I have a large cougar that showed up on my trailcams last year a couple of times. Ive never hunted cougars so I don't know anything about them, also dogs are banned in my state. I'm hearing they can have a very large range, but what I'm wondering is if they will return to an area seasonally? Or is it possible they will stay in an area as long as the prey is good?
Cougar Hunting
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sierracharlie338
Well-Known Member
Oh you meant the four legged kind.......
No experience there.... carry on.
No experience there.... carry on.
They can be territorial and have a distinct hunting range with somewhat of a hunting route they will follow and pass by your camera on a somewhat regular schedule every several days or week or two. If you find a pattern you can anticipate their approximate arrival to the area. There are also transient cougars that may wander over a hundred miles doddling around for a few days or weeks then moving on.
This is good info, but then it also means Im nowhere close to establishing a pattern because the 2 cam pics were 5 months apart. But I have seen poop and a couple cat scratches in this spot, and its not a big spot just a place I scouted to hunt deer.
What I would recommend is whenever you get a little new snow is to ride the logging roads looking for fresh tracks then do some calling. I live in Orygun too so there are as many cats as ever in the mountains & foothills. Attached photo is not me. Cat was taken in foothills not far east of Seattle. A big tom. Hunt with a partner!
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A transient cougar may move thousands of miles, a cougar that moves a hundred miles is still in a normal home range. Those things will regularly have a 1,000 square mile home range.
There has been an amazing amount of data collected from tagged cougars. Sometimes they just wake up one morning and walk a straight line for 1,500 miles at a pace that you wont believe is possible, spend a few days there for no apparent reason, then run home, all while never being seen by a single human eye.
Hawkeye Pierce
Well-Known Member
You beat me to it. Very nice.
azsugarbear
Well-Known Member
Established mountain lions have a home range/territory they are obliged to maintain. A lot of their time is spent cruising the border to re-mark their home turf so that younger males will know the land is already claimed. Each male home range usually encompasses the territory of 3-4 female lions. They are very difficult to hunt without dogs. Best chance of killing one is to find a recent kill site or set up on a canyon that serves as a corridor.
I took a wildlife management class in college and a mountain lion study in the Idaho wilderness areas was a topic. The instructor showed a map with the territorial boundaries of multiple lions that were treed, darted and radio collared. It looked like a county map of Idaho only none of the lines were straight and there were a lot of them. The territories were always changing due to death of a cats. When all the territories are taken the surplus & juvenile cats head down into the marginal areas where they get noticed.
Ive heard that killing a cougar makes more move in the area?
Basically predator hunting doesnt really improve deer numbers in the long term.
ofbandg
Well-Known Member
As Mr. azsugarbear says, a recent kill site is the best bet when you can't use dogs. That is not to say that finding kill sites is easy. Cougars like to hide their them, either in a tangle of brush or under a pile of leaves and needles they have scraped over top of it. Sometime the magpies will give you a hint about the location. Tracking them in the snow can be interesting, especially if you find the tracks getting fresher. You have to keep checking the trees around you in that particular case. On occasion you might find, as I have that when tracking them, you come across your own tracks with the cougars overlaid on them in which case all you need to do is wait and the animal will find you - if you have the patience. One almost sure way to find cougars is to watch a local herd of wild animals, in my case Bighorn sheep. When you see them staying in a very tight bunch as they feed in the open, with the young rams on the outside of the circle watching furtively, it generally means they are being watched by a cougar.
