Cougar Scratching Post?

K

KS-Pow

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I found a blown over tree that was scratched like I except a cougoar would do (my garage cat X20). It was a 10-12 inch tree cracked about 4 ft off ground and blown over. the top half of the trunk was missing the bark on the top half for approx 8 feet. I couldn't see any other limbs that would have caused the bark to rub off. The tree is along a 30 feet deep tree line between grain field and creek. A lot of large trees there and many deer. I was there for rifle deer hunt, once I figured out what I might be standing next it made the rest of the hunt a little more exciting. I did get a doe at sunset, only a 10 yard shot.
Do any of you in real cougar country know if I'm just imaging thing? There have been many reports of cougar here in Eastern Kansas but the DNR doesn't recognize them. I'd love to see one..
 
KS,
I have seen where a lion will dig it's claws into a tree when climbing a tree, but they rarely make a "scratch" like you discribe. A lion "scratch" is made in the dirt and duff under pine, juniper, and cedar type trees. It is made to mark their territories and many times there will be droppings associated with them, but not always.
Steve

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www.azpredatorhunts.com
 
There is a saying, "A picture is worth 1,000 words". Can you take a picture and post it here? Quite some time ago I posted a photo here of a lion scratch on the ground as Steve describes. Another time I posted a photo or 2 showing bear damage on standing trees. You can probably find those pics here using the search function of this forum.
 
I have found a number of trees that bears have marked, but I have never seen a cougar scratching post. But like Steve said, I have seen the marks left by a cougar that climbed a tree. These marks are not as easy to see as the marks left by a bear. Each time, I knew that the cougar had been up that tree, or I probably would not have seen the marks. These marks looked like they were made by the point of a sharp knife in the bark. The marks left by a bear are easy to see.

From the looks of some of the fresh kills I have found, it appears to me that the cats use their prey for scratching posts. In June of 2000, we found a very fresh elk kill on a remote logging road while hunting mushrooms. It was a gruesome sight. The cow elk elk was covered with slash marks. I could not find a spot on the elks back, sides or neck that were not slashed. There were numerous canine bite marks to the neck and skull. The eyes were bugged out and the tongus hanging out the corner of the mouth. It was obvious that this elk had died a hard death.

The elk stomach looked as if had been surgerically opened. The elk's stomach and intestines had been raked out on the road.
The choice vital organs were missing. I also saw an embilical chord stretched out on the road between the cows legs. The cat had eaten the choice parts and taken the calf with it.

I went to check the elk early the next morning with a friend, and we were surprised to find the cow had been drug 100 yards down through the brush. It had been eaten on and cached.

I have read that if a cat loses a canine or its sharp claws, its death certificate has been signed. I am no expert, but I do not think they use trees to sharpen their claws. I think they do that every time they make a kill.

As I was making a video of this kill, my son is saying on the video that he hears something moving in the brush just downhill from us. In the first photo from this video, he is throwing rocks at the sound he heard, trying to scare it away. The second photo shows a few of the hundreds of lacerations on the elk.
Bob

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That's interesting Bob. I was just talking to a biologist with ODFW yesterday. They've got a cougar study here in SW Oregon where they occasionally follow some of the radio collared cats to see what they're eating. This biologist said that of all the cougar-killed elk they found, one was a 19 year old cow and the others were all calves less than a year old.

I forgot to ask about the age and sex of the cougars they were following, but it didn't sound like these lions were killing healthy adult elk with any kind of frequency.

-dan
 
Dan, Finding that kill really amazed me also. I have found the remains of calves and yearlings many times, but this was the first mature elk that I have found. It seems to me that a cat would run the risk of being injured taking on a mature elk. That road was cut into a steep hillside. The cat had laid in wait on a bank on the uphill side of the road, where it had pounced on the back of the cow. It was obvious that there had been a big struggle. It looked as if the cat had been thrown from the elk once, or it had grabbed the muddy side of the road when the elk went down. There was one paw print with claw marks several inches long in the mud.
Also, I was surprised at the punctures in the thick skull just above the eye. I will locate that video tonight and make some more photos from it.
One thing I have been thinking about, is a house cat actually sharpening its claws when it uses one of the scratching posts? Or is it fullfilling an instinctive urge to use its claws? I can't see how running the point of my hunting knife down a scratching post would sharpen it. It seems the opposite would occur.
Bob
 
Well...I guess I need to update my previous post. The biologist that I was talking to sent me the Annual Progress Report on the Jackson Creek Cougar study in the SW Cascades in Oregon. Lots of interesting reading. Some of the info seems to contradict what he told me over the phone regarding prey selection.

Here are some highlights.

Regarding prey selection:
Male cougars preyed predominantly on elk (65% of male cougar kills), while famale cougars had only 1 documented elk kill and that was a calf...The small sample prevented statistical comparison of elk age classes but the distributions appear to be quite different, with >4 times more bulls in the kills than in the population.

Of the elk kills documented, 4 were of calves, 6 were adult cows, and 5 were adult bulls. [Bob, I’m guessing that was an adult male that killed that cow].

Here's some info about dispersing juveniles:
The average age young lions became independent (separated from their mother) was 16 months of age (range 9 to 23 months)...No dispersing juvenile male survived >2 years after becoming independent...Siblings have dispersed within 2 weeks of each other but have not necessarily shown the same dispersal pattern. We have now documented 5 cases of different-sex sibling dispersal. In all 5 cases, once the sibling pair left the natal home range, they were never located together.

[No info is provided on same-sex sibling dispersal].

Thus far, we have documented 21 cougar litters…The 21 litters were distributed over the entire year and show reproduction on the study area essentially every month of the year. However, 70% of them occur betweeen February and July.

And causes of mortality:
On an annual basis, the percentage of mortalities due to a single cause has varied. Prior to Measure 18 (outlawed use of hounds), legal harvest was the highest cause of mortality. Immediately after Measure 18, illegal harvest became the most important factor, and currently (January 1996 – July 2001) disease/parasites is the highest cause of mortality…Eleven cougars have died just within the last year from parasites and/or disease causes.
 
Well...I guess I need to update my previous post. The biologist that I was talking to sent me the Annual Progress Report on the Jackson Creek Cougar study in the SW Cascades in Oregon. Lots of interesting reading. Some of the info seems to contradict what he told me over the phone regarding prey selection.

Here are some highlights.

Regarding prey selection:
Male cougars preyed predominantly on elk (65% of male cougar kills), while famale cougars had only 1 documented elk kill and that was a calf...The small sample prevented statistical comparison of elk age classes but the distributions appear to be quite different, with >4 times more bulls in the kills than in the population.

Of the elk kills documented, 4 were of calves, 6 were adult cows, and 5[!] were adult bulls. [Bob, I’m guessing that was an adult male that killed that cow].

Here's some info about dispersing juveniles:
The average age young lions became independent (separated from their mother) was 16 months of age (range 9 to 23 months)...No dispersing juvenile male survived >2 years after becoming independent...Siblings have dispersed within 2 weeks of each other but have not necessarily shown the same dispersal pattern. We have now documented 5 cases of different-sex sibling dispersal. In all 5 cases, once the sibling pair left the natal home range, they were never located together.

[No info is provided on same-sex sibling dispersal].

Thus far, we have documented 21 cougar litters…The 21 litters were distributed over the entire year and show reproduction on the study area essentially every month of the year. However, 70% of them occur betweeen February and July.

And causes of mortality:
On an annual basis, the percentage of mortalities due to a single cause has varied. Prior to Measure 18 (outlawed use of hounds), legal harvest was the highest cause of mortality. Immediately after Measure 18, illegal harvest became the most important factor, and currently (January 1996 – July 2001) disease/parasites is the highest cause of mortality…Eleven cougars have died just within the last year from parasites and/or disease causes.

-dan
 
Dan, Interesting information. Thanks for posting it for us. We spend all of our spare time from March 15 through the end of April hunting elk Sheds. Last year while hunting sheds, we found 10 cougar kills.
The kills were all still cached and undisdurbed by other scavengers. All were deer, 4 bucks and 6 does. All of these kills were within 200 yards of the bottom of the drainages. One was a six point whitetail buck that had shed one of his antlers. He had been killed before shedding the other antler. We found an elk kill this fall while deer hunting, but the bears had scattered it all over the hillside, so we could not tell much about it.
Bob
 
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