CHARITON – A young male mountain
lion was shot south of Confidence on the Chariton River in southern Iowa
last Sunday after it was seen eating on a deer carcass.
“Someone saw the lion eating on a deer
carcass and called a friend,” said Todd Gosselink, DNR wildlife biologist
with the DNR. “The friends showed up with their coon hounds and flushed
the cat from a culvert, chased it for about three-quarters of a mile before
it climbed a large cottonwood tree.”
That was when Jason Klaiber shot it
with his 30-06 rifle. Klaiber, of Lineville, hunted the mountain lion
along with his father Gary.
The lion was about 6-1/2 feet long
and all indications are it was wild. “It was a good sized male. I’d
estimate it weighed 80 to 100 pounds and was probably 1-1/2 to 2 years old,”
Gosselink said. That makes the third young male lion killed in Iowa.
Ron Andrews, the state furbearer biologist
for the DNR, said he is hoping to collect the stomach, muscle tissue and
some teeth in order to age the lion and to run some DNA tests.
“It certainly is exciting and maybe
substantiates some of these reports we are receiving,” Andrews said.
“The reports we get on mountain lions is almost overwhelming.”
Andrews said there must be a general
increase in the movements of these animals into the state, but how many,
he can’t say. There have been recent reports of a lion killed on the
interstate north of Kansas City, one was captured in the Omaha area and one
was killed near Ireton in northwest Iowa.
The DNR has six apparently good, solid
mountain lion tracks in the state. The tracks were found in Webster
County, near Mt. Ayr, near Cherokee, Lyon County, Harrison County and Decatur
County.
“Killing mountain lions is currently
not illegal, but we certainly don’t want to encourage the indiscriminate
killing of these animals,” Andrews said.
The Iowa DNR has not released any mountain lions into the state.