IronKnees,
Got lots of them big kitty's out here in California. As for the tracks if you can see the marks of the toe nails it's a canine. If you can't see the toe nail marks it's a cat. Generally you'll know when they are around as people's pet start to disappear. House cats, dogs etc. are all just diner for a mountain lion. If when you're out in the woods and you see a mountain lion, DON'T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF OF IT. DON'T TURN YOUR BACK TO THEM as this will most generally instigate an attack. A close family friend raised mountain lions when I was a teeager. Just a few facts follows;
Mountain Lion Attacks
For The Last 30 Years
1972 (1 Report found)
1974 (2 Reports found, including one death in British Columbia)
1976 (2 Reports found, including one death in British Columbia)
1979 (1 Report found, including one death in British Columbia)
1983 (1 Report found)
1984 (1 Report found)
1986 (2 Reports found)
1987 (1 Report found)
1988 (2 Reports found, including one death in British Columbia)
1989 (1 Report found including 1 death in California)
1990 (4 Reports found)
1991 (3 Reports found including 2 deaths both in California)
1992 (3 Reports found including 1 death in British Columbia)
1993 (3 Reports found)
1994 (9 Reports found including 2 deaths - in California)
1995 (3 Reports found)
1996 (6 Reports found including a death in British Columbia)
1997 (6 Reports found including the death of a 10-year-old boy Colorado)
1998 (9 Reports found)
1999 (6 Reports found) possibly including death of a 3-year-old)
2000 (8 Reports found)
2001 (6 Reports found including the death of a Canadian skier)
74 Attacks in thirty years - 14 ending in death
For a period of 80 years there were no lion attacks in California then in 1986 it started with 2 attacks;
1986, March. A lion attacked a 5-year-old girl, Laura Small, in Caspers Regional Park, Orange County, resulting in a $2 million court judgment against Orange County. Laura remains blind in one eye and partially paralyzed. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
October. A 6-year-old boy, Justin Mellon, received minor injuries resulting from a lion attack. (OCR 9/29/98, OC)
1988, 25 June. Two lions chased a German couple with a small son in the Green Valley Campground area of Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. They reported one large lion with a smaller one. The Game Warden found both together, and neither moved when he approached. He shot the bigger one -- an 80-pound male -- first, and the smaller one didn't move. He then shot that one, a 63-pound male. (SDUT 2/11/96, C14)
1992, 12 March. Non-fatal attack on a 9-year-old boy in Gaviota State Park, Santa Barbara County, California. The boy's father, brought to the scene by the boys' brothers, "hit the cougar on the head with a rock, causing the cougar to retreat." The boy is recovering from the injuries. (MLCSP; OC; SDUT 4/15/95, A3)
1993, August. A 6-year-old boy was attacked in Los Padres National Forest, Santa Barbara County, California. (MLCSP, SDUT 4/15/95, A3)
September. A young cougar bit a 10-year-old girl camping with her family at Paso Picacho Campground in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California. The girl was slightly injured. The mountain lion believed to have attacked the girl was tracked down and killed. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1; MLCSP)
1994, January. Three bicyclists were "menaced" by a mountain lion at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. (SDUT 12/11/94, A1)
23 April. Barbara Schoener, 40, a friend of my sister and a long-distance runner in excellent physical shape, was killed by an 80-pound female mountain lion in Northern California on the American River Canyon trail in the Auburn State Recreation Area. No one observed the attack, and hence there are conflicting hypotheses about what occurred.
Barbara's husband Pete Schoener says that the lion was probably hidden on a ledge above the trail and pounced on Barbara as she passed underneath the lion. The lion knocked her down a slope and she was badly wounded, but she fought the animal with her arms before she was killed. Then the lion dragged her farther before eating most of her body.
The accounts in the paper said that investigators theorize that the lion surprised her by sneaking within 20' behind her on the tight trail and then ambushing Schoener, knocking her 30' down an 80° slope. Indications are she already was badly wounded but briefly fought the animal there before the lion finished the kill.
The trail is part of the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run trail. Barbara was the first person in California in the 20th Century to die from a mountain lion attack.
The mountain lion may have been protecting its one-month-old cub by "defending" its territory against intruders, or may have "recognized" Barbara as prey because she was "running away" from the lion.
Barbara Schoener was 5' 11" and 140-150 pounds. (The papers incorrectly gave 5' 8" and 120 pounds.)
(SDUT 5/8/94, A3; 5/13/94, A3; Pete Schoener, via an email from my sister Connie Vavricek)
9 May. A couple with a little boy saw a lion approaching at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. They threw rocks, but it refused to move away. The Game Warden went to the area the next day, saw it and shot it. He found the 83-pound male had been feeding on a fresh deer kill nearby. (SDUT 2/11/96, C14)
16 August. 50-year-old Troy Winslow and his wife Robin, along with 48-year-old Kathleen Strehl, were camping in the yard of a rustic cabin near the isolated hamlet of Dos Rios in Mendocino County, California, when a fight broke out between their dog and a 2-year-old, 60-pound rabid female mountain lion at 4:30 a.m. The lion retreated under the cabin after they threw rocks at it. Near daybreak, the cougar attacked Kathleen, giving her four puncture wounds in the arm and knocking her to the ground. The others jumped on the cat and Robin stabbed it with a 12-inch kitchen bread knife. The cat bit off Winslow's thumb during the melee when the man grabbed the animal near its mouth. (SDUT 8/17/94, A3; OC)
10 December. Iris M. Kenna, a 5-foot-4 and no more than 115 pounds, 56-year-old woman in excellent physical condition, was killed near Cuyamaca Peak at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park while hiking to Cuyamaca Peak alone in the early morning. She was attacked near the bench dedicated to her at the intersection of the Lookout Fire Road and Azalea Springs Fire Road / Fern Flat Fire Road. (SDUT 12/11/94 A1)
1995, January. A mountain lion charged Michelle Rossmiller, a 17-year-old girl, as she was unloading school books from her car at her home on Volcan Mountain, San Diego County. Lisa Rossmiller, her mother, said: She saw it coming at her, thought fast and closed the door before it reached her. It was running straight at her. (SDUT 1/28/95, B3).
20 March. Scott Fike, a 27-year-old cyclist, was bitten and cut by a cougar near Mount Lowe in the Angeles National Forest, California, on 20 March 1995, and fought the cougar off with rocks. The cougar was then tracked down and killed. (SDUT 3/25/95, A3)
1996, 16 January. A woman on horseback at Cuyamaca Rancho State Park reported an aggressive lion. She likely saved herself by baring her teeth, growling and staring the lion down as it approached her. Two Game Wardens and an Animal Damage Control specialist went to that spot the next day, and the lion charged them, getting to within 15 feet before the 62-pound male was shot twice. "What bothered me about this one is the
veterinarian said it was a cub," Game Warden Turner said. "It was a 1 1/2 - to 2-year-old that probably was just booted out by its mother and was trying to make it on its own." Turner said he'd never had a lion charge like this one. (SDUT 2/11/96, C14)
1997, 28 December. A female cougar charged a group of women and children at Caspers Regional Park in Orange County, less than two weeks after the county had lifted restrictions on minors visiting the park. The cougar was later killed. (OCR 9/29/98)
1998, August. A woman encountered a cougar near Stonewall Peak in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, California. She used pepper spray on an aggressive cougar and finally repelled it from attacking her and a female friend after a 15-minute ordeal. (SDUT 10/10/98, B1)
If you noticed the one thing that most of the attacks have in common in CHILDREN. Sorry this got so long, but I have my reasons. Lawdog
