197 pounds! Now that’s a big mountain lion!
A man on a fishing and camping trip with his family decided to go on a hike around Carl’s Lake in northeast Washington in September 2021 to scout for elk. Using his binoculars, he spotted the mountain lion so he grabbed his rifle and eventually notched his hunting tag.
“I’m glassing and laying clear across this drainage was a cat and a big cat,” Brandon Reed, told the Spokesman Review. “It struck me as huge. Laying there like your normal house cat.”
Reed skinned the animal and packed out the meat, hide and skull. He plans to submit the skull to see how it compares to other large mountain lions taken in the past by other hunters.
Turns out, biologists previously captured and tagged the same animal three years earlier. At that time, it weighed 197 pounds. Adult mountain lions usually weigh somewhere between 110 and 180 pounds.
(Photo credit: Courtesy USFS) Image is not the actual mountain lion mentioned above.