A hunt for the Black Lion

[Ike]

I had a couple guys tell me this morning that they had seen something black with a tail up on a cedar/russian olive ridge late last night before dark. From a distance, they though it was about the size of a small lab dog but walked and acted like a cat, and didn't seem afraid. They both asked me if I ever saw a black mountain lion, and if that was possibly what they saw.

There has been plenty of lion sightings in that farmland and I had in fact cold trailed a lion not far from there this past spring. However, none of the previous reports had claimed the animal to be black so I loaded three of my older hounds.

Well, I collared up Ike (10), Choco (8) and Kody (5) and walked them into the very spot that black panther had been seen nearly twelve hours earlier. Choco opened first and all three of those hounds dug in and began to roll down a track. I stayed in the hunt with them and even made myself believe one of those tracks along a fence line might have been made by an adult or young female lion. But I could only see part of that track.

A couple miles down the ridge those three hounds were looping around some brush near a large cottonwood tree. Shortly there after that Kody dog located in the brush and began hammering. Those two red dogs were near and then they were all three baying hard in the brush, so I edged my way in there for a peek. It was around 9:00 AM and when I got close enough to see, that five year old kody dog was buried under the brush only leaving his butt and tail sticking out. He was for sure faced barking something.

So there I stood in the brush for several minutes only feet away from those dogs and couldn't hear a growl or anything. Now I'm not a coon hunter and never have been, but if I were a betting man I'd called that a coon den............now maybe that was a black panther that had tunneled under the brush to hide from the hounds, or maybe it was a female panther and that was her den for young ones--just don't know?????????

But in the end I figured coon and those hounds of mine were trashing on a black coon rather than catching a rare, legendary black cat...........

ike

[Mike Leonard]

Good story Ike and who knows it may be a giant black coon, a worth trophy.

I recall the night my dogs treed their first albino coon. 69r and I walked thru the cornfield and looked up that tree old Big John was barking at and we both looked at each other and said he treed a dang white housecat but we moved around a little and saw it was a white coon. He hit the ground and I had him mounted on a log. I gave that mount to Chaser and I think he still has it. I would have loved to catch a black one and I saw a photo one time in Fur Fish &Game of one a guy trapped. Pretty cool.

[Dads dogboy]

Great Story Mr. Ike!

No matter what part of the country we go to hunt in, there are the "Tales of the BLACK Panther". These things appear to be more numerous than the Normal colored Lions.

Has there ever been a documented case of a true Melanistic Mt. Lion in North America?

There are 5 counties in South Florida that have Melanistic Bobcats. But while they also have the Florida Panther there has never been a documented case of a Black Fl. Panther.

Mr. Ike that could have been a "Sissoring" Den, they come in all color phases and even Dads young Hounds are suseptable to running one if encouraged!

Good Running to All!

C. John Clay
Dads Dogboy

[Mike Leonard]

Speaking of black Florida Panthers: I have told this story before but I will repeat parts of it again for sake of the color thing.

Several years back a traveling cat show was in town and they had a large tom Florida Panther named Tommy. Tommy was 13 years old and had a nero-muscalur condition in his back end and required medication. He was a large cat and weight right at 200 pounds. Well it was an extreemly hot spell here when they came thru and somehow the OD'd Tommy and he died in his cage. Well they were feeling bad about it he had been with them since he was very small I guess.they got ahold of a local pet dealor and asked if he knew anybody that could skin Tommy out and prepare the hide for a life sized mount they could carry that memory on and the show would live on in part. Well just happens this pet dealer lives down my country road and he also trains bloodhounds for search and rescue.Well he said my neighbor up the road is always hunting cats and he has a house full of them so I am sure he can do it. Well they called me and I like a fool agreed to do it having skinned dozens of cougars. Well when they brought old Tommy to me he was already becasue of the weather starting to swell pretty fast. Lions stink anyway, and with this fementation setting he was riping than a night old corn field coon. Whew!!! PPEEEUUU! Well what struck second after the smell was the color of this panther. He was dark brown to black shades. I m,ean in dim light he very well could have been mistaken for black. Ofcourse he had spent most of his life in shelter so sun did not bleach him out any. He had been declawed early and living on carpet and such his big old pads were soft as butter. But sub-species Florida Panther Hmm? Let me tell you for all the world other than the color he could have been an extra big tom from New Mexico, Colorado or Utah no differences to speak of.


Sub-Species according to Harely Shaw in (Soul Among Lion) is rather a sceptical subject at best when it comes to feliz concolor/puma concolor. Harely said that light has been shed on some of these presumes sub-species and the differences were congenital or due to climate, terrain or food supply of certain areas. Even the Florida Panther is speculative and the Uma Sub Species a bit sketchy as well. The look alike sub species clause of the ( Endangered Species Act) is a a dangerous piece of legistlation that could have effects on the whole species if left in place.


Anyway this old Florda Panther Tommy was darker than ahhh! well you can't say that anymore let's just say he was DARK.

[Big Mike]

Well I guess I better throw my black lion story in here. About 10 years ago I in the coffee shop visiting with a govenment trapper who was also a houndsman and a forest srevice biologists. The subject of the "Black Mountain Lion" came up. The trapper and I were quick to call BS!! We said we both seen piles of lions and there aint no black ones. The Forest Service guys says "yup there is and I can prove it". He said a hunter had come into the office a couple of years ago and brought a video tape of a black lion the guy had filmed while elk hunting and he had a copy of the tape made. So I say O yeah lets see this tape. Well the trapper and I follow this forest service guy to his house, he rumbles around in a pile of VCR tapes and pulls one out and says here it is. He pops the tape tape in and sure as shit its a lion and it blacker that the Ace of Spades, I mean it was glossy black. The video shows the lion clearly in the sun light walking down the trail and it is undisputeably black. The video was good enough you could see the the hide move and glissin as he walked and looking at the body shape and morphology it was a mountain lion not a jag( the video wasnt taken in jag country either). The video didnt show enough country to tell where it was filmed other than P&J country, but they told me exactly where it was filmed. Me and the trapper tried to save face by saying when that lions dead at your feet it will just look dark not black.

I told him I want a copy of that tape, Im going to prove the black lion theory!! He said no problem i will make you one. As I went home thinking about it I said hhmm, I show this tape of a black lion and before you know it its an endangered species and they stop lion hunting in my area. Hold on a minute that would not be good!!

In the end I never got a copy of the tape although I saw the guy many more times i never pursued it and he didnt follow up on it. Unfortunately the forest service guy is now decease and I have no idea what happened with the tape. I kick myself for not getting a copy

I hunted for it a lot in the area the video was supposed to have been taken and caught a few lions but none even close to black. I still try to go hunt that area a couple times a year just in case

Now like rest of you I don't believe everthing I see on video is real, but video croping was not as prevalent or easy then as it is today. I am still skepitcal because no one ever has proof of a dead one. But on the day i watched that video I could not dispute that it was of a black mountain lion!

[chilcotin hillbilly]

A friend of mine while out checking cows with his daughter had a black lion cross 50 yards in front of their truck, in the headlights. The next year near the same spot they both saw what appeared to be a black lion with tan legs. If he sees either again I told him not to be shy about calling.

[Ike]

Well I took those hounds home this morning and went back to the rig to witness more of the cementing project and told those two guys my hounds had located in a brush pile. I also told them I figured it was probably a coon den. Well, they both assured me it damn sure wasn't a coon..............and that whatever it was was larger than my hounds.

I had seen a few tracks in the clay along a trail while chasing down those dogs and didn't spend much time looking it over. On a run, I figured maybe it was a lion track--that is maybe. As you can imagine, I walked back down my backtrack and looked those tracks over again. It's funny how a guy can look at a track on the fly and think lion, then go back and look at until he's tired of it and still not be sure what the hell he's looking at. Anyway, maybe ol' Dad's Dogboy was right and it's something that I never heard of............

ike

[Doogie]

A redhead once showed me pics of a lion mount that's as white as the wind driven WY snow

Also been told of a black cat that's to the south west of me a poke, or maybe shes just telling me its black to get me down there guess Ill have to load my trashy bobcat dogs up and check it out this winter

[Big Horn Posse]

Irish legend tells of a creature that lives in the Wicklow Mountains that will rob ya blind if you leave anything laying about while camping there. They say to hang your belongings from a tree as not to fall prey to this creature they call the Wicklow Beaver........ Now, I have never seen one, but the stories are plenty in the pubs around Wicklow.

Maybe you have found yourself a Roosevelt Rockchuck Ike.

[Ike]

roflmao at tessa............

But if that rockchuck was larger than my dogs and black with a long tail then he probably could have fooled these two old boys. One of those guys that saw the mystery lion ran hounds on bears and lions like you for a few years, but has long since gotten out of hounds and runs with a friend now and then. However, I think I like your answer better than the one dogboy gave, cause I looked up "sissoring" den on the Intenet.........

The damn thing ask me if I meant Scissoring" and you should go look at that stuff--wow! Anyway, the Scissoring thing may have been what ol' Kody was looking at--might have been a couple of bitch coon in there doing that "Scissoring" thing and Kody felt left out..............cause I know I done kicked his azz for striking on coon.

Ike

[Ankle Express]

Hell at least you tried. Here on the east coast we get plenty of mtn. lion and black panther sitings. However there is never any proof. No one tries to bush it, nothing. Never seen anything here in my neck of the woods that would even lead me to believe we might have either. I made some fellers awfully mad last year over these "sitings". They were headed out to bear hunt. They hunt in a small army. They have to travel about 2 hours to hunt a place big enough to support an army. They meet early in the mornings and travel in a caravan to their hunting destination. Their path takes them thru miles and miles of roadless wilderness, huntable but roadless. This story came up because of me stating that we do not have big cats of any color. So story is on their way one morning last year a regular ole mountain lion crossed the two lane road in front of the group and the first couple of trucks seen it. He says so we got'em, like what do you think of that? I called BS. I said, "so you got pictures?" "Well no." "So you guys didn't turn out on it?" "Nope." Then I said "well I still wouldn't be telling anybody. And definitley wouldn't say I had hauled fifty men and seventy five head of supposedly the best bear dogs in the county over and away from a chance at living proof up a bush." So at least you tried.

[Doogie]

AE im sure alot of liquid corn is consumed on said trips, even that early in the morning, so it probably was a deer you should go try and catch one of them "cats" I hear you have some trashy dogs

[Ike]

So at least you tried.

Yes, I've always been a "show me" type guy and offering to load a couple hounds to go see is only in my nature. One of the local landowners has a big black lab, and that person only lives about a mile or so down the ridge. Now I'm not saying that black panther was a lab, but it makes more sense than the other. Odds are, they saw that dog up on the ridge walking through the bush and made an honest mistake, who knows.

Most likely, I walked three hounds into an area that has a good coon population and one of them figured that was what the old man wanted and they just figured to help me out. Honestly I've never kicked Kody's butt for striking on coons but I have thought about it. Usually I just make them come in when I figure they've rigged or started a coon or bobcat when I'm after lion or bear..........

And Dogboy waas correct when he said, "Has there ever been a documented case of a true Melanistic Mt. Lion in North America?" Cause we couldn't find one single documented case on the Internet.....that isn't to say, however, that ol' Ike won't go do it all again if and when another reports comes to light huh!

The fish and game called me on a lion near town a couple months back, and asked me to bring a couple hounds to see whether one of the women in that area had really seen a lion in her field. Now it was only 10 degrees that morning and had there been any lions lay there those hounds would surely have gone wild. I walked Ike and Choco in on a supposedly three hour old track (where that lion bedded) and nothing, not one chirp! Those dogs did smell the brush and something had passed that way, so I spoke to LCK on the phone and he figured a fox. His conclusion makes sense as well with the tail and the spring shed or color change of a female dog.........

ike

[TomJr]

Some people see what they want to see and nothing will change thier minds. A person that lives a few canyons north of me took a photo of an adult bobcat and sent it into the local newspaper as a young lion. I don't know how they let it get into print but a few days later I happened to run into her and called her on the "lion" picture. She just would not admit it was a bobcat. Its tail was around 8 inches, normal for a bobcat here she insisted that its tail was too long for a bobcat. And was getting mad so I left it at that...

Whats even funnier is a group of people out bird watching saw a feral house cat run across the trail ahead of my dogs and none of them got it right. Some said fox, some bobcat and one thought it was a 100lb mtn lion!

Ike, my vote is that black lab from down the ridge... either that or black lions smell so differant from normal lions that your dogs just thought it was trash

[Ike]

Your story on the bobcat/lion thing reminds me of the lady in Yellowstone Park years ago before the wolves were introduced. One of those parking lot begging coyotes came up to her and she thought she had witnessed her first wolf sighting. But a knowledgeable man attempted to explain that she had seen a coyote, and she became angry with him telling him, "you're not going to ruin my wolf experience by telling me that wolf is something else."

roflmao,
ike