Tracking a Puma; Tracks, Bones and Blood

In 2021 I spent a year researching a 1.5 square mile area in my local mountains for all the wildlife living in that area. There are well over a couple of hundred creators living in that area, in that one-year span, I visually confirmed 54 different critters. One of those critters I found tracks for belonged to a young Mountain Lion roaming about.

Mountain lions can maintain a territory of about 100 square miles. These territories can be smaller based on the available resources. If there is a consistent source of food and water then they would need to roam great distances less. With this newfound knowledge, I wasn't about to research that many miles, but I did expand my original area to 5 square miles.

With the game camera footage of the Mountain Lion, I now know a path in its hunt routine and with a few measurements of a few rocks in the video, I also know how big it is. My new subject is about 52 inches long from the nose to the tip of the tail and about 20 inches from the paw to the top of the shoulder.

Adult Mountain Lions can be between 24 to 35 inches at the shoulder and 82 to 108 inches long from nose to tail tip. Weight between 80 and 200 pounds. Males are on the larger side of the scale.

My goal is to visually see this Moutain Lion with my naked eyes, and I figured the best way to do this is to track its food source and move the game cameras around to get the times it's out and about. I also started a log of deer sightings and signs of the young predator.

Stay tuned for an update on my quest to get eye-to-eye with a Puma.