Cougar Kill

[halhiker]

Tonight at a friend's party I was talking to a fellow hiker and he told me a cougar took down a Bighorn a couple days ago on the Bear Creek Palms Trail in La Quinta. Two women he hiked with today actually saw it happen. They were hiking up the hill and saw about nine sheep on the hillside ahead of them. Then, out of nowhere, a huge mountain lion attacked one of the sheep and took it down. They were amazed and quite freaked out. He said they aborted their hike and headed down after that. They said it was like a National Geographic or Discovery Channel show but a bit too close. I'm gonna try and go up Wednesday and sniff it out. Literally. Last time I came upon a Bighorn kill it stayed in my nostrils for hours. By Wednesday, it should be pretty ripe.

If anyone's interested in going, let me know. Preferably,someone slower than me in case that cat's still hanging around.

[Perry]

Hal, I've been thinking about exploring the canyon inside coyote mountain. I'm not sure who or what is living in there... If you're interested we could carry some big sticks and rocks.

[Ellen]

Howdy Hal

Uh oh I don't think you can outrun Perry

Please post a trip report. I have yet to see big horn sheep in the Coachella valley/San Jacinto/Santa Rosas.

Happy New Year,
Ellen

[halhiker]

Perry,
Do you mean the canyon between Coyote Mountain and Sheep Mountain—commonly called Coyote Canyon? There's an old Indian Trail that heads over the the UC Preserve. That's a cool area. Just don't go into the UC property. They're as bad as the DWA.

[Perry]

Emailed you Hal.

I wonder how the UC budget pays for a SWAT team to hide in the bushes. j/k

[halhiker]

Emailed you Hal.

I wonder how the UC budget pays for a SWAT team to hide in the bushes. j/k

I think they probably hired the pepper spray cop from Davis.

[msugarpants]

Count me in on coyote cyn. Desert Magazine calls it the 'Trail of Shrines.' I have only done the first mile or so. From google Earth, looks like lots of possible camp sites closer to deep cyn.

[bluerail]

atari, cant be positive there, but I think you were safe, generally cat tracks shouldnt show claw marks, the toes and the heel lobe are a bit different than dogs...yours looks a more canine.

none the less, I'm always scared.

[cynthia23]

I have been reading that the 'no claw' rule is not ironclad and that sometimes the claws are visible. If it were a city park or something, I'd go with the obvious suspect, i.e. a dog, but in the circumstances, the presence of a mountain lion seems more likely than that of a dog. Eerie.

[SoCalJim]

I'll leave it to somebody else to research paw prints, but, as a cat owner, I can tell you that the claws are in or out as needed. When one of my cats is playing with me, he's (thankfully) very careful with the claws, but when he leaps and needs traction, there're plenty of claw marks to show he's trying to hang on. I'd imagine that if a lion was slipping in the snow, the claws would automatically come out in an attempt to improve his grip on the surface (not that it would actually help much). As I recall, there is a difference between canine and feline paw pad patterns; that's how the ID can be made.