The carcass of a buck pronghorn, apparently killed and stashed by a mountain lion, became a macabre discovery near the Thermopolis Golf Course on Sunday. Wyoming Game and Fish personnel trapped and relocated a young mountain lion that evening.
A mountain lion advocate and an experienced mountain lion hunter both told Cowboy State Daily that stashing food so close to humans seemed typical of a young, inexperienced cat.
Carcass First Reported To Police
The Thermopolis Police Department on Sunday received a call from somebody who found the carcass of a buck pronghorn, or antelope, next to the golf course. The report was passed forward to Game and Fish.
Photos taken at the site show the carcass partly covered with what appears to weeds and grass.
Mountain lions are known to stash, or cache, their kills and hang out nearby, occasionally returning to eat.
Game and Fish large carnivore specialist Dan Thompson told Cowboy State Daily that the Thermopolis game warden received a call about a dead pronghorn on Airport Road.
“Upon responding, it was confirmed to have been killed by a mountain lion,” he said.
“We obviously don't fault a mountain lion for doing what mountain lions do, but we do not promote them in residential areas. So they, the Thermopolis game warden and the district biologist, set a trap and captured the mountain lion that evening,” he added.
“It was decided not to immobilize the animal, so we don't have additional details on its weight, etc., but they safely relocated the subadult cat to a more remote area,” Thompson said.
Youngster Learning The Ropes
The incident in Thermopolis seems typical of an inexperienced male cat, Fauna Tomlinson, volunteer board member with the Mountain Lion Foundation, told Cowboy State Daily.
Young males are sometimes pushed out of prime territory by dominant adult male mountain lions, she said.
That might put them near humans, and they might be careless about where they stash their kills, compared to adult cats, Tomlinson added.
“It would be like a teenager, when you send a teenager out,” she said.
Younger mountain lions might travel great distances while trying to establish themselves, Tomlinson said.
It’s not easy being a wild lion,” she said.
Mountain lions from Wyoming and other mountain states have been expanding their territory, pushing out into the prairies and badlands in Kansas and Nebraska.
Adults Drag Kills Huge Distances
Mature mountain lions make great efforts to cache their kills in secluded areas, Neale Jones of Jackson told Cowboy State Daily.
He’s a houndsman, or hunter who pursues mountain lions with hounds.
“I haven’t seen mountain lions making caches anywhere close to town. I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t seen it,” he said.
“I’ve seen them make a kill close to a road and then drag the prey off,” he said.
The distance that mountain lions drag big game animals bears testament to their immense strength and endurance, Jones said.
“I’ve seen drag marks that go for a quarter mile or a half mile back into the trees, just to get the prey away from areas of human conflict,” he said.
Leaving a kill stashed right next to a golf course seems more typical of a “less-mature cat,” he added.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
