Mountain Lions and Bobcats

[burkbuilds]

Big cats are no longer the norm in my area of the country (Northwest Georgia). Years ago I've read that they roamed pretty much everywhere in the U.S. but that was long ago. Recently however, I've seen some pretty good evidence that indicates that might be slowly changing. Oh, we've had Bobcats around here for my entire life (50+ years). I can remember them on the ridges of my uncles farm when I was a kid camping down by the creek with my cousin, but those cats weren't really all that much larger than a big house cat. Last Fall I moved a little further away from the big cities and began working for a new employer in a smaller town in Georgia. Most of my co-workers enjoy farming or hunting as their hobbies and they tend to spend a lot more time in the woods and fields than the average city slicker. One man in particular loves to bow hunt and he keeps several wildlife cameras out on his hunting lease to see what is out there when he's not. Last Fall he snapped a pretty good picture of what appears to be a big cat with it's head down in the grass, so you couldn't really tell for certain what it was. Later he told me that when he was walking out of the area one day he heard a big grown like a cougar right behind him. He said he drew his sidearm and spun around fully expecting a big cat to be ready to pounce on him, but he did not see anything. Then last month he got a very clear shot with the camera of a full grown mountain lion. I'll post both of those pictures. Well, this weekend I was working late behind my shop, which borders a wooded ridge when I felt like I was being watched. I shown my flashlight up into the woods but couldn't spot anything. The next morning I found these tracks in the mud where I had been working the night before. Pretty good size cat tracks, 2-1/2" across, no mountain lion, but definitely a very big cat, probably a bobcat, but at the upper end of their size range from what I've read on the internet.