Mountain lion disrupts golf tournament, is killed after 2-day hunt, NE officials say

A young mountain lion that caused the cancellation of a golf tournament over safety concerns was captured and killed by authorities, Nebraska officials say.

The male cougar was spotted several times in and around the town of Valentine, over multiple days, spurring wildlife officials to take action, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission told McClatchy News.

On Sept. 19, the mountain lion was seen wandering onto a golf course mid-tournament, KVSH reported.

Specifically, the animal was seen walking across the eighth hole at Frederick Peak Golf Course while a middle school girls tournament was underway, the Nebraska Examiner reported.

Following the sighting, the tournament was “canceled out of caution,” the commission said in an email.

The commission and the Valentine Police Department worked together to track the mountain lion, Sam Wilson, furbearer and carnivore program manager for NGPC, told McClatchy News in a phone interview.

Authorities set a trap on Sept. 21 and captured the 103-pound mountain lion within city limits, at which point it was killed, Wilson said, adding that authorities followed the commission’s response plan.

The plan calls for mountain lions found within city limits to be put down, Wilson said. There’s not much of an alternative, he said; relocating the animal wouldn’t have worked.

“It’s not really a possibility here. The overall answer to that is … we don’t have a good place to put a mountain lion,” he said, as nearly all land in Nebraska is privately owned.

“If we (tranquilized) and moved a mountain lion onto one of our small wildlife areas it would quickly enter private land again,” Wilson said.

“The other issue is that zoos do not typically accept sub-adult or adult mountain lions that have lived in the wild, because they don’t fare well with stress,” he said.

Though it’s not clear where the mountain lion came from, the big cats have “recolonized three areas” in the state in recent years, and the young male may have wandered a long way before reaching Valentine, according to Wilson.

“They walk many hundreds of miles in many cases” to find territory of their own, he said.

Officials don’t know how many mountain lions reside in Nebraska. It’s true the population has grown, but the increase in sightings has more to do with cameras — such as trail cameras and Ring doorbell cameras — becoming more commonplace, Wilson said.

Mountain lions are native to Nebraska but were eradicated by the late 1800s, according to NGPC. They weren’t seen again for another 100 years, with the first “modern confirmation” reported in 1991.

Valentine is roughly 300 miles northwest of Omaha.

This story was originally published September 26, 2023 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Mountain lion disrupts golf tournament, is killed after 2-day hunt, NE officials say."