This trail cam photo was taken on Sept. 4 in Natchitoches Parish & verified by The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF).

LDWF Large Carnivore Program Manager Maria Davidson and LDWF Natural Heritage Zoologist Beau Gregory then conducted site investigations that confirmed the authenticity of the photographs.

"The department interviewed the photo providers and investigated the sites and photographs. After inspecting all of the evidence, we have concluded with the best of our abilities that the photos are in fact real and of a cougar," Davidson said.

Photo taken on Sept. 29 in Allen Parish

It helps when I add the photos  

Fingers faster than the brain  

Beautiful animals they are. We have just recently been experiencing documented sightings up here in the northeast section of connecticut along with some decent video of a black bear in my parents yard. With habitat disapearing at an alarming rate I think these sightings are going to become routine.

Nice!

Beautiful and Thanks CATT, I guess this is a picture of one of your FELINE cousins ;D

 Check the pads out on their paws, no wonder they are so stealthy

dont think ill hunt that deer stand this year

What is interesting is LDWF has argued for years they don't exist in Louisiana  

What is interesting is LDWF has argued for years they don't exist in Louisiana

I've heard of the same thing in Pennsylvania --why wouldn't game departments want to admit the presence of predator animals? It seems like they have some sort of interest in covering it up but I can't figure out why that would be

I have heard a lot of talk , but no confirmed sittings in PA. That would be great to see one of these in the wild

Wow!  A cougar in Louisiana.

That's a first for me.

Next thing you know there will be wolves in northern Louisiana.

I do know where there is a bengal tiger in Louisiana.  A very beautiful animal that weighs over 600 pounds.  

awwww I thought it was gonna be another bigfoot sighting. :

That is really cool, I wouldnt want to cross that things path in the woods though.

Same thing in central Wisconsin.  DNR says it's impssoble, aside from all the sitings in a singular area.  They can't tell you what you saw, but they can tell you it wasn't a cougar. :

That's cool!

Very Cool!  

What is interesting is LDWF has argued for years they don't exist in Louisiana

North Carolina officials say the same thing about the Appalachian Mtns. But I saw one when I hiked the trail in July. I've been in the woods my whole life and I know what a cougar looks like but they wouldn't believe me or the other guy who saw it.

What is interesting is LDWF has argued for years they don't exist in Louisiana

North Carolina officials say the same thing about the Appalachian Mtns. But I saw one when I hiked the trail in July. I've been in the woods my whole life and I know what a cougar looks like but they wouldn't believe me or the other guy who saw it.

ok, so we have multiple states writing off reports of mountain lions. But why? What interest do they have in ignoring sightings?

Time to call Monsterquest

Connecticut has been in total denial also. There have been town meetings at the Pomfret audubon society because of the states denial. people have brought photographs of the animal, pictures of footprints.What I have heard through society members is the state didn't want to start any hysteria with a large predator roaming the woods.

Plenty of them here. I was reading my game law book last week and it clearly states that you can gun them down at any time of year. Makes no sense why the state would allow the shooting of these great animals unless they were to pose a danger to people or were destroying livestock. Either way they should try to trap and relocate them.  

Catt, makes sense they would be there since it is only a river crossing away. I bet there are plenty more where that one came from.

I have heard a lot of talk , but no confirmed sittings in PA. That would be great to see one of these in the wild

Is word of mouth from me confirmation that they exist?  

I have seen a cat in Potter County and have seen the tracks from one in Cambria County.

I also spoke to an older fella in Potter County that has dated pics of at least a couple different cats in the surrounding area.

Absolutely Wayne! Ron and I saw the paw prints of the one NOT SIGHTED(according to DNR) they were pretty well defined but the game guys said they were washed out. Yet we saw them  take photos and measurements of the prints I do not knwo one animal print from the other, but Ron does and so did a few others there, they were all pretty much in agreement ;mountain lion!

I would think maybe they don't want a whole lot of pressure and poaching getting to areas where the last few manybe living.

Cool! Neat shots.

Lion sightings have been reported in just about every state for a long time. They reached bigfoot status in much of the northeast. But, it's true that their range is expanding:

USA TODAY

11/30/2004:

...

But the mountain lion is moving east again, expanding its territory for the first time in a century. More than two-dozen mountain lions have been killed or photographed outside the animal's normal range since 2000. Examples:

In eastern Nebraska last week, Elidia Valdivia found a mountain lion asleep in a tree as she loaded her kids into her minivan for a ride to school. A conservation officer killed the animal in South Sioux City.

In Iowa, three mountain lions have been killed since 2000 the first cougars confirmed there since 1867.

In Illinois, a train killed a male cougar on July 15, 2000, in Randolph County, near the Mississippi River, about 70 miles south of St. Louis. It was that state's first documented wild cougar in more than 135 years and the only confirmed mountain lion east of the Mississippi River, excluding Florida panthers.

It's unclear why the mountain lion is moving east. The cougar population appears to be growing in the West, and young males are seeking new territory, says David Maehr, an authority on mountain lions at the University of Kentucky.

Nebraska, Iowa, Louisiana I can believe. But I used to live in upstate NY and the lore there goes back a long way. And I've been one of the skeptics. There were just too many sightings, and no verifications. People in eastern lion circles often talked conspiracy theory. But that never made any sense, and the people I knew and worked with at NYS DEC would have been thrilled to verify lion sign.

I myself once spotted one of the black lions that were reported in the 60s and 70s, and possibly before. It was crossing a snowy field, and was WAY too big to be a house cat. My heart was pounding! I decided to stalk closer and realized that because of the lay of the land it was actually much closer than I had realized. It was a house cat. I also found a set of very large cat tracks in the mid 70s. This was obviously no house cat, but I've since found that a large male bobcat (they can reach 40lbs) has mighty big feet, that overlap in size with young and female lions.

I now live in prime lion habitat in Colorado and can say this: Although calm, cryptic, and stealthy, lions are not ghosts. Sign is easy to find. They make scrapes all over their territory, they scratch trees, and when they mate they carry on caterwauling like giant alley cats. When males fight over territory they can scare whole towns with the racket they make. Dispersing juveniles get hit by cars and appear in people's yards. They eat pets cats and dogs. Lions actually hunt through towns and take dogs off of porches. Twice in the past year in my immediate area lions have peered into people's windows at their pet cats. At one place my wife lived, a few of years back, she lost 9 outdoor cats in 2 years. The last two she named O.B. and L.B. for Owl Bait and Lion Bait.

Lions regularly kill and eat big things, and we find lion killed deer and elk often. When they make a kill, they create scat piles to bury their blood-filled feces. These piles are not easy to miss -they look like a giant litter box with large blood (black) and hair filled droppings. A friend of mine puts trail-cams at kills and gets LOTS of pictures of lions. I guess what I don't understand is why, with such enormous whitetail populations back east, there wouldn't be plenty of evidence, especially with so MANY sightings.

I don't think there are any cover-ups going on. The DNR people I've known would be thrilled to report verified sightings. It's the verified part that's the hold-up.

Around these parts, lions is easy to find!