Lions a little too close to home

[mthillrunner]

We live on the edge of a small town in western MT. Every day my wife drives the road behind the house and let's our lab run for 3-4 miles. This morning at about 9 she takes him for his run. About 10 minutes later she calls. She is looking at 3, no typo, 3 mtn lions, all roughly the same size, much larger than our 80lb lab, 1.5 miles from the house. They were she figures about 50yds away. The first 2 just walked off the road. The last one appeared to have a serious interest in the dog. Luckily, the dog did not want to meet the cat and could not get in the rig fast enough. I've seen 2 a couple times while hunting, a female and noticeably smaller young one, but three the same size, all noticeably larger than a lab seems odd. Might explain why the deer that always winter by the house disappeared a week ago.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Those three lions were a female with two year old kittens. Kittens stay with their mother for two years and will be nearly as big as she is when they leave her. As far as the one cat taking special interest in the dog, it was just potential prey to her and I'm sure she was sizing the dog up.

Lions spend time a lot closer to humans than many people realize. Especially in the winter time. Wherever the deer go, lions will follow and if more people realized how close lions will live around human activity they would be freaked out. Thankfully, the lions are secretive enough that there are not that many conflicts.
We treed one lion several years ago, 300 yards from a house and started a chase right from my driveway on another occasion.

 

[mthillrunner]

Thanks Gerald, that's what I was thinking the case was. I've known they were around, a lion was shot a half mile from the house last year. They are a neat animal. We have a 2 acre patch of woods right behind the house, I've seen lion tracks in there every winter. I don't let the kids leave eyesight in the backyard, drives them crazy.