Stan, does the Georgia DNR admit to cougars in your area, or are they like most other eastern states that deny it. With the advent of all these trail cameras, its hard to deny. I have had pts. show me trail cam pics of cougars here in eastern Ohio.
Was hunting in Marquette county of the UP one year and ran into a guy with his Brittany on a leash--told me he was up in the area I was headed to, and got a very eerie feeling, turned around to see a cougar crouched down and creeping up on him--he was white as a ghost and truly scared. The next year was a film clip of 2 cougars crossing Rt 95--it came from the cameras on the front of the Michigan Highway Patrol.

In the 80's when I worked in Boston and travelled Rte. 93 South every morning at 6:30 I was on my way in to work one morning when I saw what I thought was a smallish doe, dead up under the guard rail of the median. But as I drove past it and could see it from a different angle I discovered it wasn't a deer at all but was a cougar with the tail nearly as long as the body and the face of a cat. I should have stopped but the rush hour traffic was too intense.

I never heard or read a word about it on the TV news or the newspapers. It's as if the story was covered up.





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They used to deny it. I haven't spoken to any of them about it in years. Not sure what their position is now. You're absolutely right about the trail cam evidence being overwhelming these days. Trail cams have been good for lots of things.

Panther numbers have been on a gradual increase here since the late 70s, IMO. Bald eagles, too.

Best, SRH

I’ve noticed a somewhat interesting situation on the property. Throughout the fall and early winter there were many coyotes on the property. Now, for some reason, they seem to be gone. We have a lot of snowmobile and horse trails throughout the property. I have been all over the property on a snowmobile but have not seen a coyote track since we got the heavy snows. The deer tracks are thick in every area of the property, but no coyote tracks. I’m at a loss to explain it.

Look around the deer yards, if you have any in the area.





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We don't have deer yards. The snow is not high enough for them to start yarding up. It's been about fifty years since I've seen deer yards on the property. We lost a lot of deer that year, the only year I can remember with major losses.

I caught one yearling deer. She wasn't hard to catch. I wanted to save her so I placed her in the barn with a lot of feed. She died the next day. Stressing her out to catch her probably didn't help. I wouldn't do that again.

There has been a number of reports of cougars here in Alaska. Can't remember if there are any pics.

I bet the rabbit population is down the reason the coyotes have moved on to other places or else distemper has killed them off....charlie

It's hard to figure Charlie, with as many deer as there are in the area. Rabbit populations were pretty high this year as were squirrels. I would imagine that a lot of their food is rabbits and squirrels. But with all the deer I would have expected them to stick around all winter. I'll be watching to see if they return in the spring.

Turkey season isn't that far away and I'm already geting excited. I generally don't shoot turkeys in the fall although I get pleanty of chances when bowhunting deer. But the spring gobbler season really gets me going.

If I may suggest.... perhaps your population was hit hard by mange. That could provide a heavy die off if the weather has been bad enough. We have seen it here in Southernmost Illinois.