Lion wipes out petting zoo

[RYDOG]

Guys,This is from the morning paper.Amado,AZ. just south of tucson.Lion comes on to well known farm in the area where people come to pick vegtables and stuff and also have a petting zoo.Well first they had four sheep killed,then on june 15th sixteen pygmy and nubian goats killed in a single night.The farmer had actually seen the lion a couple of times but didn't mind because it was the first one he had seen in forty years.They brought in a hunter with hounds and caught the lion laying under a tree ,loosed the houndsand treed him.They say it was an older tom,but they have picture on the front page and it looks like a young lion to me.Also do you think that is normal behavior for a older tom?

Ryan

[pegleg]

what is normal behavior for suburban lions? we are just now getting to the point in human expansion in the west to start experiencing this phenomenon in high enough numbers to collect decent data. however i don't find it surprising as any time a easy food source is available predators will exploit it. and i know that many lions in southern Arizona have ranges around towns. where the lion's range is smaller then the average of there country brethren. so they must be gaining some benefit from the close proximity of humans. maybe it's livestock,pets or just a increase of natural prey like javelina and deer. the lack of hunting around these areas may also contribute to the numbers as well. so eventually conflicts arise.

[Big Horn Posse]

Well, cats are opportunists. Can't blame him for wanting an easy meal.

[wyatte]

You find the lions where the deer are, here in California you can't hardly find a deer in the mountains, last year in Nov. it snowed down to about 3500 ft on Thursday, on Saturday when I could get out and traveled about 30 miles in the snow up to about 6,000 ft I only cut four deer tracks and not one lion track, but down at 1500 ft where I live the deer are thick and so are the lions.

[.25-06]

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/299737

[pegleg]

i must admit it gives me some satisfaction when the peace and love natural living people have their eyes opened to the realities of life, although it never does hunters any good in the end. the offending animal is always portrayed as abnormal in some way. i do wonder how these people didn't hear this as it was going on. wasn't real clear if they used hounds or not i had hoped it would have been good publicity for hounds

[Mike Leonard]

He looks like an old sore toothed skinny tom cat to me. Yes this is very normal for those old pensioners to get their behind's in trouble

Probably feels good again to them to just kill them little suckers like they did the wild deer back in their salad days. LOL!

[Big Mike]

Very normal for any age of lion to kill in excess IMO. It seems to always be sheep and goats when they do it. I think it is because the sheep and goats dont run they just stand there while there buddies getting killed and watch. I think this triggers the lions killing instinct and they just keep on killing while the killing is good. Ive seen bears do the same, they usually eat the utters.

I have seen where a lion has killed 20-30 sheep(more than one occassion) in a night and never ate on one. Had a pair of lions kill 10+ goats and sheep never ate on one and never came back until about a month later and did it again. That time I caught one of them. Perfectly healthy mature female. About a year later the other showed back up and killed 9 sheep, never ate or came back. A Month later he killed 4 adult llamas never ate, never came back(think it was the same lion he had a pretty distinct killing method). All kills were exact same location. Never caught that sucker either, he had my number.

The lion that killed the guy in Silver City was a perfectly healthy Tom weighed 139 lbs in his prime. He didnt just kill, he ate too!

[TomJr]

The Bunny huggers would have you believe that wild animals are noble and above killing for fun. If they spent any time in the real world they would know thats not the case. Most times multible kills take place with livestock because they are not equiped to excape. But even in the wild if a lion comes across a deer yard where several deer laying up and the snow is so deep that they bogg down trying to run. The lion will make as many kills as it can, just because it can.

Many preditors will get into a killing mode and just go nuts until all the prey is dead or gone. Had a ring tailed cat kill 27 chickens in one eveing because we got back from town abit late and the chicken house was not shut up before dark.

If they had not changed the season for lion there would have been no need to get a depreditation tag. As it stands now the months where you tend to see the most lions coming into populated areas for food and water are the months when we can't hunt them May, June, July and August... I wonder who the brainiac was that thought that up? Anyhow right now we have a lion in the area its been seen several times on the road below our orchard. Two days ago one of our guests was able to watch and film it for 45 mins. I would say its becoming "habitated". If season was open I would go run it and likly take it before it becomes a problem. Oh well only a month and half to go... if its going to be problem it will likly still be there in September unless it kills someones pet before then Over the 4th I saw several people walking little dogs both off and on leash up and down the road just asking for it... weener dogs and the like. Starting to feel like a city park here

[wyatte]

If you go to the web site that 25-06 posted you can read though the 114 comments that were made and the amount of people who get it really suprised me, not as many bunny huggers as I thought there were.

[Mike Leonard]

We have seen many multiple sheep and goat killers over the years. If you are called out on one of these watch very closely because you generally are dealing with two types. The very old tom as we saw in this case or a mature female with 6-10 month old sub adults. this is a show and tell deal for them usually and she demonstrated killing technique and then everybody gets in the spirit of the game.

Had a guy called in on one of these two years ago and it was a long ways out on the reservation. Well he got a run of the killing field and he thought he had one lion but ended up with a female and large sub adult in a tree. while he was there with the lions up and dogs barking he loked up and here came another lion towards him at a run. It was the tom kitten and he ran right into the mess and went up the tree with the other two. Now that is quite a deal and lucky he had it on video.

One of the guys that works with me is a Navajo and his mother has a large band of sheep. she watched a female comein and kill 27 sheep and she said it happens so fast that she couldn't even get back to get a gun. This l;ion never at on any of them, and when they say her depart there were two subs following her.

[liontracker]

Year before last, I came into a little valley and there was over 100 birds on different kills. As I stood at the head of the valley,it felt like the Jeremiah Johnson movie, when they rode through the indian grave site - spooky. After sorting things out, I found 5 kills in 5/8 of a mile, 3 elk and 2 deer. All kills were made in 4 days and only one of them, a deer was fed on. All kills were made by the same tom.

[the breeze]

and now for the rest of the story....

I am the alleged hunter friend. My buddy with the petting zoo had been seing the lion off and on for around a week. He thought is was pretty cool. Until the goat massacre. When I got there we did a big loop down towards the river thinking the lion had gone that way after his late night snack. There was alfalfa all the way to the river (around a 1/4 mile away) and no cover until you hit the river so who would have thought that he would have been anywhere else? It was pretty hot out and the the dogs couldn't find a track and neither could I so we headed back to the house. I was going to go home and get some leg traps because with all of the farm fence it was a tough place for the dogs to get around. when we got back to the truck we looked over towards the goats and that lion was trying to sneak out the back in some tall grass. He was never more than a couple hundred yards from the goat pen the whole time. I dumped the dogs and it was a short race and the rest is pretty much self explanatory. As for the lion he was a young Tom just coming in to his prime and wieghed in at probably 100-110#'s. I was thinking the same as Mike as far as we would probably catch an old scraggly Tom. It was a shame that he got a sweet tooth for goats as he was a nice youn lion.

[Cathunter10]

Hey tom did you ave the fameus Slim on Him or were you resting him.Hey buddie send me a pic of old slim I was looking the other day and I dont have one.
Bill

[MAC]

Ive seen lions kill in mass and only eat the heart and lungs and leave the rest. seen bear do it too. The bear came back when the carcass got ripe though.