Disregard the Photo bucket link above. It’s too late to edit it.
Thanks for the heads up LSL.
Sorry folks.
As I recall, you can buy Bear Urine, & spray it around the yard.
The lions will scent it, and leave.
Which is why they sometimes wander around residential areas (especially if the deer wander into those areas), but it would be pretty far out, and you would probably notice, if a mountain lion moved into your back yard as its territory. It’s probably long gone.
Now a friend of mine ran once into a young tiger while hiking in India. That must have been exciting,
Our property backs up to National forest. Gonna need a lot. I’m mostly concerned for my Wife as she goes hiking with the dogs back there. The dogs will protect her.
I also suspect it’s gone. ‘Suspect’ is not terribly reassuring. When my neighbor and friend walks his dogs, he takes a .38 spl. Well, OK. If nothing else the bang should scare things away.
Was driving in Breckenridge and a moose was walking down the sidewalk. I noticed he was headed right towards a person. I stopped when I got the the person and suggested they may want to go to the other side of the street.
Black bears have ripped our shed door off twice. I rebuilt the last one and reinforced it with oak. Now we just get claw marks.
It’s been an interesting time at elevation. But it’s time to leave.
Disclaimer I am not a wildlife biologist, and I have only once encountered a mountain lion while hiking, but even if you/your friend did see one (not unheard of if you live adjacent to the forest), you do not have to try to blow them away, or even fire a gun, because they are afraid of people. Those moose and bears and even cows should be more worrying.
I would never advocate shooting any wild life unless you are being actively attacked, or they have broken into your house.
I have fired guns to scare bears off my property that where stalking the house. I just put a round into the ground or a tree near them. Other yelling and noise did not work. That does.
Or when a bear breaks into a car. You can tell because the door/s are open. But you can’t see into the car. I don’t like to approach the car in that situation. I fire a round and watch to see if the car moves on it’s springs at all. I feel a bit safer approaching the car then.
I’m also cautious around moose. We have a lot of them. As I said, “There is a reason they aren’t afraid”
I just looked up the sound and I definitely heard it once in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I was hiking alone at night when I heard a scream from the bush. It wasn’t a human and didn’t sound very much like a bird, either. It was only that one scream, though, and I didn’t hear anything moving, so after a second or so, I continued walking, then I heard it again but louder. Sounded like it wasn’t 30 feet away from me. So I turned back and stopped my hike.
It took me a couple of seconds to figure it out. At first is sounded human. Then… no way that’s a person. It really sent a chill down my spine. The dogs where very upset about it. A good thing. I just don’t want them chasing one.
Interesting variant of “if the car’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’”.
I had an old boss who was a bird hunter. He had an invisible fence for his bird dog. A couple of times a week he’d come in, mumbling under his breath. Seems the dog would see a squirrel & get such a head of steam chasing it that he’d blow right thru the shock of the invisible fence chasing after it. However, it know if it came back on to the property it would get shocked when it walked over the fence wire so the invisible fence did more to keep the dog out than in.
Since we’re on the subject, one of my favorite (scary) wildlife encounter stories was when @ASL_v2.0 was stalked by a moose (link).
I’ll bet. We spent 4.5k getting our dogs professionally trained. For heal/come/sit/wait/break/place kind of stuff,
But oh boy, they have the laser focus that border collies have. If their attention breaks away from you, well, you may as well not exist.
Each dog weighs about 60lbs. Lots of muscle, and 4 paw drive. On leashes, my 110 pound wife is out matched. Especially on an icy snowy path. My 220 lbs is out matched too.