Phelps County landowner and hunter Jerry Laster spent several hours with his son, Bobby, cleaning brush from around a pond on the family’s farm north of St. James one day earlier this month.
They heard some noise in the brush but didn’t think about it. Who would? It’s the rural countryside, shared with plenty of wildlife. It could have been a raccoon, a deer, a possum, or all of them—nothing to worry about.
The next day, though, when Laster checked his Reveal wildlife camera, he found some pictures that made him wonder if some of those wildlife noises might have been a mountain lion.
One of the pictures—time-stamped at 12:48 a.m. Nov. 4—shows a deer in the foreground, standing on the trail, bent over, perhaps nibbling. And in the background, back there in the dark, are two little white spots—they appear to be eyes.
The other picture—time-stamped at 6:02 a.m. Nov. 4—shows no deer in the foreground, but back a little farther on the trail is what appears to be a big cat.
It appears to have a tail.
It appears to have specific markings on its face.
And it appears to Jerry Laster to be a mountain lion.
“My wife, Amy, and Bill Huskey, my father-in-law — “they both say it looks like a mountain lion, too,” said Laster, a well-known painting contractor — “been painting over 30 years.” His wife is a Rolla Middle School teacher.
But according to the Missouri Department of Conservation, mountain lions are “officially extirpated” in the Show-Me State. That means the population is destroyed. Gone. Nowhere around.
Now, yes, the conservation department recognizes that every now and again there are what they call “confirmed sightings” of a mountain lion that apparently has wandered in from somewhere. A big cat’s hair or scat or footprint leaves no doubt.
But most of the time, the sightings are mistaken identity. Often, what people think are mountain lions are bobcats, according to the MDC, even those in pictures.
Laster said the picture he has looks like a mountain lion to him, for the tail is longer than that of a bobcat, and the animal looks like it has black markings around the mouth, typical of a mountain lion. It also looks bigger than a bobcat would be; Laster estimates it to be 75-80 pounds.
“I’m out in the woods a lot, and I’ve never, ever seen it,” he said, except for the image on the camera. “And I’m still checking my cameras.”
The Missouri Department of Conservation agrees that mountain lions possibly wander in on occasion from other states.
Laster is convinced that is what has happened here in Phelps County, convinced sufficiently that he’s continuing to keep an eye out for the big cat whenever he’s outside on the farm—for safety reasons, perhaps lifesaving reasons.
“These things are predators,” he said. “And they’re tree climbers.”
Laster said a lot of people outdoors walk around and never look up to see what’s above them. He acknowledged being guilty of that, too—not looking up in the trees unless he’s actually hunting for something up there.
Since that camera check the other morning, though, “when we’re out in the woods, we’re constantly looking up,” Laster said.
When he and Bobby were out working on the pond clean-up, hearing noises occasionally, “the only thing I had in my hand was a pair of tree clippers,” Laster said. “He had a brush trimmer--a weed whacker.”
A mountain lion might have laughed uproariously at that.
“Now we’re definitely more cautious when we’re out there,” Laster said, without adding details.
Regarding the picture of the doe in the foreground in one of the pictures, Laster said he can discern some markings on the deer, and he has not seen any pictures of her on camera since that picture was taken. Nor has he seen her in the wild.
“We have not seen that doe,” he said, speculating that she might have become a meal for the big cat. On the other hand, she just might not have been spotted again because “we have a lot of deer out there. It’s quite populated. I’m still checking my camera for her.”
He said another such sighting of a big cat has been made over in Salem.
The official response to that was, as it has been with other cases, that there is no population of mountain lions in Phelps County or in Missouri.
Laster said that position is so official that when he sent his pictures to the conservation department, he didn’t even get a response from an agent. “It was just a lady in the office who called,” he said. The response was that the photos were not clear enough to make a determination.
Laster expects to see that big cat again either on camera or in person, because of the number of deer, and perhaps even in that same spot.
“A lot of deer move on that trail,” he said. “It might be like a smorgasbord for it.”
