Cats are fairly common here, since I live right next to a National Forest. My nearest neighbor has some kind of state permit, and until late last year, kept 2-3 in a secure pen at his house.Males and females. The game wardens would occasionally bring him one that was injured or one they had taken from someone that no longer wanted it, had no permit, or had abused it. He lives across the river from me, and 3/4 mile as the crow flies, and male lions often came to his house because he had the females there, and they cross my property. I learned a lot about lions from him--he's the one that showed me the little mounds the males make and how to recognize their tracks and scat. He also told me it's rare to see them in daylight, but on the worst weather nights imaginable, they'll be out and about.
I had 2 encounters with them since 2006.
I lived at first in a small house on the front of this property while I was cleaning the place up. Late one evening, I was sitting in the little yard, which is less than 100' from the National Forest line. It was drought time, July or August, hot as hades just getting dark, and not a hint of a breeze and I was trying to cool off at the picnic table with an adult beverage. Dog was with me. I happened to look up, and there walks a mountain lion right down the power line easement that ran between the house and the govt land. I reached down, grabbed the dog's collar and watched him walk along till he went behind a stand of cedars. I got up, went in the house and picked up my spotlight and SKS, walked out on the easement and didn't see him, but a few seconds later, he came up from a little pond, turned on down the roadway and I let him go one his way. I could place my closed fist in his paw print and started building a 6' chain link fence around the yard the next day.
A couple years later, my wife decided we need to go for a walk around the perimeter of our whole place--this was before I had it cleared but I had just bushogged the fencelines the day before. I got a flashlight, got the 2 dogs and we had went about 2/3 way toward the river when we heard that high pitched scream followed by the little low deep growl they make. Both dogs came scampering back into our light
and I told citygirl wife to grab the back of my belt, hold on, don't look backand don't slow down. She said "wasn't that a screech owl"? 'Not hardly, that was a lion, lets go!'
We were completely unarmed, 1/4 mile from open ground and the house.
They make an awful racket when mating. One night in Feb 2007 in the midst of a bad storm, wife and I were laying in bed and from across the highway came a noise that for all the world sounded like a man having the flesh torn from his body. It went on for 30-45 minutes and I really wanted to walk across the highway and see what it was, but deer season had just ended and I don't have a hunting lic--figured sure as I walked out on that road with a light and rifle, the game warden would come down the highway and I would never be able to convince him I wasn't spotlighting deer. The same neighbor told me the next day that he had heard it as well and it was males mating a female, and it's she that was doing the screaming. It was an awful noise and truly sounded like someone was dying a little at a time.
I've never lost any stock to them but my sister did a few years ago--2 calves a week apart. There's no mistaking the claw marks on the calf's side, neck and back, with the rump eaten off and the guts torn out. The lion just jumps up on their back end, digs in the claws, weighs them down and starts that terrible slashing, clawing and chewing. They are very effective at their business.
