one down, but I think it came part way down on it's own but they still had to shoot it with a tranquilizer and move it to a new area, away from the camp.

Town was not very close, and junk food in the camp area would have been really dangerous. We just tried to be careful.

Soonergrandmom, I love that story about your son with his arms around the moose calf, and the mother moose licking your son's face. What an amazing experience that was for him!

One of our favorite places to visit is the Tetons and it isn't just for the beauty and magical quality of the area, it's also because of the variety of wildlife you can see there. We've seen bear, moose, elk, eagles, deer, buffalo, and more. On one trip we were camping in Colter Bay and my husband was about to take the dog out for a walk, when he saw a bear coming down the road just about 15 feet from our trailer. Of course the bear was headed for one thing ... the trash dumpster. The dumpsters are bear proofed, but it sure was interesting watching him try every trick he could think of to get into it. Unfortunately we learned that a bear was euthanized shortly after we got home from that trip, because it had broken into a car. The bear was a repeat offender and they had tried to rehabilitate it by taking it back out to the wilds, but it had returned and was showing signs of being a danger to humans. That is sad, because it is the negligence of humans that leads to the bears becoming dependent on humans for food sources.

Dawn, we have friends who moved from Dallas to Frisco about a year and a half ago, and just after they moved there were reports of a female cougar in the area. They are in one of the newly developed housing areas with lots of undeveloped land nearby.

Suzie

Dawn, if memeory serves, the trapper was hired by ranchers in the area to kill as many as he could get. He/they didn't care about anything other than to kill as many as possible. (At first this make me very upset, but then I remember that I have the same opinion about wolves these days.) There was no law against it. It had to have impacted the population severly at that time and "experts" were of the opinion that the population in these areas of Texas was shrinking while all other areas in the west were seeing increases.

Is this an old photo?

Here is a link that might be useful: Atoka Sighting Last Year

and here is another really good photo in western ok 5 years ago, and some postings by others to go with it.

Here is a link that might be useful: and this is west ok

Jessaka, The one from Atoka that you linked above is from last December and I linked it at the time and we discussed it a bit, so yes, it is old but there may be people here who haven't seen it. The one from western OK is, as far as I know, the only other OK cougar sighting confirmed in recent history by the wildlife folks, other than the radio-collared one that was hit by a train.

I don't think it is all that unusual for an occasional mountain lion to be seen in western OK because they are known to inhabit adjacent states and the young males will roam a long distance but the sightings in southern Oklahoma are more rare, though not as rare as they used to be.

Something that is happening here that I do not understand is that we are having very few problems with coyotes the last three years. I don't know why. What I do know is that we used to hear them every night and often early in the morning as well, just as regular as clockwork and see them with great regularity. I'd see them in our yard, in the neighbor's pastures, running along the road or along fencelines, etc. I can't even remember the last time I saw one though I think it was the winter of 2008, and we rarely hear them. This is a total and complete reversal from just 2 or 3 years ago. I know their population cycles up and down, but lately it seems we haven't had the 'up' part of the cycle, not that I'm complaining, but I find it odd. While we're not seeing the usual level of coyotes, we have tons and tons of bobcats, which we've always had, but there seems to be more of them lately, and gray foxes as well. Foxes are a bit more 'shy' but they're always around. This year, I have had them hanging out around the garden, and that's a first in our 12 years here.

Dawn

We saw a coyote by the road a couple of weeks ago down near Muskogee as we were going to Greenleaf State Park. Before that, I hadn't seen one for a long time. Once I saw one on the side of I-44 near the Sapulpa Toll gate. My son has a lot at his place near Bartlesville and they are getting very brave. My DIL was mowing the other day and one was standing there watching her.

I saw a red fox on Thursday night just a block or so from my house. We have several that live in a small wooded area so we see them a lot. They may stay away from here for awhile because the walnuts are falling and it sounds like a war zone on my metal roof, and it is worse as the cars roll over them on the asphalt.

I looked out my window yesterday and someone was picking up the walnuts. I opened the door and just stood there and watched her. She said, "Your husband told me I could have these." When I asked him, he didn't remember telling her that, but we don't really care. I like the taste, but I don't like to crack and pick them out, nor do I like the black stuff you get all over your hands and knees as you crawl around. I don't mind pecans, but black walnuts are a mess. In fact, I may be parked a little to close to the tree, so I probably should move my car for a few weeks. I will gladly pay Braums for an occasional black walnut ice cream cone, and leave the walnut crop to anyone that wants it. She was just picking them up to sell anyway.

Some years I pick them up and put them in a big flower pot under a small shed. The squirrels think its a picnic lunch.

Carol,

During our first 6 or 7 years here we just had coyotes all over the place, including one who'd sit right outside our bedroom window and "sing" at night. They often were bold up to a point, but generally most would turn and run if they saw humans. We have had them walk up the driveway right towards us...as if we weren't even there. Every now and then we had a very aggressive one that wouldn't turn and run when it saw me walking down the road with 1, 2 or 3 leashed dogs. Lately, we just don't see them and barely hear them.

You've always seen more foxes there than I have here. I think they're here, but often hard to spot because of all the dense vegetation. I bet I didn't see but 5 or 6 live foxes total (also saw an occasional one dead in the road) our first 10 years here, and I've seen more than that in the last 12-15 months. The only red ones I've seen here were a couple of miles from our house, but the gray ones run up and down our road and hang out on our property.

I bet the squirrels appreciate the 'picnic'.

We let the squirrels have the walnuts and they also get a lot of the pecans. None of our nut trees are near pavement, but we have neighbors who have pecan trees near the road and when pecans drop and get run over, they leave little oily spots all over the road. I wouldn't want those little oily spots all over a driveway or patio.

Dawn

There is a breeding population in Woodward County along the Colorado border area. There have been a few killed by wildlife people and ranchers in that area for taking their livestock. Take a look at a satellite image from Google of Mapquest of that county and you will see that the NW portion is an extension of the "mountain" range coming out of New Mexico and Colorado and that is as far into this part of the country that mountain lions reside. (This population is pretty new and they have only been there in the last two decades.)

Outside of those confirmations there have been, in the last decade, confirmations around the state in (1) the Ponca City area of one from South Dakota that was hit by a train, (2) one in the Perkins area in a really poor quality trail cam shot 2 or 3 years ago, (3) one rumored to have been killed crossing I35 near Purcell about 10 years ago, and (4) the one by the trail cam near Atoka last year. Plus, I know of one other in eastern Oklahoma from a few years ago that was never publicized.

Most of Oklahoma is really far from any breeding population of lions so we don't get many lone males wondering around, but we are starting to see them a little more.

Nebraska now has a small breeding population that has come from the South Dakota Black Hills in the last 5 years, North Dakota has a similar small population that dispersed from the Black Hills, and states like Wisconsin, Kansas, and Iowa have see a handful start to show up in the last few years that are also dispersing from the Black Hills area. All have been younger males looking for new home ranges.

In the main body of Texas and even a couple of times into Louisiana there have been confirmations of younger males roaming through, but not as many as there have been in the past because the resident populations in South Texas and the Big Bend area were not really increasing until maybe just recently.

The populations in Florida and the Black Hills of South Dakots have been studied extensively. Large percentage of the animals in those states (and any populated area) are killed annually by autos beacause of how far the animals travel in their normal routine. If we had any resident population here we would see bodies showing up regularly.

Wow! I had no idea that this would make it onto this forum. I'm from Ada, and I know Steve H. (the trail cam owner--Great, and I mean great homebuilder/carpenter). I have seen a large bobcat in this area in the daytime. Don't know if it's a lion or not, but it very well could be. By the way, don't ever approach a moose of any age, they are far more dangerous than any mountain lion, in my opinion; blind and big.