Potential Cougar killing lambs

gth said:
A 20lb lynx in Northern Ontario leaves tracks all over the place but a 100lb cougar in the south never leaves any. It would take me a week or less to capture a coyote (with a way better nose than any cat) in a trap or on camera but no one ever seems to be able to get a pic of a cat.

Tough to swallow for me.
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You're an MNR mole :p
BURN THE WITCH :D:wave:
 
Had a close up with a cougar in Northern Sask. He was just strolling past the entrance to our off-grid camp site. Man, they are damn big cats. This one would have been 4' from nose to arse, tail not included. How big do they get?
 
2fat2fly said:
Had a close up with a cougar in Northern Sask. He was just strolling past the entrance to our off-grid camp site. Man, they are damn big cats. This one would have been 4' from nose to arse, tail not included. How big do they get?
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Varies, but on average 2m nose to tail. What you saw was a real monster!
 
gth said:
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A 20lb lynx in Northern Ontario leaves tracks all over the place but a 100lb cougar in the south never leaves any. It would take me a week or less to capture a coyote (with a way better nose than any cat) in a trap or on camera but no one ever seems to be able to get a pic of a cat.

Tough to swallow for me.
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I totally agree with this. I spend 300 days a year in the bush, and have been doing this all my life, trapping, surveying, claim staking etc. I have seen lots and lots of lynx tracks, but never once have I seen a cougar track. And I know the difference between them. Every second person arround here says they've seen a cougar, should be lots of tracks IF they really are arround. I'd really like to think that they were here, but I think that that is all it is, wishfull thinking.
 
Well had a good little road trip today. Nice area of the country with rolling hills and rock fence lines. Real nice people. They have lost a total of 24 lambs over 2-3weeks, all during the day. They have found 5 dead lambs and 1 that was living that died shortly after. All taken from fenced pasture. One from 30 feet behind a parked van the owner had parked in the middle of the field with the radio blasting!
This all seems very weird to me. This is in the country but well populated with only small sections of bush.
We took the foxpro and did a few sets starting out with a fawn bawl, followed by a fawn distress, then female howl and finally pup distress. Saw one small red fox, a turkey and a bunch of crows. Not a single yote track, not even any scat. After hunting we hit the bush around the pasture, no hair, no blood, no tracks or trails of any kind except for a few coon trails. It hasn`t rained there in weeks. A good day in all, left with only more questions than any answers:confused:
 
...well there was an article in the french Hunting & Fishing magazine (Sentier Chasse et Peche) here in Québec. There have been hundreds of sightings throughout the province (highest concentration of sightings in western Quebec along the Ontario border), tracks, and DNA proof (hair found). It was proven to be eastern cougar. It's no longer a question of believing their existance or not. Cougars in the east do exist.
 
tjsudbury said:
I totally agree with this. I spend 300 days a year in the bush, and have been doing this all my life, trapping, surveying, claim staking etc. I have seen lots and lots of lynx tracks, but never once have I seen a cougar track. And I know the difference between them. Every second person arround here says they've seen a cougar, should be lots of tracks IF they really are arround. I'd really like to think that they were here, but I think that that is all it is, wishfull thinking.
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Never had anyone claim they saw a cougar, what crowd you hanging out with? :onCrack: ;)

What area around sudbury do you spend your time? I spend most of my time NW of sudbury.
 
My uncle lost 12 lambs in 2 nights a couple of years ago, to coyotes, since we don't have cougars here. We couldn't find any of the lambs and only odd bits of wool through the woods above the pasture. We thought that it was a ##### teaching the pups to hunt.
In my experience, dogs will make a racket and chase sheep, maul them and sometimes kill them, but they don't tend to feed on them or drag them into the woods. More of a "when it stops moving, it's not fun anymore" type of thing and they tend to injure a whole bunch at one time rather than picking off an individual animal.

Good luck to those that are helping out.
 
gth said:
I still hunt/trap there but just not as much anymore.

One farm I hunt/trap is a sheep farm. He has losses every year from predators. The local coffee club always blames the 'cougar'. We almost always find coyote dens full of lamb bones/hide. The farmers son and his coyote hunting army took 22 coyotes out of that concession last winter.............wouldnt take 22 coyotes very long to eat 20 lambs.

A 20lb lynx in Northern Ontario leaves tracks all over the place but a 100lb cougar in the south never leaves any. It would take me a week or less to capture a coyote (with a way better nose than any cat) in a trap or on camera but no one ever seems to be able to get a pic of a cat.

Tough to swallow for me.
Click to expand...


im a "gotta see it to believe it" type person and i always figured there were as many cougars around here as bigfoot. then a month or 2 ago (i made a post here) i saw the rear 2/3 or so of a large COUGAR jump across the trail as we were driving our atv's. no other animal around here has such a long and slender tail. my buddy in front saw the entire animal. we just happened to be looking the right way at the right time as it likely took 1/2 a second for it to jump the trail.

i've been back to that same place (mt pleasant for any locals) and havent found a single track or seen the animal again. i figure they are like a normal cat...avoid mud whenever possible.


shooting this animal to protect livestock would be 100% legal. it would be awesome to see pics when you finally get him :)
 
I don't know anything about whether cougars are in Ontario, or not in Ontario.
Quite a bit has been made of a lack of tracks. In the summer time it is extremely hard to find a cougar track. I have seen a cougar den, but could not find a track leading to it, or near it, except in the fresh dirt at the den entrance. This was in bush, with the usual amount of leaves and trsh on the ground.
Our trapper friend on here can, of course, distinguish cougar tracks from lynx tracks. However, I will wager that the majority of writers on these posts can not tell the difference!
OK, I will give away the secret. Looking at the tracks in the snow, the front feet of both species are very similar in size. But here is the sure fire, give away. A lynx has a furry foot, and no claw marks are visible. With a cougar, the claw from every toe will make a mark in the snow, in front of the toe pad.
Length of stride is another clue. A lynx will step about 12 to 14 inches. A cougars length of stride will be on the order of 22 inches.
The hind foot of a lynx is very small, compared to the hind foot of a cougar.
 
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