Mar 24, 2007 - 04:11:36 CDT
A northwest North Dakota rancher says there's no doubt in his mind that a mountain lion was to blame for the death of one of his cows, and federal wildlife officials say he's probably right.Tioga-area rancher Francis Franson discovered the dead cow, weighing about 1,200 pounds, in a pasture last week and notified authorities who used a plane to try to track the cougar. They found no sign of one, but John Paulson, district supervisor for the federal Agriculture Department's Wildlife Services, said the cow showed signs of a cougar attack, including a bite on the neck and claw puncture wounds.
"It's real common for a lion to go through the chest cavity and eat the heart, liver, lungs first, and that's exactly what this one had done," Paulson said Friday.
Evidence at the scene also was consistent with deer and bighorn sheep kills by mountain lions in western North Dakota, he said.
Paulson said Wildlife Services field specialists who examined the cow were "95 percent confident" it was a cougar attack. It would be the first documented case of a mountain lion killing domestic livestock in North Dakota in at least a couple of years, he said.
"My cows have been awful spooky since," Franson said.
The rancher said he believes a cougar also was responsible for killing one of his cattle about four years ago. He said the cow found dead last week was valued at about $1,200. "There's nothing I can do," he said.
Paulson said mountain lion sightings have been reported in the Tioga area in recent weeks, and authorities confirmed a track about eight miles from the site of the attack on the cow.
Wildlife officials believe North Dakota now has a breeding population of mountain lions.
The state Game and Fish Department has held mountain lion hunting seasons the past two years to try to gather more information about the cougar population. Five lions were killed during each season, the majority of them west of the Missouri River. So far this year, three mountain lions also have died after becoming snared in bobcat traps in western North Dakota.
Paulson said deer is the food of choice for mountain lions, and the chance of a person being attacked is remote. However, he said, livestock kills could become more common if the cougar population is indeed increasing.
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