Originally Posted By: randall729 Why didn't they stay where the females are? Since no females in mi. then I guess they'll roam right out of here?
Don't count on it, after all those wandering males out of South Dakota were finally admitted to exist in North Dakota, (it took awhile before they admitted they were there, at least half a dozen cut up horses, several sightings, all with feeble attempts at denial by Game and Fish), wasn't but 8-10 years we had a viable breeding population, and they opened a limited season.
Of course somewhere on the board here is a story about one that got run over in New York state, as best I recall. DNA evidence supposedly proved he had migrated from South Dakota too, and in the course of his 1500+ mile journey, he'd left a hair sample on a fence in Wisconsin or Michigan or someplace with big sign that said, "DNA Sample for evidence, on my way to the Big Apple!" I mean seriously, some guys believed that line of B_S_, but what are the odds of a cat from the Black Hills of South Dakota roaming clear to New York state, and in passing through Wisconsin he just happened to leave a hair sample on a fence, and of all of the thousands of miles of fence in Wisconsin, a wildlife biologist with interest in big cats just happened to find that twist in the wire on that one little chunk of fence with the hair sample and say, "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm... That looks like mountain lion hair!! We should take that back to the lab, waste the tax payers money, and run a DNA sample on it to make sure, and see where it might have come from!"
[beeep], everybody knows ALL wandering mountain lions come from South Dakota, why bother testing it? Honest injun, it don't matter where you're at, if you live in a state where there are no mountain lions, and one shows up, you can bet your [beeep] it came from South Dakota! You could be in the middle of Siberia, lost in the Australian outback, in the penguin breeding grounds of the Antartic, wherever... if you see a mountain lion, it came from South Dakota! Not sure why there are so many dissatisfied Mountain Lions in South Dakota, but they sure seem to hate the place! Been migrating out of there for 20+ years now, can't believe there is any left there! And, I don't buy they've been over-populated that long down there, and there's still anything left for them to eat. As many as have supposedly migrated out over the years, you'd think there wouldn't be a deer, or an Elk, or anything else left alive anywhere in the state.