Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

With all the trail cams in the woods today, it was only a matter of time before a quality undisputed picture of a mountain lion would be taken is this area.

Well, as luck would have it, this very nice pic of a mature female mountain lion last week just south of Uniontown Pa.

The Pa. Game Commission investigated this picture. They also obtained print casting from the area. The game Commission confirmed this picture as authentic and classified this as a confirmed sighting.

[quote="Greybeard"]With all the trail cams in the woods today, it was only a matter of time before a quality undisputed picture of a mountain lion would be taken is this area.

Well, as luck would have it, this very nice pic of a mature female mountain lion last week just south of Uniontown Pa.

The Pa. Game Commission investigated this picture. They also obtained print casting from the area. The game Commission confirmed this picture as authentic and classified this as a confirmed sighting.

Funny how things sometimes come in bunches. This morning an employee here showed me a picture on a cell phone that had supposedly been downloaded from a trail cam set up at a fellow employee's deer stand near Keokee Lake in Lee County, VA. Appears to be of a mountain lion (they call them "painthers" around here) big enough to carry a good-sized deer past the camera. Can't vouch for the bona fides of the picture, but that's the tale that was told to me. The Game Warden will no doubt tell you there ain't no such thing as a mountain lion hereabouts. I will say that any varmint, woodsbooger or "haint" that may have been hiding unseen for decades in these hills might be expected to to have been best hidden in that particular little godforsaken corner of nowhere, though.

Dorm! YEP! All my cousins live in that very area, and YEP! I've seen one of those "mysterious paithers" myself.

One Game Warden was patient enough to explain WHY they do not claim to exist in great numbers: MONEY!

White tail, duck, and dove make TONS of money for the DGIF, and Commonwealth, in turn, they are given a set amount of funds. Those funds are hard to come by, and spent frugally. If they had to take funds from a MONEY PRODUCING area to defend an "endangered species" it'll kind of be a waste.

Same reason they won't actively look for "wood boogers". If they found one? There are folks traipsing thru hunting grounds, and funds being wasted.

Those in the know....know there have always been large cats running around the wild places. The "authorities" said there were no cougars where I lived in TX too....well they should have told that one that was tracking the cows on my grandpas farm that he had to go away cause he sure scared the pants off of us.

I have done Search and Rescue tracking (mostly wilderness missing person search) in the area for many years.
That also includes Georgia to New York, and Ontario. and in most of those area I have come across their tracks.

Locally, just south of Front Royal va, their are a few sightings with photos. One of my SAR friends has some good
photos of Coyotes as well, near Winchester Va. Most memorable was a search I did near Hagerstown MD, on
a snowy day, under 1 inch. We found large cat tracks in the freshly fallen snow.

at Dulles airport complex, I witnessed deer carcass that was in a tree.

Marcel Lorger

I know we have 'yotes in Hanover currently. Pop makes a bounty off of them.

But Lorger is scaring the crap outta me with the Front Royal, cuz' I like hunting in that area.

We've had a 'yote problem in SW VA for at least 15-20 years. Quail are now pretty much extinct out here; probably due to the coyotes.

As for cats, There've always been plenty of wildcats out here, but they're not nearly as big as the cats we're talking about now. There've probably always been "painthers" out here, too. But before the advent of trail cams, most folks just dismissed the reports as exaggerations of wildcat sightings. And I can remember sitting around a campfire as a boy and listening to large cats squalling most of the night - - and moving in a circle around the camp. After a while, it starts to sound just like a woman wailing. Probably been the genesis of many a "haint" tale.

CORRECT!

Now if we could just solve the "WoodBooger" mystery, I'd stop carrying a Ruger .454 Casul.

I ain't gittin' "luved up on" by no Wood Boogers!

Reverenddel wrote:I ain't gittin' "luved up on" by no Wood Boogers!

That's a future bumper sticker in the making

Reverenddel wrote:CORRECT!

Now if we could just solve the "WoodBooger" mystery, I'd stop carrying a Ruger .454 Casul.

I ain't gittin' "luved up on" by no Wood Boogers!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

OK. Is that a statement of intent, or a complaint?

Both.

Episodes in the woods that made me touch big steel, and thank Jebus for Bill Ruger.

Got to tell y'all that the picture of the "painther at Keokee Lake I posted turned out to be a hoax. Story now is that the guy's hunting buddies loaded that pic on his trail cam as a joke. It worked. he was telling folks he was now a little bit afraid to hunt that stand. I'm told an image search on the net tied that picture to Texas. I was a little suspicious of it to start with, which was why I said I couldn't vouch for its bona fides. Turned out my suspicion was valid. Sorry about the misleading post. I didn't go to do it.

Still....I don't doubt that there are big cats out there.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

You know what would be worse? Painther-WoodBooger mutants....

I'd quit goin' in the woods, move to the city, and never come out.

Zombie Woodboogers

...all I'm sayin'

mamabearCali wrote:Still....I don't doubt that there are big cats out there.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

I had been asked a few time to confirm sightings, looking for tracks and other signs in NOVA.
Loudoun and Fairfax. Between 2005 and 2009 I checked 10 locations for the quick and easy.
Tracks in soft soil and scat. Scat looks like big cat poop, full of fur. The only confirmation was
seeing a deer carcass up a tree at the Air and Space museum at Dulles. The "official" report
was Coyotes or ferrule dogs. I can not think of any thing that would drag a deer up a tree.
It could have been fake, but getting caught on Dulles doing something dumb would most likely
be handled by DHS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao62AiFiZ-o
Here is a vid shot in Wva. When it gets up and walks, you can see the tail, it is not a bob cat.
I think this is done in Wva, as it looks like a Wva sticker in the lower left windshield.

Another thing to look at is that cats in Va are looked at as endangered, not extinct.
And in Virginia given Special Legal Status.

The lack of photos does not really mean any thing, camaras around for over 100 years,
but the first Snow Leopard was not photographed untill 1971, and again not untill 1990.


Something that is also cool, Elk are making a comeback in Southern Va. Wonder If I
will see on in NOVA in my life time.

Lorger

I'm not saying there are no mountain lions in SW VA. I expect there probably are. I was just owning up to the fact that the pic I posted turned out to be bogus.

Yes, Elk are around. They just stocked some in Buchanan County; and they have already drifted into Lee, Wise, & Buchanan Counties from Kentucky; where they were stocked several years earlier. They only downside is that they are VERY destructive. They can tear a golf course fairway up like somebody's been cutting cookies with a small bulldozer. Ditto plantings and gardens.

Hmmmm...well that particular video looks to me like a bob cat....the ears just don't seem like a cougars ears. But I certainly could be wrong.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

I know I have seen one with my own eyes, and it was NOT a "bob cat", WAY too big!
I measured against a tree it crossed, and it's paw print, and that was a BIG OLE CAT! About the size of a German Shepard, or even a golden retriever.

Made me start carrying in the yard, back in hills.

I still remember going out my cousin's house late at night to get in the truck, heard a scurry, click on my flashlight, and a bob cat was about 25 yards from me got into the truck pretty quickly. Ran into a black sow bear in near the spring that feeds my cousins cabin by the railroad trucks... TWAS NOT...HAPPY! Think she had cubs close by, but AGAIN, I got BACK into the truck fairly quickly.

That's the thing people forget who live Suburban, or Urban... You are NOT top of the friggin' food chain in the woods, UNARMED, UNAWARE, OR UNPREPARED!

Keep your wits about you, and beware Zombie Wood-Boogers.