Thread: The Mountain Lion.

Great, really nice. Wish I could do that!

That did turn out well. We have those big cats right tight in close to the village.
Couple of deer kills in the village last winter had parents of little school-age kids quite worried.
There's a Bylaw about no discharge of firearms in the village. Yeah right. My little kid and a big cat on my doorstep?
Fish&Wildlife set some big traps but caught nothing. One was right behind the library!!!!!
I'm going to throw some rocks here: My tastes suggest a smaller head and more erect ears.

British Columbia Big Game Hunting Outfitter

On the home page, I'm the guy in the ghillie suit with the wild turkey.
It's up to you to figure out which is which.
Click on the cougar picture to get a gallery of BIG cats.

Nicely done Rob, I have a stack laying around waiting for suitable project,

Great work Rob!

Especially on such a hard subject.

Thanks for the comments folks. Cava, If I can do it you certainly can. Sebastiaan, I pondered over the silky oak for a awhile but the grain and texture just kept suggesting an animal or reptile of some sort.
RV, It's nice to have some wild life at your back door but not the type that can eat you. I'd have a loaded shotgun sitting ready if I lived there.
The head is pretty close to the size on the plan (which could be a bit out), the ears I had trouble evening up the size, they are still a bit out but
the more I carve the more I learn.
Thanks featherwood, not sure I want to try and do teeth in an animal again, that was definitely the hardest part.

Rob, the teeth are great, , , just right when the cat is threatened.
All the Kettle River cats (local ones, too) have slightly smaller heads.

Our little poem here goes like this:

"Two in the body, one in the head.
Guarantees they're really dead."

Sadly, I have had to dispatch(?) wounded/bashed cats in vehicle collisions.
Damn, but I hate like Hello to even have to remember such things.
Remington NitroMag #2 x 12 ga. I have felt so sorry for the drivers who hit the cats,
They were so heartbroken. I do the wet work so they can watch to see that it's over.
"Go home. We are done in peace here."
I can scream like a coyote after that.

Good piece. Ilike the timber selection, as you said it suggests fur.

Robson: Our feelings towards wildlife are a mixture aren't they? We love the big
stuff, we fear it, we are sometimes mesmerised by it and we are saddened by the
painful death some endure. Yet, when threatened or worried about the safety of
others we will kill. I wonder how many of us think about these feelings?

Artme, It's a bit like the shark debate that's raging over here in W.A. since we have had a spate of attacks, some want them killed if
they venture close to shore and threaten human life and others say leave them it's their territory and being the apex predator they are very important to
the bio diversity of the ocean. I tend to agree with the later but if I came face to face with one and was armed to kill, I'd kill it.

I'm a bird hunter. Some people joke that for me, "if it flies, it dies."DeerAsmall.jpg
My wood sourcing forays back into the mountains are also the places I hunt grouse.

Really bothers me when I get to "clean up" after a highway collision.
While they're not common events, the smash is hard on everybody
(including my GMC Suburban after smacking a deer.)

Cougars have come into the village, possibly driven away from their
parents' territory. The resident deer are easy pickings, at least they were
last winter. Scares parents with young, school-age kids.

Here's some cougar bait from lunchtime today. Fork-hornmule deer buck
in the snow. Looking out my kitchen window, across the back lane.
There's a doe up against the fence to the left of the brush pile, she's behind the two whitish
posts that prop up the rotten fence.

Rob, I stay out of the ocean on the grounds that there is not enough water between the sharks.

Up here ( Hervey Bay) we have the Vic Hislop Shark show! Bloody hell! I regard the man as a being
devoid os common sense . He would like to wipe out al White pointers on the grounds that they are the
top of the food chain!! Seems to know little about ecological balance and so on.

The Sea of Cortez is a prime example of what happens when you almost completely exterminate
White Pointers. Now the place swarms with giant squid and every other species is now under threat
as a result.

artme: yeah, I hear you. Swimming in the ocean is trolling for sharks.
Leave them alone to eat seals or whatever.

Aren't those deer pretty? They spooked when I went out to the shed
(out of the pic, to the left) but they show up daily. TG for a fence.
I've got one really stupid & bold Chesapeake bird dog who wanted a tilt with a deer doe.
She was on and ready to go except for the fence. The other Chessie is far bigger but came hard-wired for birds =
no training needed whatsoever. He (Muddy) sat and watched Tia mouth off at the deer.

Man oh man, bring me the squid. I love those guys, hot or cold.
I could try to live on that meat. Not that it would cramp my bird hunting
by any means. I tried the big game thing for a decade = all I got was exhausted.
Birds? Throw it up in the air and I'll knock it down.
I'm very, very efficient. Plus, I've taught my GF all the same tricks.

eg: -15C and windy. I told her the night before that I'd pick up my goose decoys at approx 10AM.
I do as I predicted (4 birds). I hear a noise behind me.
Here comes my GF with hot coffee to help pick up the decoys.
She cleans her own kills. Sorry. No sisters.