The Outspoken Sportsman

Alpena Courgar?  ........Nope!........

By SUE BARD  http://www.silsbeebee.com/news.php?viewStory=282
The Bee

Sometimes it pays to be a little skeptical. John Dietrich asked the Bee to look into an email his daughter had received claiming a cougar had been killed a mile south of Silsbee recently.

Game Warden Rod Ousley confirmed the email to be a hoax.

“If anyone wants to know more about it, they can check it out at www.snopes.com,” he said. “There they’ll see the same pictures, but with a different story.”

The email includes a man’s name, John Snipe, who claims to have struck the “260” pound cat with his truck. Fatally injured, Snipe’s says he called authorities to put the animal out of its misery.

The truth is the large mountain lion shown in these two photographs was struck by a Ford F350 in northern Arizona in November or December of 2007. The couple in the truck pulled over and found the animal alive, but badly injured. They did call the state’s Department of Public Safety to put the cat down.

The Trooper who arrived was Jason Ellico. He is also a taxidermist, and he offered to skin the animal. Ellico is the man pictured with the lion.

According to John Young, a mammalogist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, the average adult male lion weighs about 140 pounds or less. Though no one weighed the animal, “those present (estimated his weight) at 200 to 220 pounds.”

The email with changed text has circulated through several states including Arkansas, Wisconsin, Kentucky, West Virginia and Michigan.

“This is the second call I’ve received about a community in Texas asking about the lion,” said Young. “We know there were people in Stonewall County asking about it.”

The Michigan version reads......."This cougar was hit on M-65, just north of Long Rapids near Alpena, Michigan by a car.

MDNR had to come and put him down. He charged at the MDNR officer in the process.

And you thought no cougars lived in Michigan."

Jason Ellico, a state trooper and a taxidermist in Arizona, poses with a 260-pound mountain lion.