Mountain lion shot in Vale

By BCP staff | Tuesday, November 18, 2008

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VALE -- A young male mountain lion killed Monday inside Vale city limits appeared to be the victim of a string of bad luck, said Belle Fourche-based state game warden Bill Eastman.

He and Butte County sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call and found the lion in a large tree inside a kennel that housed two Rottweilers.

"It looked to me as if he was between a rock and a hard place," Eastman said.

After consulting with state Game, Fish & Parks Department supervisors, he killed the 2- to 3-year-old lion. That follows state policy regarding mountain lions in city limits, he said.

How the 100-pound lion ended up in the tree inside the kennel is anyone's guess.

Eastman said it's possible that the lion was chasing domestic cats and ended up in the kennel, or he simply entered the kennel and took refuge when confronted by the two large dogs.

Eastman said it is relatively unusual for a lion to come into town, but said the presence of house cats tends to attract the bigger felines. High populations of antlerless deer also may have something to do with lions holding in the area around the Northern Hills and farther north.

"They kind of use rivers as kind of a traveling corridor," he said. "I would imagine that this is likely the same scenario."

The last documented lion sighting in the Vale area was about five years ago, Eastman said.

Two young lion siblings were captured and equipped with electronic tracking collars.

One was killed by a car, but the other lion lived for a time along Whitewood Creek at the Belle Fourche River. It moved on to the Slim Buttes area in Harding County, then into North Dakota, wandered over to Minnesota and was last located just over the border in Canada.

To reduce the mountain lion population, there is a hunting season beginning Jan. 1.