kscowboy's Link
On September 15, 1904, the last documented mountain lion in Kansas prior to 2007* was shot during a prairie chicken hunt in Ellis County, Kansas along the North Fork Big Creek northwest of Catharine, KS. Three well known Hays business owners, Henry Havemann, Bill Applebaugh, and J.H. Spratt were hunting in rural Ellis County when their hunting dog leaped toward some brush and spooked the mountain lion. The story goes that the lion was about to pounce on Applebaugh when the two others shot the animal.
The men returned the mountain lion to Hays where several of the locals gathered in downtown to see the rare cat. Applebaugh, the local druggist, sent the lion to KU where it was prepared by Prof. L.L. Dyche. He kept the taxidermy lion in his store front window until he moved out-of-state. He later gifted it to the Hays state college museum.
At the time there was two different theories as to where the mountain lion came from, some believed it escaped a circus while others think it roamed into Kansas from Colorado.
Meanwhile, some Kansas residents have multiple sightings and some have even seen black ones. It’s truly amazing what people will believe they saw when they want to see it.
I was bear hunting on Vancouver Island in BC when a cat ran across the remote mountain road in front of us in the dark. My guide (who was in his 50s) and I immediately turned to each other and said, “Mountain lion!” We flipped our lights into the ditch to get a better look and it was a ginger house cat. We were not around any homes and it was really dark outside which made it difficult to know the true size of the animal when it crossed. Had we not confirmed it, I’d swear to this day that I saw one in BC that trip.
crestedbutte's Link
In the video, when the narrator is showing the KS map with stars on it….he repeats verbatim the content in the attached 2015 article by author Michelle Lindsey….especially the info. in her bullet points are repeated verbatim when stars are placed on ABT’s KS map.
The black cougar story is making it's rounds again, have seen the "official report confirming the sighting" shown to me by co-workers and have seen it on FB that it happened here. The coworker, when he showed me the post, said he thought he had seen Darth Cougar too, "it crossed the road so fast he wasn't sure, but it was black and it had a long tail, it had to be a cougar he guessed"
As far as the Mountain lions my wife and brother have seen one years ago on two different occasions and I had a turkey hunter leave all his hunting equipment by a brush pile one spring next to our north fence and a brush pile. When I called him asking why he left all his stuff and he said he was sitting in his blind when a Mt. lion jumped the fence and scared him so bad he said he was not coming back.
