Regular cougar sighting in North Carolina

Two years ago, a friend and myself were deer hunting in Rutherford County NC, and I saw a cougar. I had been sitting at the base of an oak tree for about an hour, and I decided to get up and move around a little. I had been standing for about ten minutes when I happened to turn around and look behind me. All of the sudden, I spotted what at first, I thought was a deer trotting towards me a about 50 yards away. Naturally, I got my deer rifle ready so I could shoot. As it got closer, I thought to myself, that is not a deer. As the animal got closer, I noticed that it had a broad head, was tan in color, and was not moving like a deer at all. When the animal got within about 30 feet of my location, it turned and went behind a laurel thicket. By this point, I knew that this was a cougar. It appeared to weigh anywhere from 150 to 175 lbs. and it had a long bushy tail. After the cougar ran behind the laurel thicket, I lost visual contact for about 5 seconds. When the cougar came out from around the other side of the thicket, it jumped a shallow ravine that was about ten feet wide, and ran up the ridge away from me. The thing that still stands out in my memory is the fact that I never heard a sound. This occured in late fall, so there was plenty of leaves on the ground, however, when the cougar passed by, there was complete silence. Something that I will never forget to say the least. I never fired a shot because I was in shock over what I was seeing.

I live in Georgia. We too have sighted a mountain lion, in fact a neighbor has him on DVD. The cat has killed every chicken and duck we had. We called fish and game; same old story: mountain lions don’t live in Georgia. Well, this one sure does. Why is it so impossible to believe that Mountain Lions can exist in pretty much every state. Some people call them Florida Panthers, well look at any map and see the approximate distance (or lack thereof) from GA or NC to FL. All the people who have sighted these cats can’t be wrong.

We have Mountain Lions in Randolph County, NC. I saw my first one in the late ’70s. Broad shoulders and camel colored, it circled road kill as my headlights came around a curve at 2am and it circled back off the road. A few years ago one was killed in the road around the Sandy Creek area. A very large cat between 100-200 pounds. Several years before this I was walking into an overgrown field along an adjoining creek and thought I had jumped a deer. Something big hit the ground but I didn’t hear a deer trotting away. Looking around I saw the backside of a large camel colored cat silently slipping out of the field and into the thick woods. He was travelling away from a lone tree that overlooked the down-slope of the field towards the creek. The large tree had its first forking limbs about twenty feet off the ground.
I would not want to face one of these cats in a foul mood but I guess the good news is that they are territorial to one another and one pair will occupy 100 square miles or roughly a 10 mile by 10 mile area.

i live in hudson nc . i was feeding my dog one morning who stays in a chain link fence.my dogs tail was tucked between her legs. it was just at dawn.i saw to my left about 30 yards away a cougar.i stood still.then i stomped the ground. he looked at me. and looked staight ahead.then turned and ran back into the woods. my dog never tucks her tail.she usually barks at anything stange.later i learned that
a mans german shepherd dog was killed by a cougar
less than a mile away from my house.COUGARS ARE IN NC!!THERE IS NO DOUBT. I SAW IT FOR MYSELF.
I HAVE SEEN THE COUGARS IN GRANDFATHER MTN. PARK.
AND THATS WHAT I SAW HERE!!!NO ONE SEEMS TO BELIEVE ME. WHEN I TELL THEM. BUT YOU CAN BELIEVE IT. IT’S A FACT!!

We have now had two cougar sightings in our subdivision, Bailey Springs, near Hough High School, in Davidson, NC. We border a nature preserve and the Davidson Greenway where a lot of deer are seen. After what I have read online, I find this pretty frightening. My guess is the cougar is about 100 pounds.

For sure, we hear their unmistakable cry every night.

We live in 28904 zip code where also live many white-tailed deer.

The government again demonstrates its incompetence when it concludes there are no longer any mountain lions here, and to claim those that we hear and see (tracks and the animals) are from escaped pets is just nuts, there are hundreds of sightings in our area alone, even more in the Blue Ridge Mountains at large. These ain’t UFOs, you know it when you hear them. In fact, Fish and Game ignorance is a big joke to all of us who live around here.

We have also heard these animals have been introduced to our area to control our huge deer population by the government, too. Apparently, they don’t want us to know this plan.

If you doubt it, just come on up to Warne and ask somebody. Then wait until dark and listen for all the dogs to start barking…and then you’ll hear that shriek like a women screaming, an unmistakable sign of the mountain lion, the Eastern Cougar, alive and well in North Carolina.

I don’t think the cat was domesticated. The reason being is I run along te rivers edge and follow trails around about 5-to-10-mile spans quite often. I have seen rabbits birds even cayotes remains partially hanging in trees. Even a mangled-up cow close to my house about a mile away. There is a highway coming through in the next 1 to 2 years and I believe maybe logging and grading companies are pushing it closer this way