The Cougar Truth

So in late October I posted this picture on my Facebook page with a caption that said "I filled my 2011 Cougar tag." The picture was real and the caption was real. Is it my fault that that people assumed I shot and killed the cougar.

Even though I have not lied about anything I will just let people know the truth.

I just got back from a week of successful duck hunting. On this particular night it was supposed to be a relaxing evening with my wife and daughter before I went back to work. At about 5pm I received a call from a local game agent and friend of mine.

The first thing he asks me "What are you doing?"

So I start going through all the hunting in I have done this year and trying to figure out what I did wrong somewhere. But I cant think of anything so I ask "What do you mean?"

He starts laughing and then asks "Do you want a cougar?"

I told him of course I want a cougar.

He goes on to tell me he shot a cougar and knows I have a cougar tag and he also knew I wanted a cougar. He tells me he will bring it to my house and we hang up.

So now I go tell my wife the good news.......  So hey guess what, the game agent is brings a cougar over for us. My wife was not exactly happy to hear that I will be processing a cougar on our relaxing night. But over the next 15 minutes I convince her it will be ok, and I invited a friend over to help process and speed up the process.  

So my friend arrives and the game agent arrives with the cougar. The Agent tells us how to skin it and what the good meat parts are and how to cook them. He also explains that this cougar was living in a barn about 15 miles away. The cougar was not afraid of humans and would just sit there and watch people as they walked by. The farm it was on had live stock and children around so it was a very unsafe situation, so the agent had put the cougar down.

I took some pictures and we got to work using my Havalon knives, we skinned it leaving the skull and paws in the hide. My goal was to let the taxidermist do the hard work of the claws and skull. I found out that for the taxidermist to clean the skull it would be $100. So I eventually took the skull out of the hide but still left the paws for the taxidermist.

I am very happy with how the skull has turned out, thanks to the help of a friend. We wont know how the hide turns out for another couple months when we get it back.

We are going to try the cougar meat for the first time tonight so we will see how it goes, I've heard good things about cougar meat.