FIELD REPORT ON COUGAR SHOT AND KILLED IN NORTHWEST IOWA
ECN News, October 25, 2003
Farmers shot and killed a 113-pound male cougar in rural Sioux County, Iowa.
Dr. James Mahaffy, a biology professor at Dordt College in Iowa, has
provided ECN with the summary results of his investigation.  Analysis of
the carcass and stomach contents indicates probable wild origin.

Dr. Mahaffy has been interested in the possibility of cougars in this area
since 1998, and has actively been investigating credible reports.  His report on
this incident follows.

 **** Mountain Lion Killed in rural Sioux County Iowa****

A male mountain lion was shot and killed this past Thursday evening
(October 23, 2003) around 6 PM in a corn field in the western part of
Sioux County in NW Iowa.  This is a flat area with little cover, except
for the corn.  The farmer noticed the lion sometime around 4 PM while
combining a corn field and decided to kill it since he had cattle and
children on the farm.  Around 6PM he and a couple of his friends killed
the lion. The animals have no protection in Iowa and the farmers knew it
was not illegal to kill the lion.  A couple of years ago the DNR
sponsored a bill that would at least give them protection by classifying
them as game animals without a season, but it was defeated in the
legislature.

I asked and was invited to see the mountain lion shortly after it was
killed.  The cat was a healthy male, 44.5 inches long from head to rear
(excluding tail) and a height of 26 inches from front shoulder to paw.
The evidence I saw Thursday evening  indicated this was likely a wild
animal and not an escaped pet since the claws were sharp and I could see
no indication of tattoos or other evidence of a pet lion.  I asked the
farmers to get me the weight and asked if I could find out what the lion
had been eating.  The next day I was told that the cat weighed 113
pounds and was offered the opportunity to look at the carcass, which
otherwise would have gone to the rendering service.  I salvaged the
stomach and both intestines. The contents of the digestive track were
examined by a local veterinarian, Dr. Brian Cuperus, with myself and one
of Dordt's pre-veterinarian students attending.  We will continue study
some of the preserved material, but know from what we saw in the
digestive track that the lion had recently eaten a small wild mammal.
There was still hair, a few bones (mostly parts of several ribs) and
fortunately for us one paw. All the material was consistent with only
one animal.  It was clear that the lions last meal was not livestock or
pets, but a badger or raccoon. We have not had time yet to get a positive
identification but hair and paw should be enough for a positive
identification.  All the soft part of the meal had already left the
stomach and was present as semi-digested material found in the small
intestine.  The cat also had some tapeworms in the intestine and two
nematode worms but the nematodes might also have come from his prey.
There were seven fairly solid fecal pellets in the large intestine. The
hair in these pellets appeared to be of the same type as the hair in the
stomach.

One should not assume from the last food that this animal ate that
lions in this area do not eat larger prey. Studies of mountain lion's
diets elsewhere show that most feed on larger prey like mule or white
tailed deer but also need a smaller secondary prey (like porcupine or
rabbits) in their diets.  Due to the abundance of white tailed deer in
this area and the lack of evidence of livestock loss, one can assume
that the major large prey is white tailed deer.   The fact that this cat
was male supports the theory that these are males that were kicked out
from areas of expanding populations (perhaps from the Black Hills or
other western populations).  All three of the cats that have been
captured or killed in this area (the Worthington Minnesota cat in 1991,
the road killed cat in Harlan in 2001, and now the Sioux County cat)
were male. The same is true of neighboring Nebraska where the state
reports that 6 of the 7 confirmed cats whose gender is known
(captured or killed or in one case videotaped) were male. There is as of
yet no hard evidence of a reproducing population (confirmed females or
females and litters) in Iowa.

My work would suggest that one or perhaps a few cats have been in this
area since 1998 so they can survive for several years in one of the more
intensive agricultural areas in the country, but the killing of this cat
point to the need for the legislature of the state of Iowa to pass a
bill to give the DNR the tools they need to provide these animals some
minimal protection, or the mountain lion could once again be extirpated
from the State of Iowa.

 James Mahaffy is a biology professor at Dordt College