Here is a link to a news item today that a bow hunter sighted an African lion in the West Va. woods. No questions asked, let's just all believe it. No matter that apparently none has been reported missing. Motion sensitive video cams will be installed in the area, and already someone with a game farm has stepped forward with a push to keep the animal from being killed. Interesting how this report is assumed to be true, but if it were a 7 foot ape --any guesses?

At least they will place game cams out there . Let's hope they catch what they do not expect.


http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/10939086.html

A relict North American Cave Lion?

Chow-chow mix (aka WVa Hybrid Special)

By the way, why would a lion wander around in the woods, thought they was plains critters. If farmers were seeing it in their fields it'd sound more likely...

A 250-300 pound chow is a BIG CHOW! Of course maybe the hunter was munching on some magic mushrooms he came across in the woods.

Now, from a personal standpoint I can say without a doubt that sometimes when you see something in the woods that shouldn't be there, but you see the proof, you still don't want to believe it. Going back some thirty years ago or so a couple of friends and I had picked up a 6 pack and took a midnight ride down a 4x4 trail I had made through some woods on our property. Half way through the trip the guy whose Jeep we were in decided to run out of gas, and unfortunately he'd forgotten to fill his Jerry Can's so we were stuck there temporarily. Luckily my house was only about a quarter mile away and I simply had to walk out of the woods and across an open field to get to our shed where we had extra gas stored for the tractor and mowers. It was a nice warm night during the summer, and a full moon so it would be an easy walk. As I came out of the woods at the edge of the field was a sandy area about 30 or so feet across which I had to walk through. In the moonlight I could see a trackway where something had walked through leaving footprints. My first impression was maybe one of the horses or ponies from the pasture next door had gotten out and walked across the sand, but when I got closer even in the moonlight I could see these were not hoofed tracks but toed tracks and for no better way to describe, they looked like giant cat tracks.

This was in Northern Illinois, no cougars reported at that time and even so these made cougar tracks look tiny. I went back to the Jeep and asked my buddy if he had a flashlight with him, which he did and I had him and the other buddy follow me back to the sand area to see if we could get a better look at the tracks. Sure enough, now in the light of the flashlight, they looked even more like giant cat tracks. Well neither one of them wanted to walk any further and decided to go BACK to the Jeep leaving me on my own to finish the trek to the shed to get the gas. At first I went past the shed and went all the way down to the house and retrieved my 30-06 with several full magazines of ammunition, just in case I ran into whatever was out there making those tracks.

I got the gas back to the Jeep and we left without any further incident or any sightings or hearing any strange noises. The next morning I was awaken by my mom, telling me to wake up because I had to hear a story on the news she'd heard the previous hour. It seems that late the night before, yes the night we were in the woods, a truck had overturned on I-90 carrying circus animals and they had escaped temporarily. The location of the trucks overturning was about 1/2 mile east of our woods. One animal that had escaped hadn't been captured until 6:00 am after it had been sighted laying in the middle of a sod farm just over the hill from our woods. That animal was in fact, a male African Lion, so I'm pretty sure that's what walked through our woods and field that night and had left those tracks.

What would I have done had I seen the lion while walking to the shed to get the gas, before I was armed? Most likely a lot of SCREAMING! and prayed if he ate me he'd choke to death on a big piece. Had I seen him after I was armed? Probably still a lot of SCREAMING! Only this time a lot of gunfire noise too!

What I never did understand was WHY there hadn't been anything on the news, radio or televsion right after the accident to warn people in the area? Why was it kept a secret until the next morning when the final animal, which was the lion captured? Maybe it was simply better to keep it quiet, as if it had been broadcast more people would have been outside looking and putting themselves in harm's way? That's the only thing that sounds logical to me.

There was a sheriff's deputy that shot a large house cat that he identified as a mountain lion a few years ago. I saw it on the news a week before and it was obviously a house cat. Perhaps it is another house cat or even a mountain lion is in the woods. You would think a mane would be distinctive enough to be sure but the news crew, people who reported the house cat and the sheriff all thought it was a mountain lion.

I used to do a radio show with a veterinarian. Now this wasn't just your average run of the mill vet. He had worked for the San Diego Zoo, worked with that crazy snake guy in Florida who injects himself with venom and had spent time in Africa inoculating the locals’ cattle as part of a United Nations Team. He was the been there done that type.

I asked him once what the closest call he had ever had with an animal was and his answer surprised me. It was actually here in our own little rural county in Southern VA. He said, about 20 years ago a deer hunter came out of the mountains straight to the Sheriff’s Department reporting a female lion. The hunter was deep in the mountains when he came across a fenced in area with a couple of buildings built inside, and when he tried to get near the fence an African lioness charged him.

Well the first thing the sheriff did was come by the vet’s office and invite him along for the ride. The vet kinda laughed and said it was probably a big ole collie or something but he would do his civic duty and go. They took and old logging road as far back in the mountains and walked the rest of the way in. When they reached the enclosure they didn’t see a lioness but they did find several thousand dollars worth of mature pot plants. The sheriff had bolt cutters and made short work out of the lock holding the gate and they proceeded to enter. Once inside they heard a sound that sounded like something snarling with every step it took, and yes it was running. The vet took one look and said, Holy S**T it’s a lion, and they dove out the gate just as she hit it full throttle, with the intention of ripping them apart.

The vet said he looked at the Sheriff and the Sheriff said that is the biggest d**n collie I have ever seen.

The guy was later arrested and admitted to buying the lioness in order to watch over his plants, the only problem was she had gotten so mean he couldn’t even get inside to harvest them.

So the moral of the story is if you want to grow pot in a fenced in area in the middle of nowhere, get a big collie it will save you money in the long run.

I likw a story with a moral.

When I was a kid growing up in Indiana I heard a story about a lion as well. The story was that during WW2 the navy turned some loose around there ammunition depot to keep people way. They was fenced in on both sides with the depot in the middle. The story went that some escaped and was living in the hills around the area. It even included one being shot by a hunter down near what is called sharky hill.
Now I am almost sure that it is a made up story but it did have a lot of details to it. The navy depot is Crane navy depot and is still there today.

For some crazy reason I seem to feel a little safer believing that Bigfoot is in the forest than I do hearing that hungry lions and giant collies are in the forest.

Maybe it just means I'd rather be torn limb from limb than eaten alive.

Yeah well I've been carrying a blade and walking with a big stick in certain areas since last year when I found a cougar print as big as the palm of my hand.

I suspect many large predators go missing from owners without proper permits and are never reported. I had something scream at me back in 94 while I was on the front side of a field about thirty acres in size. It came from the back woodline. I told wife and friend and they found it hilarious until a few days later a deer come tearing into my yard and stopped not twenty feet away and was looking back into the field. It was visibly scared sh*tless. Then the sound I heard and it tore out like its ass was on fire and its head was catching.

three weeks later a friend shot a deer and with a bad back came back to my house to wait for me to help him drag it out. We got to where he had left the deer and there was nothing. There was a very visible blood trail and then where it had lay down and died and then just a short section of drag marks. Only thing it was away from us and towards about five miles of seriously mountainous terrain of which you had to cross a small river about ten to fifteen foot deep. No access other than through my gates.

A month later a guy about five miles away was busted for letting his bengal tiger get loose. It was shot and killed trying to eat a german shephard.

There is no doubt it would have taken one of my small children given the chance.

Back during the summer a woman reported another tiger over near the next town. She was laughed at til she got a pic of it. They started the search. of course after a week or so it all died down without the tiger being caught. Not another word about it. I asked the sheriff and his reasoning was "well it was obviously an escaped pet that wouldnt PROBABLY hurt anyone anyway" he also said "its probably starved to death by now because it never learned to hunt" yeah just like the hundreds of thousands of housecats turned feral out there