By Jim Stanford on February 22, 2007
They almost seemed too unreal to be true.
The mountain lion photos spreading by e-mail around Jackson Hole this week (and posted here Tuesday night) may not have been shot in Rafter J, as alleged.
Mark Gocke of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department says no sightings have been reported in the suburban subdivision three miles south of town. Gocke received the same e-mail.
It’s highly unlikely that if someone had a mountain lion snarling on their back porch they wouldn’t have reported it to some sort of authority, which would have passed along the tip to Game and Fish.
Sara Carlson of the Cougar Fund, a conservation nonprofit based in Jackson, said these types of photos of mountain lions are widely circulating in cyberspace, and periodically surface. In some cases they have spawned urban legends, like the one about the mule killing a cougar.
When I posted the photos, I figured as soon as word got around I would hear from the photographer, or the photographer’s neighbor, or someone who could confirm where they were shot and when. But that hasn’t happened.
I did do a pretty thorough Internet search to determine whether the photos had been published before, and turned up no results.
Plus the e-mail addresses before me on the chain were all local and from fairly reputable establishments (wildlife art museum among them), which lent the message an air of credibility. The falling snow made it seem recent.
A posting by Joaquin on TetonAT said he received the same pics three years ago, of a cat purportedly seen in Lander.
The Cougar Fund’s Carlson says people are naturally curious about lions and aren’t trying to perpetuate a hoax when they e-mail these types of photos.
But it’s like the old childhood game of Telephone, where the message gets slightly distorted the more people pass it around.
Usually when we see pictures of mountain lions up close, they are dead, with a hunter holding them by the head.
Carlson says the lion pictured was a young one, relatively small in size. And she passed along a photo taken in Canada that shows how large these majestic cats can grow:
Posted under cyberspace, mountain lions, wildlife
Bummer….I was hoping to see one on my deck in town!
We grilled turkey burgers last night in hopes seeing one live!
Cool site!
OK, so I was skiing (actually boarding) lower tramline yesterday (3/10/07) around 10:15am and I was the only one there in the thick fog. No other tracks around except these HUGE freaking cat tracks, fairly fresh because no snow was on top and it didn’t stop snowing yesterday morning until around 8am. I nearly wet my pants I was so scared because you really couldn’t see more than 5 yards in front of you and I had no idea if I was riding right into it. They were way to big to be a dog and were definitely feline as far as I could tell. I didn’t linger long to examine them though. I’m not from JH, so I had no idea there were mtn lions in the area. Has anyone else seen tracks on the mountain?
The picture of the mule with the dead lion was explained by the people who took the photo.
The lion was already dead when the mule arrived:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/mulelion.asp
The picture of the man and the ‘huge’ dead lion is faked. If that image were real, the cat would need to be larger than a tiger. Mountain lions are about one third that size.
about 40 years ago moutain lions were alot bigger then they are now adays. i htink that picture could be real! i have seen “REAL” pictures of mountain lions that were over 5 foot long from head to it ass. i would like for the person who poster that picture to E-Mail it to me because i am an avid hunter and i wish we could still hunt mountain lions, because they are getting over populated in the north western part of california. the mountain lions are killing off most the young deer and most of the wild life! if the FISH AND GAME people “educated morons from the city” would do there jobs and count them by getting out in the wilderness and looking for signs of them instead of looking from there vehicles.
Stop killing them move out from their territory. Give them the space that they deserve. Once you guys move in, then burger king and al the human hell moves in as well. They deserve to have their territory, there’s no need for humans to keep expanding by going out to disco techs and reproducing at the end. Which is not living any space what soever for wild life. STOP MATING, STOP MAKING UP CASUAL RELATIONSHIPS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT. YOUR SENSES TRIGGER WHAT YOU WANT TO FIND WHICH IS SEX..IDIOTS. Then we end up over populated.
Leave the Mountain Lion alone.
What a bunch of redneck assholes. I’d love to watch their fat asses get mauled by a puma, in the worst way possible.
Kevin, you need professional help.
I’m from southern part of iowa and have been at my residence for over a year now. This will be the 2nd winter and we have a huge mountain lion. It has killed one of my young colts last winter and tried to get a second one earlier this week.
If it wouldn’t of been for my 2 rottweilers and pitbull it would of got the 2nd colt. I have young children and I am worried for them cause the damn thing keeps coming way to close to my house. We were able to track the prints down the corn feild and back to the timberline. The prints are 3x the size of my largest dog.
I had called the DNR last winter and he tried to convince me it was a large stray dog. He wouldn’t even come to the house. I had large cat prints that led up to my back porch and a injured colt in the shed 250 feet from the house. My neighbor has seen it, local hunters in the area have viewed it and numerous other people in the area also. My brother found a den in one of the coves of the lake that we live by.
I also have other horses that have had marks on them that look like deep scratches but they are also in a pasture unlike the yound colt it jump on in my shed. The shed was torn up from top to bottom and the colt only survived 2 days with help. It’s hard to tell young children why they don’t have their pets when they don’t understand. We have quite a few of these large cats down here and the DNR keeps denying it even though half the town has seen them.
My residence is literly a stones throw from town. I’m across a hay feild from a daycare center my child attends.