Oklahoma Mountain Lions

This week on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, John digs through the archives to one of his favorite old interviews with state furbearer biologist Jerrod Davis. Next to bigfoot, mountain lions are Oklahomas second most elusive creature. It seems like every person you meet has one running around in the draw behind their barn, but is that really the case? Jerrod helps John uncover some of the mystery around big cats and just how many may be lurking around in Oklahoma. The guys talk about confirmed sightings, whether the population is growing or not, and what to do if you see one. It's a light hearted but very informative episode that is definitely worth a listen!

Check out the Sportsmen's Empire Podcast Network for more relevant outdoor content!

‍

John Hudspeth: [00:00:00] Hey guys and gals, welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast, brought to you by Arrowhead Land Company. Here you'll be educated, entertained, and equipped to get more out of your outdoor experience. So hold on tight because here we go.

What's up guys? Welcome to the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast. I am your host. John Hudspeth and I have to start this episode out with a little bit of an apology. I think I mentioned last week that my wife was gonna be outta town. She works in youth ministry. They have a trip this week, she's gone for eight days.

And so this last week I have been working full-time, taking care of my one-year-old daughter, trying to keep the house in line and everything. And honestly, the podcast just had to take a little bit of a backseat. So [00:01:00] now if you're listening to this, you've probably noticed that we do in fact, have an episode this week, so didn't leave you guys completely high and dry.

And I'll get into a little bit more of the explanation of what's going on this week here in a little bit. But I do want to tell you guys about an awesome weekend that I had this last weekend. So because my wife was gone, figured, why not head out to the ranch? So loaded up the diaper bag, took my daughter out to the ranch.

She just stayed in the truck. It's so stinking hot. I keep complaining about that. But like I said, she just stayed in the truck for the most time. I'd let her out run around every now and again. But I took some more protein feed, topped off the feeders and everything like that.

And, but where it really started taking a fun turn is as I was driving out to the ranch, My phone went off because my tro cam pictures come in at 9:00 AM every morning. And so my phone buzzes and I'm almost to the ranch and I'm going through the photos and wham bam, ba lamb. Exactly one year to the day from last year.

I got my first [00:02:00] picture of the 2% buck, so no mistaking whatsoever that it's him. He looks like he's gonna be back to being a awesome deer. I mentioned several times last year that he had kinda taken a step backwards, I'm guessing because of the drought we had last year. For whatever reason, he just wasn't up to his normal standards last year, even though he was still a great buck.

I just got one picture and it was, he was a little bit further away and he was facing the camera so you didn't get a real good angle. But for July 14th, looking at what he already had on his head, I think he's going to be a super good deer. I don't know if it's gonna be his best rack ever, but I think it's gonna be close to it if it's not.

And like I said, without a doubt it was definitely him. No mistaking him. I've been watching this buck for five stinking years. I know him pretty darn well. Even when it's like a bad picture and fuzzy, I can usually still tell if it's him or not. But as always, he stayed camera shy. He didn't come up to the feet or anything like that.

He was out in my soybean [00:03:00] plot with a couple other deer. Have not gotten another pi picture of him since, but that's okay. At least I know he's there. Not sure if that's a good thing or not because I told a couple of my buddies, I was like, Hey, he's alive. May just be setting myself up for yet another year of disappointment on this deer because.

He just doesn't live on us. That's the f you know, I get these pictures. It's super tempting. He just, he's hardly ever there in daylight. I have maybe five daylight pictures of him in five years. I did have my one encounter with him last year. It's stinking water bottle cracked and spooked him.

And so I haven't yet decided just how much I want to dedicate to him. The reason I call him a two per the 2% buck is because I give myself only a 2% chance of killing him every year. And for good reason, for all the things I just listed. And Part of me wants to, dedicate at least one of my buck tags to that buck and that buck only.

I've never really done that in the past. It's always in the back of my mind. I passed a really [00:04:00] good deer with my rifle last year cause I knew he was still out there. But I just don't know I hate to get myself all worked up for a deer that I just honestly don't know if I can kill because he, I just don't think he is on our property.

You can't kill something that's not there. So I don't know. We'll work on that, like I've said, that's a big reason I went ahead and planted these these food plots and everything. Got some protein out there, just doing everything possible to get deer on our property and keep 'em there.

So very excited that he is there. But yeah I don't know what that means yet. So that was awesome. Like I said, went ahead and topped off the feeders. As I was driving around my, my three food plots they have been overgrown. So I sprayed the same day that I planted them, but I never went back and sprayed again.

And they've been doing pretty good. They've been out competing, but with all the rain and sunshine we've had the last couple weeks, all the other grass and weeds and stuff have caught up with it or with the beans. And I wasn't sure, my plan was to like, Change some straps on some some stands and do little small stuff like that.

But I was like, man, [00:05:00] these really need to be sprayed I didn't know if I could get a tractor. I didn't know if the sprayer was working or I had seen it as I drove by and I noticed it had some chemical in there, so I was like, I'm just gonna call and check on it. So called my brother.

I was like, Hey, what are the chances I can get a tractor and maybe the sprayer? And he's man, like I don't care if you use it all, but I got about 150 gallons of glyphosate or a roundup in the sprayer. And I was like wouldn't you know it? That is exactly what I need. So I had some roundup ready soybeans, and so I keep, I think I said this on my Instagram story.

It's literally almost scaring me how well all my preseason prep is going this year. They could of just they just keep working out like that. I got stuff, the switchgrass and stuff plowed, which the switchgrass ended up not growing. I told you guys that I got all these plots planted.

I ended up having extra seed, so I planted a third plot because the drills just set perfectly. And and now I, had all this stuff ready to spray. So ran over and hooked the sprayer up to my pickup, pulled it over. Hooked up to [00:06:00] a tractor and like I said, it was completely ready to go.

And so went back there, sprayed the first two plots in the back and I was I started basically at the one furthest away from the house. I was working my way forward. The only little hitch that I had was After I sprayed my second plot while I was heading to the third one, I passed by a gate that, that I had actually clipped I think with the plow earlier this spring.

Kind of bent the gate a little bit and was like, you know what? I have this tractor have a little time. I'm gonna try to use the forks and straighten the gate out a little bit. So I turned around for some unknown reason. Still not don't know why my brother couldn't figure out why either. The tractor just died.

It was some kind of fuel problem. I don't know if when I turned, I did kinda drop off this little ledge and I didn't have a ton of diesel, so maybe it just sucked some air up in there. But I was trying to bleed the lines and everything. My brother came out and was helping me. We were unscrewing the filters and filling them and all that.

We never got it started and so I did not get my third plot sprayed, but luckily it was right there by the third plot and everything was hooked up. [00:07:00] And so my brother went back later that week and got the tractor running. He went ahead and helped me out and sprayed that third plot for me.

So I did not get all three done. I got two of 'em done, but my brother got the last one done. So all three of my plots have now been sprayed again. And so they should just from here on out, they should just be golden. I've yet to see the man, like they are getting hammered in a good way.

Like they're in a good way getting hammered by the deer. So I'm not sure yet if they're gonna make it into the fall. Worst case, I just plant right over 'em with a fall mix and still be good to go. So yeah, very excited about that. That was awesome. Didn't get any of the small stuff done, like the straps and everything, but.

Hey I can do that later. I still got, over two months till deer season's here, so not too worried about that. So overall, fantastic. Quick little trip up there. As I've mentioned, I've been having to work a lot. Work's been crazy. My daughter, for some reason, has not wanted to go to sleep till like midnight every night.

It's I haven't been getting a ton of sleep. And that's gonna bring us into this week's [00:08:00] podcast and kinda my explanation here. Like I said I just, I've had zero time. I wasn't able to get a guest, I wasn't able to think of anything I'd do myself, and I'm so scatterbrained, I don't think I could produce a good content anyway.

So what I have decided to do this week, and I hope you guys are okay with it. I went back into the archives and I pulled out, I believe it was, Episode two, the second episode that I ever did. I actually recorded this three years ago because I recorded it before I even actually started putting out episodes.

And so this is an interview with Oklahoma's fur biologist Jared Davis. And I'll be honest, I'm not sure if he's still there or not. Like I said, I recorded this three years ago. But this is an episode we did about Mountain Lions in Oklahoma. And so I loved doing this episode. I still remember it.

We talked about basically whether there are mountain lions here or not. We talked about, sightings, what to do if you have a sighting, what those sightings usually turn out to be. Is it plausible that Oklahoma has [00:09:00] a, actual population of mountain lions? Again, like I, I haven't even listened to this since it came out, but I just remember all this stuff because I enjoyed it so much and so yeah, I hope you guys can forgive me, but I'm still putting out an episode.

I will warn you again, I recorded this three years ago. My equipment has come a long way. The audio quality. Sucks. It sounds like I'm talking into a coffee can. But you know what it's still very audible, whatever you wanna say. You can still listen to it and it's not too awful bad.

So that's what we have going, I'm gonna repeating an old episode. There's thousands of you guys that came and started listening to the episode a or listening to my podcast after I dropped this episode. So welcome to all the newcomers. If you are an older listener, and you've heard this before, my apologies I'm gonna do better next week, I promise.

And so yes, that's what we have this week. Thank you guys for for just supporting this podcast. As always, thank you guys for listening. If you have any ideas or things you want to hear about, please let me know. And that is all I have for [00:10:00] y'all this week. So we'll get into the podcast about Mountain Lions with Jared Davis right after this.

There is truly no place like the great outdoors in Oklahoma. When you're out in the wild, you want your wireless devices to work unlike other carriers. Bravado Wireless believes that coverage in rural areas is important so that you stay connected with competitively priced plans and coverage where you need it.

The mission of Bravado Wireless is to keep you connected no matter where you are. Visit bravado wireless.com or check them out at one of their retail locations. Bravado Wireless, the power of connection. Hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. Today I'm talking to Jared Davis. How you doing today, Jared?

I'm doing fine. How about yourself, sir? I'm doing great. You gave me a great excuse to come in outta the heat and sit in the AC for a while, so I have absolutely no complaints right now. So good. Jared, why don't you, before we get started, why don't you tell us a [00:11:00] little bit about yourself and what do you do?

Jerrod Davis: Okay. Like I said, my name's Jared Davis. I am a wildlife biologist with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. I've been with the department for 12, 13 years. 12 going on 13 years. I currently my job is as the fur bear biologist and one of my job duties that I do with that is I deal with mountain Lion reports and do sight investigations to confirm mountain lion sightings in the state.

That's, like I said, that's one of one of my job duties along with dealing with. Trapping regulations and fur harvest. Tracking, monitoring populations of fur bearers in the state.

John Hudspeth: Awesome. Awesome. We may get into a little bit of some other stuff, but mostly what we wanna talk about today is the good old Oklahoma Mountain lion.

And I'm pretty excited for this for a lot of reasons. One, I just love learning about it. But two so many people that I talk to Hey, we got a mountain lion in the [00:12:00] back here, or if you go over this draw, we got a mountain lion over there. Or, just all over the place.

And And I'm really just excited to, to present some facts and I'm not calling anybody a liar or anything, obviously. But you guys put out a video on Facebook a couple months ago talking about mountain lion sightings, and I believe it was you and the video correct. That was me. Yes.

Yep. And you presented a lot of facts that were honestly, pretty mind blowing to me. And so that's what we wanna get into today. But if you wouldn't mind real quick could you give us just a little bit of a history of mountain lions in Oklahoma?

Jerrod Davis: Sure. Before, prior to European, settlement basically.

There mountain lions were common in Oklahoma. Or the Oklahoma territory and a across the plains. As it started getting settled and developed mountain lions were extricated from this area in the 19th century. We don't know exactly when or exactly time, but we know that they weren't common in the area [00:13:00] sometime in the mid 19th century.

They were hunted because they were perceived to be a threat. Both to the settlers and to, their livelihood being the cattle and the, personal safety as well. And they also began to leave the area because deer were being harvested for food, which is their main food source.

So their main food source is gone. They're being threatened. Yeah, they're gonna, either they're going to stay and be hunted, or they're going to leave this area and go to areas that have, abundant food sources and less pressure from humans. There were scattered reports that started back in the 1950s.

But we as a department didn't start tracking and confirming those reports until, the early two thousands. And since then, we've had a pretty consistent protocol and procedure in place to report and confirm these mountain lions. Yeah we've always, we know that we had them in the [00:14:00] past.

And we know that we have had them passing through the state, but as far as resident populations in Oklahoma, we haven't found any evidence of that since the 1950s or maybe even earlier than that.

John Hudspeth: No, no breeding going on. No Mountain Lion staying around or calling this home,

Jerrod Davis: right?

Yeah. We, they have pretty large home territories that they range and. We know that there's probably some overlap that comes into Oklahoma, but as far as those core territories where you have reproductively active females with cubs, we've had no scientific evidence of having that in Oklahoma yet.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. And so if you had to guess, or you may have exact numbers, how many reported sightings do you

Jerrod Davis: guys average per year? I don't really have a yearly average, but I know. That any given month, like I went through my emails and our reporting system now is you go to our website, you fill out a [00:15:00] report and it sends an email directly to me.

Gotcha. So any given month, I have upwards of 30 reports. So I guess a conservative estimate is probably 300 reports a year. And those are the ones that, those are the ones that just make it to me, either through online submission form or phone calls that are forwarded through our game wardens and field biologists.

That doesn't include the Facebook posts and not our Facebook posts, but, private Facebook posts. Or, the local rumor mill. Those don't make it to us we don't. We don't get to, we don't get to take a look at those.

John Hudspeth: So walk us through that real quick.

So let's say an email goes all the way through, gets to you maybe they have a picture or a picture of a track, you think it's fairly credible. What is your process then for going out and checking on that?

Jerrod Davis: Sure. Yeah. Like you said, people send in a report to me. Sometimes it's just, hey, I saw something.

I don't have any evidence, but what I believe it was a mountain lion. I'm not in the business of telling people what they see. I'm just in the [00:16:00] business of telling people the facts and then they can decide on their own. In reports like that, Where there's no hard evidence or physical evidence of a mountain lion being in the area.

What we do is we take that information we put it into just a little database, like a little spreadsheet, and we have a date and a location track on that. And if we get multiple reports in the same area, we may try and go out and see if we can find something, look a little closer for tracks or hair.

Maybe a kill cash location where they've predated on Deere and cashed those carcasses. But, short of having any physical evidence, that's what we would do. If somebody sends me a picture of a track or a trail cam picture or a camera phone picture or something like that we look at the credibility of the picture.

First, if it's track, we, I try to identify. Is that a mountain lion track? Is that a dog track? We need to get some size on that. Because we know, average size of a mountain lion track, average size of a bobcat track, those are the really, the only two in Oklahoma that you're gonna get confused with. And [00:17:00] size is really an issue. With the canine tracks versus feline tracks. Those are usually. Pretty easy to determine because the presence of claw prints in the canine track and also the heel pad, is gonna have two lobes on the bottom as opposed to the, excuse me, the tri lobe on the cat pad.

There's some things that we look at as far as that on the tracks. And then if we get a picture of an animal, of course we need to look and try and verify if it's a mountain lion or if it's a. Something else, it could be a yellow lab a house cat, a bobcat.

But if, if we do believe that there there's a good possibility that is a mountain lion. We contact the person that sent it in try and get access to the location that the picture was taken and verify that picture was taken in Oklahoma. There's a lot of, there's a lot of pictures floating around there.

And people will try and pass them off. As I took this picture, or this picture was from a friend of a [00:18:00] friend. Of a friend. Google image search is an amazing thing. Yeah. You can find pictures. That people post and Right. And try and take off the internet and pass off as their own mountain lion sighting, which I don't understand why

John Hudspeth: anybody?

Yeah, I I've definitely seen there's probably three super popular trail cam photos that I see pop up every couple years and usually it's always in a different location or a different person. And so yeah, I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure that's a common occurrence.

Jerrod Davis: Yeah, there's that one where the mount lion's dragging the deer in front of the deer feeder and it's, man, that thing's been dragging that poor deer for years.

It hasn't stopped to got to eat the thing or anything.

John Hudspeth: All right. Average, let's say 300 a year, and of those, how many do y'all, or can you actually

Jerrod Davis: confirm? So any given year? I think the most we've confirmed is five. And then some years we have zero, I think 2016 we didn't have any confirmed mountain lion sightings.

There's always some in the works. But I'm pretty sure five is the most that we've ever done in one year. Yeah.

John Hudspeth: And [00:19:00] to, for it to be considered confirmed, do you have to actually see the cat or, if you can tell without a doubt that it's a mountain lion track. Does, can that count as a confirmed case?

Jerrod Davis: Yeah, there is. There's actually been a case since I've been in this position, I think it was back in 20 2017 in Macintosh County. We were able to identify through hair samples, tree scratch and tracks. All three of those basically indicated there was a mountain lion near the Canadian River in McIntosh County.

Yeah, we don't have to have a picture, if we have a good track that gives us good information on location, we can find all kinds of stuff.

John Hudspeth: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so let's let's move on from that. So let's say you get the call. You go out you confirm it.

What is the best, explanation for that cat bean, wherever it is? Is it, a young male looking to breed? Is it just a young cat that might have been displaced? What's usually y'all's best guess [00:20:00] on why that cat is there?

Jerrod Davis: We believe that like the most probable reason for a mountain lion to be in Oklahoma and is.

Probably a younger cat looking to establish a home territory. And we've been fortunate enough to collect DNA from a handful of mountain lion that we've either gotten through. I think, there was a train accident where a cat got hit by a train cat got hit by a car. We've had one that was illegally hunted in Oklahoma and then one that was killed.

When it was trying to eat some sheep in the panhandle. Panhandle. We've been fortunate enough to be able to collect data, to get some information off those, and we were able to send that DNA to a laboratory for genetic analysis. So the, of those cats, they were linked to three established populations.

One in Nebraska, one in South Dakota, and one in Colorado. They're coming a long ways, right? These, the areas, especially in South Dakota and Nebraska, these are heavily populated and dense for, [00:21:00] animals that have 40, 50, up to a hundred and 125 square mile range.

They're packed in there pretty tight for having that type of territory. So those dominant males are pushing these female or these younger males out. And they're going to look for greener pastures. So that's what we think that they're just transient males or transient juveniles coming into, or adolescents.

Gotcha. Coming into Oklahoma looking for an area to set up shop. The main, one of the things that you look for in establishing a territory is, females coming in cuz the males aren't gonna stick around. Until there's a female that comes in to, to set up that home range.

So until we have those females come in and set up those home ranges, I think the males are gonna continue to move through Oklahoma in search of an area where there's already a territory that overlaps with the female's territory. Gotcha, gotcha.

John Hudspeth: So the lady's gotta leave the way, huh? Yeah. Yep. Okay. I got two questions that I'm gonna put in one and you covered it a little bit, but [00:22:00] is there a part of the state where you're more likely to encounter one than another?

And along with that, like habitat wise, is there one habitat that they seem to like over the other? Oklahoma's very diverse from east to west. And me personally, when I think of a mountain lion, I would think maybe. In the mountains, more eastern Oklahoma. But it sounds and I guess it makes sense if you think of where the populations are, but it sounds like more of the cats are coming from the west.

So is there a part of the state where you're, where you might have more encounters than the other?

Jerrod Davis: So if you would look at a map of what counties have had confirmed sightings in them it pretty much ranges in every region of the state as far as if you divided it up into, four northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest.

It's pretty fairly distributed as far as where those confirmed sightings have come from. But then when you look at the number of confirmed sightings in each county, there's more activity in the far northwest reaches of Oklahoma where you're closer to Texas and Colorado and New Mexico, where they do have all of the [00:23:00] established populations of Mount Lions.

So yeah, they're coming north to south. And we've, we were able to track, I say we were able to track through confirmations. I think there was one year where we had multiple, 2015, we had multiple photographs. From Logan County, Potawatomi County and we were actually able to link that up with Kansas, who had been tracking the same cat coming southeast through Kansas, and it went southeast through Oklahoma.

Once it got passed, te Compa mod area we don't know where it went. We weren't able to, we didn't have any more confirmations. The, so you would think. And that's where we have seen it up in that panhandle area where there's more confirmations, there's more sightings up there.

As far as the habitat, basically areas with good cover. And, that's a very broad statement. That could be dense vegetation in tall grass, prairies or forests or swamps or even rocky bluffs with rocky bluffs. Geez. With rapid elevation change. Yeah. And [00:24:00] any of those areas that have sparse human population is gonna be preferred as well, because, they don't look at us and see prey, they look at us and see a competitor.

They're not going to, they're not gonna want to put up with that competition if they don't have to.

John Hudspeth: Lucky for them. There's quite a bit of that sparse population in this state yeah. You have the right to the best wireless service. Bravado Wireless provides the best mobile, wireless, high speed internet, latest devices and customer service at prices.

You feel good about Bravado Wireless strives to put these values first and offer you the best wireless service available, see what they have to offer@bravadowireless.com or one of their retail locations in eastern Oklahoma. Let Bravado Wireless connect you to your family, friends, and business partners.

All over the world. Bravado, wireless, the power of connection. So as far as like factors that could make us have maybe potentially more lions you mentioned cover, obviously, but what about our deer herd is [00:25:00] growing. Oklahoma's a big ranching state. You got cattle, you got sheep goats.

It does that type of thing sound like it could make more for more lion sightings?

Jerrod Davis: So out of the 20 ish years that we've been keeping as good of records as we can we've never had a confirmed case of mountain lion predation on cattle. There's been one case where there was one found eating a cow, but we don't know, based off that was a Wildlife services.

That was a wildlife services issue. Gotcha. When it starts dealing with livestock you start talking about wildlife services. So I don't think that the cattle are gonna have any impact on Mount Lion prevalence. There has been a confirmed case, a Mount Lion predation on a goat herd in the panhandle.

Yeah. That, but I think that's just more of the fact that. We're gonna see more of them up in that area because they're coming down from that area. Gotcha. And our deer herd has been, pretty healthy over the last decade and a half. We've got really good deer herd in [00:26:00] Oklahoma I don't think it's gonna be any more of a draw to 'em now as it, or in the, in the next decade as it has been in the last decade.

But that is one thing. That is one thing that we do have now that we didn't have, 50, 60 years ago, is a good deer heard. So it may just be time for, the prey the selected prey of choice is back in the state. So now they're gonna come back in the state and we may just be catching onto it as it happens.

Gotcha.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha. All right. This one might go along with that a little bit or I don't know, it could be totally random, but as we see an increase in the Black bear population specifically in eastern Oklahoma, is there any correlation from that could carry over to cats? And I think I heard that they've now seen black bearers as far west as Oklahoma City or maybe west of Oklahoma City.

So yeah. Is there any correlation between bears and cats?

Jerrod Davis: I don't think that there's any direct correlation between black bears and mountain lions. In states where they have both of those, they actually come into conflict with each other as opposed [00:27:00] to, working in tandem with each other.

But we have had quite a few success stories in Oklahoma regarding the reintegration of historic species. Now we've got the deer herd. We've seen the river water return to the majority of their historical range. Since the mid 1980s black bear are another species that have begun to naturally reintegrate back into their historic ranges.

It's more likely that there's a correlation between conservation efforts and the natural reintegration of species on their own accord that I think than there would be between any other species moving back in. Maybe aside from the whitetail deer that there may be a delayed correlation with Mount Lions coming back into that, but, As far as the black bear, I don't think there's gonna be any correlations other than the fact that conservation efforts are allowing them to come back in.

So there may, that may be the on, I think that's probably the only, only point in which they are, they're able to be.

John Hudspeth: Examined at the same level. Gotcha. Gotcha. It's funny you say Otter after the big the floods of 2015, which I'm sure everybody's familiar with we had some property along the [00:28:00] Red River that the river got out of its banks and flooded into one of our ponds.

And that oh, I don't know, October, November my sister and I were duck hunting on that pond, and all of a sudden my sister starts nudging me and she's John and Otter. And I'm like, there's no otters here. And I turned my head and sure enough, there were two otters in that pond that I assume came outta the river during all the flooding.

But yeah. Oh, that was very cool to see.

Jerrod Davis: It is very neat. We've had reports of Otter all the way over in Custer County in western Oklahoma. The only place we haven't had any are up in the panhandle, which, that's not their historic range anyway. Cuz there's no water up there.

There are not a whole lot of water up there.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. And then actually just on the same topic, I actually saw a quail yesterday which is something we haven't seen around here again, I'm in southeastern Oklahoma for you and the listeners. And seeing that was really cool.

Jerrod Davis: Yeah, that, that's, I'm in central Oklahoma. I live just northeast of Oklahoma City in little town. And actually where that bear was [00:29:00] confirmed was about four miles from my house. So it was just to the east of Oklahoma

John Hudspeth: City. Gotcha. Gotcha. That's cool. So with the way things are going with the habitat with cats coming in and out would you expect to see an established population anytime soon?

Jerrod Davis: A fema, a female, establishing a home range would be the first step in, in beginning that process of having an established breeding population. And you like, like we talked about earlier, we don't have any scientific evidence of a reproductively active female or cubs. Any of the carcasses that we've been able to get our hands on, none of if.

I think one of two of those were female. And neither of them had shown signs of being reproductively active. So until we get that, we're not even gonna be able to begin that process. And when that happens, that, that guess is as good as anybody's that could happen tomorrow, next year, or a decade from now.

I'm sure it's going to happen. I just, like I said, I just, there's no way to put a timetable on that.

John Hudspeth: Yeah. Okay. And then one of my [00:30:00] last questions, so I've, again I've had people talk to me about Mountain Lion and, claim they saw one and usually they're saying it, pretty excited.

They think it's cool. They think it's awesome that they saw it. What is the general population's feelings on mountain lions? Do they like 'em? Do they think it's cool? Are they scared of them for, their safety or their livestock safety? Just what is the general feeling about these lions?

Jerrod Davis: Yes. Yes. The answer to that would be yes. Public opinion. Just like on anything, public opinion on Mountain Lions run the gambit. What I can do is give some facts, different lists show different numbers, but in North America, there's been less than 150 attacks in the last a hundred years.

And that's the, that's North America, that's Canada. The United States, I think, are where these numbers are pulled from. Less than 30 of those attacks have actually been fatal. As far as a threat pos to humans by mountain lions it's very low. Like I said earlier, they look at us, we're not in their prey profile.

They don't look at humans and go, dinner, they look [00:31:00] at us and go, competitor. And you know me saying that if somebody's afraid of them, they're gonna be afraid of 'em. That's not gonna, that's not gonna sway them one way or the other. But they, in areas where mountain lions are more prevalent and there are more people in those areas, attacks are still incredibly rare.

Like in California and Colorado where they have. Much higher densities of human population. Yeah. And much higher densities of mountain lion populations. So having that fear, having a healthy dose of fear of an apex predator is not a bad thing.

But, being able to enjoy it for what it is an apex predator in a very healthy, vibrant ecosystem that, that we have in Oklahoma. I think is probably the route that we should take with that.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha. Yeah, my my brother and I were on a lease last year that had bears on it, and that was actually the main reason we wanted to be on the lease.

And we both went up one weekend and set up our bait barrels and stands and all that. And then we had it worked out to where I would go one weekend to refresh the bait and he'd go the next weekend. And [00:32:00] the first weekend it was my weekend and I remember getting out of the truck and thinking I am headed into a spot where we are trying to attract bears and it got very real and sure enough, I, I.

Get on the trail and I hadn't walked 15 feet and I looked down and I see a fresh bear track on the trail. So now it's not only am I going to where we're trying to attract him, but I know that something has been there. Yeah. And and when I talked to my brother about doing this podcast, we were talking about, lions and what happens if we saw one.

And he asked me if I checked my trail camera and, got a picture of a mountain lion on it, would I still hunt that stand? And boy, I had to really think about it. I feel like I would. Got over it with the bears, but I think a cat just brings a whole nother level of fear for some reason.

Jerrod Davis: Yeah, I think 2014 when I first started this position after transferring over from the law enforcement division I started the job October one and October 24th. I get a phone call and this guy is, he is adamant, I've got a mountain lion. I got a mountain lion. We had a, the older [00:33:00] reporting system then I, I had, I gave him my information and he sent me the picture. I was like, sure enough, man, that's a mountain lion. And he's man, I just got it on my camera this morning. You need to come out. And what I'm saying this morning he called me at 7 45. I think he took the picture at five something that, or the trail camera got the picture at five something that morning.

So we go out there and just kinda like you were talking about with being in an area that That there has been an animal there recently that is much bigger than you and much stronger than you. It puts you in place as far as Yeah, I know. It's, I know there's a very low chance that I'm going to get attacked by this animal, but just knowing that it was there. There's a chance. Yeah. I'm walking in the exact same spot up to this game camera. This mountain lion was walking, five hours ago. Yeah, it does. It makes the hair on your neck stand up a little bit. And it gives you, like I said, a healthy dose of fear is not, is nothing to be, yeah.

Nothing to be sad about.

John Hudspeth: That just about covers most of my questions. Real quick before I let you go could you walk us through the steps? If someone was to [00:34:00] have a sighting can you walk us through the steps of what they should do to get into contact with you?

Jerrod Davis: Of course.

Yeah. So our Our website, the Department of Wildlife Oklahoma, department of Wildlife is wildlife department.com. When you go to that website, it is going to give you the option to report a sighting. Let's see. You totally caught me off guard

John Hudspeth: on this one. Ah, my bad. No, you're fine. I told you I was gonna get you somehow.

You,

Jerrod Davis: yeah, you told me you're gonna throw me one. So you go to wildlife department.com. Go to the hunting section. When you click on hunting, there's a what to hunt, and then it goes to fur bearers and trapping. At the top of the fur bearer and trapping page, there's a mountain line information.

Click Once you go there there is a reporting page. At the very top it says, report citing. And that takes you directly to our report citing form. Which goes directly to my email. And you can always just search Mountain Lion Report [00:35:00] or Mountain Lion sighting on the search bar whenever you log into wildlife department.com.

Gotcha.

John Hudspeth: Gotcha. Yeah. I believe I Googled Oklahoma Mountain Lions and that Facebook video was one of the first things to pop up. So if people wanna watch that I highly encourage it. I think what y'all did with the scale, you had a scaled of a house cat, a bobcat, and a mountain lion, and seeing that scale really put things in perspective of kind of what to expect.

Jerrod Davis: Yeah, it was a lot of fun doing that video, and I hope that a lot of people found it educational and, people listening to this, if you haven't seen it go look at that, because it really does surprise you as to, there's a little bit of a little bit difference between what you're seeing.

And what's actually there sometimes when scale and angles are played with. But yeah, once we put that mountain lion silhouette up there, it was pretty

John Hudspeth: telling. Nice. Jared, I've really enjoyed this. You were very informative and very helpful. I'd encourage people to get in contact with you if they think they saw something, and again, go watch that video.

Cause it, it [00:36:00] might stop you from contacting Jared and save him a little trouble. But yeah, this has been great. Any closing thoughts or any any questions or information I might have forgotten.

Jerrod Davis: Oh, there's always something that we forget. So I'm sure we'll take us something in about five minutes.

Of course. Oh man. We should have put that in there. But no, just the main thing that I wanna talk to or tell people is, go outdoors, have fun outside and just enjoy yourselves. Be safe.

John Hudspeth: Awesome. Awesome. All right, and with that, we're gonna close this out. Thanks again for coming and yeah, get outside everybody.

There we go, folks. Another great episode. I love that one so much. I ended up going back and listening to a bunch of it while I was doing some other editing stuff. And so just a really good conversation. I think I, yeah, I can't remember if I talked about it in the episode or not, but I've just talked to so many people over the years that are just so confident that there's like currently a mountain lion living on their property at all times.

And and not [00:37:00] calling anybody a liar again, but just when you look at the numbers, I'm just not sure that's completely accurate. So anyway, fun topic, fun conversation. Thank you guys for listening to me. Please keep me in your prayers if you don't mind, as I still have a few more days here solo before my wife gets back.

Yeah, that's all I got for you guys this week. So thank you again for listening to this show. I appreciate all the support and until next week, I will see y'all right back here on the Oklahoma Outdoors Podcast.[00:38:00]

‍