got er did

Dakotaboy...probably gray fox not red due to the seeds as reds are carnivores, grays are omnivores I believe.

TravC do you have any tricks for making Prickly Pear bait? I've been thinking about trying something for the past few days. The pears around my house are going fast.

Was that puked up or crapped out? Its believed they eat it to purge bile from their stomach

It's a dropping.

Funny thing happened at Locklear's Advanced Trapping School.
We pull up to a culvert with about a 6-8 students.
On top of the concrete crossover are piles of coyote and bobcat droppings. A couple of the students jumped out and start gathering up the droppings like they were pickin' up Easter eggs...
I laughed so hard I almost cried. But,those were the ones that were ahead of the class, IMO !

these dropping tell me a cougar came in about a week ago and marked this territory with droppings. then it came back this morning and dumped on the same pile. the droppings have deer hair and... possibly juniper berries. I knew the droppings were fresh by the steam coming off them. its hard to tell in the pic but the fresh droppings were a reddish lite brown color.

I'd either be nervous or set that up with a 750 !

Can you trap cougars in Oregon?

Lol LT. I guess looking back me and my buddy did look like 2 kids on Easter morning.

yes you can trap cougar in oregon if they kill your livestock. It killed one th3ere last april or may and i dont know how long after the kill you can trap it. there seems to be a there a grey area as to that.
dont tell anybody but i set it up with two #5's next to the dung and another pile of cougar dunk on the opposite side those traps with some cougar gland/urine mix on a piece of the sheep hoof it killed. chained the traps to a tree 15 feet away with logger chain. Im hoping the heavy chain will take up some shock and allow the cougar to get into the thicket where it feels more comfortable and won't fight the trap so much. One trap is a Bridger Alaskan Wolf trap and the other is a beefed up CDR Wolf and lion trap (now out of production).

I cant sleep at night with that big cat that close to my livestock and do nothing.
I had a good discussion on this forum last spring. someone said I might have a long weight for it to return, several months. Id given up on it returning and then here it is 7 months latter.

I didn't place any guide rocks or sticks just plugged in a couple of traps and lured it up.
scent station predator set:


this double pile of droppings taught me I was previously off on my location. I previously thought the lion had come around from the other side of the pod. Now I believe it was coming right down off the mountain, across the highway and I've the fence in the west corner of the pond where a tree had blown over across the fence. It can get water right there in the corner of my property and leave back out the way it comes in.

It has to cross the highway, busy in the day but traffic is light in the wee hours of morning. Ive never in my life seen a cougar killed/hit next to the highway. I think they must listen for a break in traffic and quickly dash across.

I may have deterred this cougar from my property just by repairing and building a higher fence. Droppings tell us everything about location and an animals territorial boundaries.

I found this yesterday.




The funny thing is that it is on the edge of my yard. I have a wooden box with a dermestid beetle colony in it. There is alot of smell that comes from the box and I guess the yote thought it was worthy of a dump.

Here is the dropping as it layed on the ground just about 20 feet from my bait buckets and beetles.



My dog is kept in the yard by an underground wire 20 yards from here. Hope the yote isn't marking the dog for a future meal.

Jayirvin,
Man, wish you were closer. I 've got a pile of #8 DLS LPC's ready to go...

Ive wished many time I could get you here Lt Grey. You know more ways to catch a predator than there are ways. We can only set a trap with a 9 inch jaw spread if it isn't in a kill type situation I think it is.

the dropping I used were fresh last spring but i dried them this summer. It rained hard and they puffed up in-spite of the glycerin id pored and painted on them. The rain didn't change the look of the real cougar dropping at all.

So far there's no sign of the cougar coming back it. Could be another 6 months. Maybe the fencing detoured the predator.

jayervin if a big lion your #5;s will look like a bunch of bent up metal when you come back! Many don't understand the power of a larger lion and what kind of trap one needs to hold them, staked even more on a drag as well. Larger lions will test traps like no other animal there is.

I found another calling card the cougar left.

Lot of deer hair in that one? Wonder what it's been eatting?

I found droppings on a set this morning . Fox I think . But it left the bait undisturbed. Can anyone shed some light on this ?

That's a real good ( and common) question...

Anyone want to share some thoughts on this, before I do ?

I checked a set today and there was i dropping on it . It was a rabbit baited dirt hole with grey fox lure . Can anyone shed some light on this ?