em777's Favorites

Open to opinions on length the cow had been dead for, I’m guessing around 5 days. Did not uncover at all but it seemed all 4 quarters still in tacked as well as neck with some scratches on rear quarter. Multiple sets of same sized cat track going in and out, spent around 5.5 hours tracking to no avail. Out for Photography purposes only.

These seem to be cougar tracks, nicely imaged in fresh snow. They were very clear especially in the thin fresh snow overtop a bank of older wind-crusted snow.

The tracks are mostly 3 1/4" to 3 1/2" long and 2 1/2" to 3" wide, with the smallest at 2 1/2" long and 2 1/4" wide. The tracks are a bit small for lynx (ref.: Olaus J. Murie's "A Field Guide to Animal Tracks"; Peterson Field Guides series) and this area of aspen, pine and spruce covered foothills doesn't seem particularly like lynx habitat.

Was stalked by a cougar, felt like being watched heard noises from bushes while bird watching. Was looking at the pond when I spotted it, it was crawling lowly through the grass roughly 60 feet away. I was crouching using my scope so when I stood up it "ran" into the bushes, could hear bush noises for maybe a second then stopped, which meant that it was still there. Farm owner helped get me out of there.