A cougar was just spotted on the South Hill in Spokane. Near 41st and Havana. It was on someone's RING doorbell cam.
It really is getting ridiculous, a couple years ago an old friend of mine went out to his car to go to work one morning, in the carport was a cougar and 3 kittens! In the town of Snohomish! Not rural but right by Blackmans Lake! If I remember right he made the news. WDFW came out and within a few days rounded them up, tagged and released them somewhere. Like I say, the estimate of 3000 statewide I think is not close, I’d bet it’s close to double that.
When I was younger I spent almost all my free time pre season scouting in all parts of the Methow along with other family members. 40, 50, 60 years and more ago it was an absolute rarity to run into a cougar or a bear, if you did it was cool, it was a highlight and a memory that some I still remember today. Nowadays, not so much, especially when you stumble into fawn graveyards or areas that a bunch of cached kills are located. Those are becoming an all to frequent event nowadays. I remember finding a few here and there every once in awhile decades ago but nowadays it’s every year, either while hunting or scouting, one of us comes upon the graveyards of either fawns or adult deer caches. We sent a guy into one of those areas about 8 or 9 years ago(before we started getting into predator hunting) and the next day he drove by our camp and showed us a 128lb collared cougar they killed that morning! They were very appreciative of us pointing them to the spot. That’s where we had found a half dozen or so half buried deer in about a 2 mile radius, most were fairly fresh kills. The guy later sent me a picture of the mount and a $50 Cabellas gift card.👍
