One of my great grandad's regrets, later in life, was the realization he and his father killed one of the last jaguars in North Texas, if not the last one. I'll have to see if I can find the account. My one vague memory of him was him telling my dad about it.

Those old pics reminded me that I've seen an old photograph of Sam Houston wearing an ocelot skin vest. Historically ocelot were present over most of Texas so the skins making his vest likely came from east Texas.

Dang Ursus, I didn't mean to call out your Grandad, I'd never have guessed that someone here was related to that picture.

Edit, I just realized that you were referring to some other jaguar story. Was is the one killed in Mills County in 1903?

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/2002_3609490/jaguars-time-in-texas-is-gone-for-good.html

[This message has been edited by Bird Dog (edited 12/11/2012 8:58a).]

For those that are interested, Rancho Caracol (Tamaulipas) has a cat conservation/research study going on. Their flickr page has some pretty cool pictures.

http://www.ranchocaracol.com/conservationandcharity/ocelotstudy/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42895635@N04/

No, this would have been Jack County, in that same general time frame. It was about 20-25 years after Fort Richardson was no longer in use. It didn't get quite the fanfare the Mills county cat got.

We got a very nice plaster of Paris print of a big cat (bigger than my hand) on my parents' place by their creek, about 10 miles due west of Tatum almost 20 years ago. My mom is a researcher (I forget if she worked at UT Tyler or at the Texas A&M Extension in Overton at the time), and took it to some of her wildlife colleagues at her work. I won't say it was a mountain lion on this board, but the consensus is that it was a big cat, larger than a bobcat.

I'll try to find it and take a picture when I'm at their place for Christmas to get the OB's opinion.

quote:

---

LDWF has documented several occurrences since 2002. The first cougar sighting was in 2002 by an employee at Lake Fausse Point State Park. That sighting was later confirmed with DNA analysis from scat found at the site. Three trail camera photos were taken of a cougar in Winn, Vernon and Allen parishes in 2008. Subsequently on Nov. 30, 2008, a cougar was shot and killed in a neighborhood by Bossier City Police Department.

The mountain lion, cougar, panther or puma are names that all refer to the same animal. Their color ranges from lighter tan to brownish grey. The only species of big cats that occur as black are the jaguar and leopard. Jaguars are native to South America and leopards are native to Africa. Both species can occur as spotted or black, although in both cases the spotted variety is much more common. Although LDWF receives numerous calls about black panthers, there has never been a documented case of a black cougar anywhere in North America

---

Article is invalid. EVERYONE knows that 43.68% of all mountain lions are black.

Back in 2003, I swear I saw a mountain lion just east of Tatum off of Highway 43 near the edge of some of the TXU property while doing pipeline inspection. When I first saw the animal it was at about 120 yards uphill from me and I just assumed it was a coyote until my gaze made it to the tail and realized that it had a rope-like tail and upward curl that is distinctive of large cats. It saw me at the same time and made it into cover in a flash. I looked for tracks but never found any and I must say, I was a bit on edge walking around there after that wondering what was in the trees eyeballing me....

Hodor and TxScorpio those are the exact same areas that this cat was seen in. Right by the Luminant plant at Martin Lake.

Note, I said District 5, I didn't say anything about District 6.

Waaaayyyyy back when I was in school, a group of us WFSC students went to Denton to a Wildlife Society meeting. I sat in on a lecture on Mountain Lions in Texas and it was really enlightening. I still have the pamphlets and overview of the lecture, but don't know what box they are in.

Forgot, when did you go through WFSC? Ahhh as a student, WS meetings were interesting. How many people could be pack into a cheap motel room. Granted, as a professional, I've found myself sleeping on the floor more than once, just for different reasons.

quote:

---

Any Mountain Lion sightings in East Texas?

---

Ive seen plenty of cougar in east Texas.

I've seen a mountain lion on a large ranch in the hills outside of Wynona. It was about ten years ago. We also found a hallowed out tree that had fallen and was practically shredded with all the claw marks.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42895635@N04/4565318201/in/photostream

lol about this being a jaguar...

[This message has been edited by rtsingleton (edited 12/11/2012 8:59p).]

[This message has been edited by rtsingleton (edited 12/11/2012 9:00p).]

Ursus, this was 90 or 91 I believe. My buddy and I passed Dr Slack on I-35 doing about 80 and he just shook his head as we waved and blew past him. Those were the days...

Out around the old pecan plantation area?

bushman, picture driving all the way to Arcata, CA. with him.

I'll just say this about that area....where I saw the critter is less than 4 miles from the Sabine River bottom....lots of places for things to hide and a great alley way of travel....

quote:

---

lol about this being a jaguar

---

I like how they have a camera to take a picture of their other camera taking a picture. Very thorough.

Last time we were on our way back from TN, I saw a mountain lion on the edge of the forest in the middle of po-dunk AL on I-20. I had to do a double-take.

East Texas Near https://us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com/ya/download?mid=2%5f0%5f0%5f1%5f745959%5fAHN2w0MAAD4jVe4yogj8yMK8Ns4&m=YaDownload&pid=2&fid=Inbox&inline=1&appid=yahoomailWoodville Tx. My Steathcam caught this cougar

East Teaxas Cougarhttps://us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com/ya/download?mid=2%5f0%5f0%5f1%5f745959%5fAHN2w0MAAD4jVe4yogj8yMK8Ns4&m=YaDownload&pid=2&fid=Inbox&inline=1&appid=yahoomail

Rob, try again. Linkeys no workey.