indiucky
Grandmaster
I believe her......
At about 8:30 am EST (7:30 am local) I left our little shack to run up to the quickie mart (10 mile round trip) to get some breakfast...To you city dwellers questioning how good breakfast can be at a rural quickie mart let me just say...Like Grandma's...Rural quickie marts take their food making serious.....I left her sitting on the front porch sipping coffee and when I returned about 25 minutes later she was still there but had her "tub gun" (H&R 20 gauge with cut down stock and barrel) laying across her lap...
I raised my eyebrow up and said "Trouble in paradise and on the Lord's Day no less?"
"I saw a large animal...A cat...I think it was a mountain lion..."
"You mean a coyote..."
"No I mean a Mountain Lion..."
"Are you talking our bobcat?????"
"NO...I KNOW WHAT I SAW..."
I googled bobcat on my phone and hit google images and handed her the phone...
"YES!!! That's it right there..."
I grabbed my phone back and a photo of a mountain lion that was with the google bobcat images was clicked on....
Well things just got interesting...
We had six inches of rain Friday night...She pointed to the field across the road just over Oil Creek, the corner where I sometimes turkey hunt...I used a range finder once to check the distance and it's right at 240 yards, maybe a hair less, from the front porch....The farmer had put feed corn in last week so the ground was brown....A bluff rises up about 600 feet and levels to a plateau before dropping back down on our other property about 1.1 miles away...She said the animal came down the bluff (following the same trail the turkeys, coyotes, and deer use) and seem to be following something she thought...She then did an imitation of how it was walking using her hands and I thought, "Damn...That looks like how a cat would walk and...Damn...She looks pretty darn cute doing that...."
I said "Lets go look for tracks....The ground should still be soft enough" and off we went....Our boots were making tracks but not sinking in very deep...We crossed the first field and managed to ford Oil Creek without going over the top of our Mucks....We spread out and began searching for tracks...I found some coon tracks but nothing else...She kept insisting it was right by the creek but I told her if it was right by the creek she would not have been able to see it's whole body so I stood right where she was and backed up until I could see the front porch....
I began looking and spotted a large track...I saw the claw marks and called her over to tell her the bad news...Coyote track for sure...
I could see this track was probably a day old....Some debris in it and the small grass inside the track had popped back up...I then began to notice some other tracks running alongside this set of tracks...They were rounder, fresher, (the grass had not "popped" back up yet) with no sign of any claw marks......
This photo shows the two types of tracks in the same frame...
The field and the woods where the animal first appeared..You can not tell from the photo but twenty yards into the woods and you are heading straight up..
Here she is looking for tracks closer by the creek....
Here are the rest of the pictures of the tracks as best as I could take them...
My knife is 4.5 inches long....Notice how the blades of grass are still stuck to the earth and have not, "popped up" yet...
I called my buddy who is an ex C.O. and he forwarded them to another C.O. to get to the biologist for identification...I told him not to say we saw anything other than the tracks as I want their honest opinion...
My wife knew I was going to post this and is very shy about posting such things on the internet but she wanted you all to see this...I checked this morning on INGO and saw HK had a good weekend as well!!!! I told her that and asked her if she wanted me to post it in his thread and she said, "No sir...In six years of you being on INGO I never had a thread from something I did...I want BBI, Rustyhornet, Historian, Churchmouse etc... to see that I saw the mountain lion...Not you...You were too worried about getting biscuits and gravy so this is my post..."
So that's our story boys and girls...
At about 8:30 am EST (7:30 am local) I left our little shack to run up to the quickie mart (10 mile round trip) to get some breakfast...To you city dwellers questioning how good breakfast can be at a rural quickie mart let me just say...Like Grandma's...Rural quickie marts take their food making serious.....I left her sitting on the front porch sipping coffee and when I returned about 25 minutes later she was still there but had her "tub gun" (H&R 20 gauge with cut down stock and barrel) laying across her lap...
I raised my eyebrow up and said "Trouble in paradise and on the Lord's Day no less?"
"I saw a large animal...A cat...I think it was a mountain lion..."
"You mean a coyote..."
"No I mean a Mountain Lion..."
"Are you talking our bobcat?????"
"NO...I KNOW WHAT I SAW..."
I googled bobcat on my phone and hit google images and handed her the phone...
"YES!!! That's it right there..."
I grabbed my phone back and a photo of a mountain lion that was with the google bobcat images was clicked on....
Well things just got interesting...
We had six inches of rain Friday night...She pointed to the field across the road just over Oil Creek, the corner where I sometimes turkey hunt...I used a range finder once to check the distance and it's right at 240 yards, maybe a hair less, from the front porch....The farmer had put feed corn in last week so the ground was brown....A bluff rises up about 600 feet and levels to a plateau before dropping back down on our other property about 1.1 miles away...She said the animal came down the bluff (following the same trail the turkeys, coyotes, and deer use) and seem to be following something she thought...She then did an imitation of how it was walking using her hands and I thought, "Damn...That looks like how a cat would walk and...Damn...She looks pretty darn cute doing that...."
I said "Lets go look for tracks....The ground should still be soft enough" and off we went....Our boots were making tracks but not sinking in very deep...We crossed the first field and managed to ford Oil Creek without going over the top of our Mucks....We spread out and began searching for tracks...I found some coon tracks but nothing else...She kept insisting it was right by the creek but I told her if it was right by the creek she would not have been able to see it's whole body so I stood right where she was and backed up until I could see the front porch....
I began looking and spotted a large track...I saw the claw marks and called her over to tell her the bad news...Coyote track for sure...
I could see this track was probably a day old....Some debris in it and the small grass inside the track had popped back up...I then began to notice some other tracks running alongside this set of tracks...They were rounder, fresher, (the grass had not "popped" back up yet) with no sign of any claw marks......
This photo shows the two types of tracks in the same frame...
The field and the woods where the animal first appeared..You can not tell from the photo but twenty yards into the woods and you are heading straight up..
Here she is looking for tracks closer by the creek....
Here are the rest of the pictures of the tracks as best as I could take them...
My knife is 4.5 inches long....Notice how the blades of grass are still stuck to the earth and have not, "popped up" yet...
I called my buddy who is an ex C.O. and he forwarded them to another C.O. to get to the biologist for identification...I told him not to say we saw anything other than the tracks as I want their honest opinion...
My wife knew I was going to post this and is very shy about posting such things on the internet but she wanted you all to see this...I checked this morning on INGO and saw HK had a good weekend as well!!!! I told her that and asked her if she wanted me to post it in his thread and she said, "No sir...In six years of you being on INGO I never had a thread from something I did...I want BBI, Rustyhornet, Historian, Churchmouse etc... to see that I saw the mountain lion...Not you...You were too worried about getting biscuits and gravy so this is my post..."
So that's our story boys and girls...
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