Steve Knight

Despite the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s insistence that mountain lions are few and far between in East Texas, residents believe they are seeing them.

Following a story in the July 20 Tyler Paper, phone calls and emails from readers poured in about mountain lion sightings, including two purported “close encounters” just days later. One reportedly happened on a highway near Eustace and another on Farm-to-Market 2661 on the western edge of Smith County.

Although not recently, there have been reports of mountain lion sightings in the New Harmony/Garden Valley area of northwestern Smith County.

Harry Rankin is certain he saw an immature lion in his backyard east of Tyler in early July.

“It was a young cougar. I saw it at about 20 feet. I was sitting on my deck. The cat came through the fence. It saw me and took three steps back and tried to dive back through the fence, but where it tried to dive through it hit chicken wire,” said Rankin, identifying the cat as about 12 inches at the shoulder, three-feet long not counting its tail and copper in color.

Rankin said it wasn’t the first mountain lion he had seen. He said he first saw one years ago when working ranches in the Panhandle.

The sightings came following a statement from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist John Young that of the 400 to 1,000 sightings reported each year only 1 percent is verified. Further, Young noted, there had not been a confirmed sighting in eastern Texas in more than a decade and only a handful of incidences where one was struck by a car or shot going back to 1983.

“I know folks can get very upset regarding sightings. But a confirmation for us still requires physical evidence and physical evidence is hard to come by. Its not that we disbelieve someone’s sighting, it is just that we have to have physical evidence in order for us to consider that a mountain lion was present,” Young said.

Most confirmations have come from South Texas and the Trans Pecos region, two portions of the state with known mountain lion populations and from the Hill Country.

Other data on mountain lions comes when a hunter takes one of the cats or Texas Wildlife Service is called on by a rancher to take one of the animals feeding on livestock.

Mountain lion sightings are a little like UFO sightings. The people are seeing something, and just because TPWD can’t find a paw print or other evidence, it doesn’t mean a mountain lion doesn’t exist. On the other hand, just because someone thinks they saw a mountain lion, it doesn’t mean they did.

One reader sent in a photo of a cat running across a field in Collin County. The photo was forwarded to TPWD, which confirmed the animal as a bobcat.

Cushing’s Harold Renfro is professional trapper who traps commercially and to eliminate nuisance animals in East Texas and Louisiana. He said on five occasions over the years he has been called by landowners who believed mountain lions were attacking their livestock. On each occasion, Renfro determined it was either feral hogs, coyotes or bobcats causing the problem.

The trapper said he believes people often see something, such as a bobcat, dash across a road and think it is a mountain lion. At this time of year the bobcats’ spots often aren’t visible. He added that East Texas has an abundance of bobcats and some, especially large ones, in a split-second view can deceive even the most experienced wildlife observer.

Renfro believes mountain lions are in East Texas, but not in the numbers the public reports. Although he has never caught one in his traps, a result of using techniques and equipment not conducive to trapping a cat weighing 70 to 100 pounds as an adult, he has seen signs of them. Two weeks ago, he said he was face to face with one in Rusk County.

“I had a lady call me out because when her daughter had been feeding their horses a coyote came close to her. The lady was afraid the coyote might attack, but I don’t think so. She asked me if I could get rid of it,” Renfro explained.

At the ranch the next morning, Renfro said he began using a “doe in distress call.” Expecting a coyote or maybe a bobcat to appear, he was surprised that within minutes he was looking at a mountain lion.

“The one I shot at was red. It was 50 yards away. I got shook up and missed. You get nervous when you have a 90-pound lion looking at you for lunch,” he explained.

Had Renfro shot the mountain lion, something legal in Texas since the cats are considered a non-game species, it would have been a rare occurrence.

TPWD Game Warden Maj. Robert Carlson has worked the woods of East Texas for 26 years and not only does he not recall hearing of one being shot, he has never seen a mountain lion in the wild.

“I have been out day and night, sitting, rolling, walking up and down the rivers and I have never seen one,” said Carlson, supervisor of a region that includes the lower half of the Pineywoods and some of the best cover for a mountain lion. In contrast, mountain lions killed by hunters have become so commonplace in the Hill Country that it no longer comes as a surprise.

“I think they are here, but the reason they are here is because people don’t see them,” Carlson said. With the roads and traffic through East Texas, he believes if the cats were here in numbers there would be an occasional roadkill. Like one being shot by a hunter, that hasn’t happened to Carlson’s knowledge either.

Nathan Garner, TPWD Wildlife Division regional director, agrees there are probably some mountain lions in East Texas. He has just never seen one or seen a report of a sighting that was confirmed.

“We get cougar or mountain lion sightings from time-to-time throughout the year in East Texas. We do our best to have our local field staff investigate them to determine if we can confirm them by documenting a track, locating a carcass, getting a photograph or video by the observer, getting a hair or scat for DNA analysis and so forth. We seldom are able to get this type of scientific evidence to confirm what the observer is reporting,” Garner said.

While not having confirmed a mountain lion sighting in the last 10 years, he and his staff have proof that black bears are in the region.

“Going back to 1999, some 10 years ago when we had a road-killed black bear collected on I-30 near Mount Vernon, TPWD has documented approximately half a dozen or so confirmed bear sightings in East Texas, which is a low number. In that same time period, we have investigated several more bear sightings across East Texas that we simply could not categorize as confirmed,” Garner said.

The biologist said one reason for the increased number of bear sightings is that they are visiting deer hunters’ corn feeders that have a game camera located nearby.

However, Garner during his 16 years in East Texas has not seen a picture of mountain lion at one of the feeders.

TPWD would like the public to report mountain lion sightings in East Texas by calling the Wildlife Division regional office in Tyler at 903-566-1615 or Young’s office in Austin at 512-389-8047.

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Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com

PROWLERS: Mountain lions (left) and bobcats can be found in Texas. East Texas has plenty of bobcats and it is believed an occasional mountain lion passes through the region.
((Courtesy Photos/TPWD))