They were hunting raccoons but treed something much more fierce

Teens Evan Hutley and Will Glotzbach raced through darkness Thanksgiving night, headed toward an excited hound that sounded as if it had treed a raccoon in eastern Kansas. But that’s not what Hutley found when he shined his headlamp upward.

“I looked up, and there was a mountain lion staring me right in the face. There was no doubt what it was,” said Hutley, 16, of Paxico. “It was pretty calm. I wasn’t scared. I was really just shocked. I knew it was pretty cool.”

Cool indeed, especially after Hutley pulled a phone from his pocket and logged some video.

The teens, and Thunder, a 5-year-old black and tan hound, are probably the first to tree a mountain lion in Kansas in modern times. Though short and a bit shaky, theirs is one of the first videos of a confirmed mountain lion in the state.

“The first thing I thought was we needed to get it on video,” said Hutley, a junior at Wabaunsee High School in Alma. “I wanted to make sure it was documented that we had treed a mountain lion and where it was at. People had to believe us.”

Other sightings

Biologist Matt Peek believes the boys but doesn’t know whether that part of Kansas is suddenly mountain lion central with multiple animals or whether the big cat in the video has simply been getting around. Three sightings were documented within about a 60-mile area in 15 days.

Peek, a Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism furbearer biologist, said a trail camera on Fort Riley got a good image of a mountain lion on Nov. 9, though he hasn’t officially confirmed its authenticity. A similar camera got a photo in Shawnee County on Nov. 20, four days before Hutley and Glotzbach found their mountain lion along a creek bottom in Wabaunsee County. It wouldn’t be unheard of for the same animal to get photographed multiple times.

“Last year, we’re pretty sure we had one move through the state and get photographed five times in Kansas plus in Nebraska and a couple of times in Oklahoma,” Peek said. “You could tell it was probably the same cat because it was always headed the same direction, and the photos were spaced about right, several days apart.” In 2010, a mountain lion fitted with a tracking collar in Colorado moved in a straight line from northwest to southwest Kansas in about 21 days.

Including the three photos in November, Peek said, Kansas now has had about 18 documented cases of mountain lions. He expects to confirm a 19th photo soon. Before the Fort Riley photo, the previous documentation was a clear daylight photo, also from a trail camera, from mid-September in Rawlins County.

Kansas’ first documented mountain lion in more than 100 years was shot by a landowner concerned about his livestock near Medicine Lodge in 2007. That’s about the time the cats also started occasionally showing up in southern Nebraska and Oklahoma. It’s believed most have come from a growing population in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Nearly all have been young males probably looking for a new territory.

Mountain lions are protected in Kansas unless they’re threatening a person or their property. To date, there’s been no documented case of a mountain lion attacking livestock or pets in Kansas. The Los Angeles Times recently reported one mountain lion killed 11 alpacas and some goats near Malibu, Calif.

Called family, friends

Hutley said he never felt threatened by the mountain lion they treed on Thanksgiving. In fact, he and Glotzbach called several friends and family members to come see the treed animal over about a 45-minute period. At one point, the mountain lion did start coming down the tree, which had grown at an angle.

“He looked like he was getting a little antsy and did start walking down the tree,” said Hutley. “But that was about when I yelled at my dog, and the cat just stopped and looked right at me and didn’t move.”

He eventually put Thunder on a leash and moved out of the area so the treed mountain lion could do the same. Hutley said he has no fear of being attacked by a mountain lion, day or night, in his hunting grounds. But the raccoon hunt was called early that night.

“We could have kept on hunting, but we knew we probably couldn’t do any better than we’d just done treeing that cat,” Hutley said. “We just went on home.”

This story was originally published December 2, 2016 at 6:35 AM with the headline "They were hunting raccoons but treed something much more fierce."