I read this week where a jaguar was captured in Arizona recently.

Read about it: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/02/20/20090220jaguar20-ON.html

very cool.will their be a sustainable population?

That is cool, Gary. Maybe if we're lucky, there will be a huntable population of jaguars in the US someday.

There was a huntable population at one time but the Lee brothers were paid to get rid of them.I have read a few articles about Dale Lee and there famous hounds.

Very cool

Probably not huntable in my lifetime. I don't even believe they are huntable south of the border which is where they are expanding their range from. I'm unsure of their overall numbers but it's probably more than people think at least in the remote regions.

I wonder if there could ever be mountain lion/jaguar hybrids like the liger.

are they still huntable in south america?

Really cool!!!!

Kinda neat but not very cool IMO. Over the last couple years coyotes have been making a big entrance into my area of PA. We are seeing a less and less small game and even deer. Turkeys are getting quieter since they know talking will attract varmints and may get them eaten.

I can't imagine how much something like a jaguar would eat.

Come eer kitty kitty kitty!

I am with you Dan, don't think I won't none them kitty's around

Maybe he'll help the Border Patrol capture some illegal's trying to sneak into the US!

Then I am ALL FOR jaguars in the US!!!

yeah but then the illegals would sue the jaguars like they did that rancher for holding them at gun point when he caught them on his ranch. The poor illegals had emotional distress, I guess they should have stayed on there side of the border but that's another topic.

Jaguars eating illegals sounds good to me !

I didn't know this... I was re-reading some Capstick last night and he enlightened me a little on the jaguar. Apparently in their southern haunts, like Brazil, they can be far larger than I had imagined. A very large leopard will go 180-200 lbs. A very large jaguar can reach 400 lbs. I don't know how many get that big these days but in any case, it sounds like they can be significantly bigger than a leopard and that's a whole lot of spots.

yep, and it's funny you mention that, when you posted this I was thinking about when reading Capsticks books he talked about how he started his proffesional hunting career in south america hunting the jaguars.

I was just reading the section on Alexander "Sasha" Siemel in Capsticks book Death In The Silent Places. If you have not read the book, its worth picking up. Siemel hunted jaguars with a spear. Capstick wrote of a large male jaguar that weighed in at 460 lbs on a cattle scale. Thats a big cat!

Life Of the Greatest Guide is the story of Dale and Clell Lee and there hound adventures.He hunts Jags as far up as Nevada and maybe even futher North and down into southern Arizona and on into South America.
Here is an excerpt on the Jags for you from a scientific stand.............The largest felid in the New World, the jaguar (Panthera onca) historically ranged from the southwestern United States to northern Argentina; however, habitat destruction and hunting have reduced its former range (Seymour, 1989) to less than 37% of its extent in ca. 1900 (Sanderson et al., 2002). In northwestern Mexico, it still occurs in the state of Sonora, where at least 3 sub-populations have been identified in recent years (López-González and Brown, 2002). Just south of Sonora and 500 km south of the USA-Mexico border, the state of Sinaloa constitutes the link between populations in Sonora and more southerly populations near the Mexican Pacific coast. Leopold (1959:529) reported that “the highest densities of jaguars noted in the course of this survey [of Mexican wildlife] were along the heavily forested flatlands and foothills of southern Sinaloa, the swamps of coastal Nayarit, the remaining uncut forests along the Gulf coast as far east as central Campeche, and the great rain forests of northern Chiapas.” It is a widespread belief that the range of the jaguar in Mexico has been reduced so much that it is only possible to find important populations in the southeastern states (e.g., Téllez-Girón and López-Forment, 1995; Aranda, 1996). However, that belief possibly reflects the lack of research and available information rather than the lack of jaguars, as was discussed during the last attempt to gather information on current distribution in 1999 during the “Jaguar in the New Millennium” workshop (Sanderson et al., 2002). It was shown at that workshop that in a large area of western Mexico, of which Sinaloa represented a considerable portion, the status of the jaguar remained largely unknown (Sanderson et al., 2002). The tropical deciduous forests that cover much of the sierras of Sinaloa are part of the 18% of the historic range of the jaguar on which its status remains unknown, and where the development of surveys is considered a priority (Sanderson et al., 2002). To better understand the current situation of the jaguar in Sinaloa, we undertook a series of field trips, reviewed literature accounts of the species, and summarized published information (Appendix 1).

We conducted 60 interviews opportunistically from the summer of 2000 to May 2002. Interviewees included local ranchers, local livestock association officials, hunting club members, and employees of local tanneries from those areas where jaguars were known or suspected to exist, especially in mountainous country. We tried to obtain physical records (photographs, skins, or bones) of hunted jaguars, as well as basic information regarding kill sites (such as location, date, and type of vegetation). We visited 8 towns and cities (El Fuerte, Badiraguato, San Ignacio, Concordia, Chupaderos, Copala, Mazatlán, and Teacapán; Fig. 1) and summarized previously published records from Sinaloa.

We obtained 57 records of individual jaguars, of which 41 are first reported here (Appendix 1). Jaguar records were abundant in the southern half of the state. The local people considered the species a common and regular member of the local fauna throughout the mountainous sierra. The jaguar seems to be most common in the San Ignacio and Concordia municipalities; however, in those 2 municipalities the search effort was more extensive. More research is needed in northern Sinaloa.

During the course of this survey, only 1 (possibly 2) records were found from higher elevations in oak-pine (Pinus-Quercus) forest and 1 record from riparian vegetation. Most occurrences were from the tropical deciduous forest that originally occupied most of the lowlands in the state and still covers much of the sierra. Tropical deciduous forest currently covers 40.09% of the area in the state, whereas oak and pine forests cover 14.71% of Sinaloa (INEGI, 2000). Today, most of the coastal plain (34.72% of Sinaloa) is being transformed for agriculture, aquaculture, or human settlement (INEGI, 2000), and few adequate habitat patches remain for jaguars there. However, 2 recent records occurred close to the coast, approximately 80 km north of the city of Mazatlán; one was within the Mesa de Cacaxtla Natural Protected Area. Although much impacted by aquaculture operations or human settlements, mangrove swamps still represent 7.36% of the area in the state (INEGI, 2000).

Predation on livestock by jaguars seems to be a common event. Cattle traditionally are allowed to roam over vast expanses of land. Local ranchers kill jaguars regularly using different methods, including poison (strychnine), dogs, and steel traps, or by shooting whenever they have a chance encounter. Steel traps for large cats can be purchased readily (prices currently range from 400 to 600 pesos, about US$40 to US$60) at many local hardware stores, despite the fact that jaguars and mountain lions (Felis concolor) have been legally protected in Mexico since 1986 and are included in the “Norma Oficial Mexicana” (NOM-059-ECOL-1994) (SEMARNAP, 1994), the federal list of protected animals and plants. In some areas, landowners pay bounties of up to 5,000 pesos (about US$500) for killing a troublesome jaguar in cattle areas or, in some places, for any jaguar. To determine whether a jaguar or a mountain lion killed cattle, ranchers observe where the predator started to eat the cow. Mountain lions kill cattle by biting the throat, producing asphyxia; they begin to eat the hindquarters and cover the carcass with branches and dirt. Jaguars kill by biting the cervical vertebrae or the skull. Jaguars drag their prey by the muzzle, which causes the tongue to protrude. Jaguars begin eating the tongue, the muscles of the chest, or the muscles of the face, and do not cover the carcass. Both felines remove the stomach and intestines. In 2 interviews, ranchers saw a jaguar eating a dead cow. These methods to identify which feline killed cattle also are used in Sonora (Brown and López-González, 2001).

Whenever a “tigre” (jaguar) is killed, it is skinned and the hide normally is sold, usually to people from larger cities, such as Mazatlán, Concordia, Culiacán, and Escuinapa, or to tourists. Ranchers usually sell the skins for 1,500 to 3,000 pesos (about US$150 to 300). No evidence of current sport hunting of jaguars was found during this survey, but some might still occur.

Extensive areas of tropical deciduous forest remain along the Sinaloan sierras. Densities of jaguar prey, such as armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), coatimundi (Nasua narica), collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), seemed to be high, according to most people, and free-ranging domestic animals were widespread. A new, undescribed population of European wild boar or feral hog (Sus scrofa) might be established in the Concordia municipality, as suggested by a set of tusks from the area. European wild boars were introduced into the buffer zone of La Michilía Biosphere Reserve, Durango, in 1989 (Weber, 1995), about 160 km from Concordia. Hogs might provide jaguars another prey item, because jaguars frequently prey on several pig species, both wild and domestic (Leopold, 1959; Seymour, 1989; Brown and López-González, 2000). The widespread practice of drug harvest and traffic during recent years might have benefited jaguars, because fewer sport hunters and foreigners visit the area.

A specimen (Fig. 2) hunted near Copala, in the municipality of Concordia, in the early 1990s, has unusually small, broken rosettes without interior spots. This variation is known as “tigre pinta menuda,” or small-spotted jaguar (Brown and López-González, 2001). This specimen and the 1 described by Alessio-Robles (2002) from Campeche are the only 2 such specimens reported north of South America.

The abundance of recent records suggests that a jaguar population still exists in Sinaloa, especially throughout the sierra, and more surveys urgently are needed to better understand its current status.

One interesting thing that Capstick wrote about was that a jaguar would claim a herd of cattle as his own and attack anything that came near them, including men. He made the same observation as Lee, that jaguars usually kill by puncturing the skull with their teeth.

Cats are truly the ultimate killers. One that's 400 pounds plus would be a force to reckon with.

A buddy of mine works on boat motors and attended a school in Florida a few years ago and one of the other students was from South America.As they introduced themselves,having same hobbies...hounds,my buddy and this guy from down south got to talking about different styles of hunting.The guy from down south said they hunted hogs with there dogs and occasionally treed a jag.My buddy asked what that was like and he said okay for a while then jag get pi@#ed off come down tree and dog food bill go WAAAAY down.Now imagine this story being told like he,the guy from down south,would have said it.lol...I make my buddy tell it from time to time for a good chuckle.

Some sad info from Arizona! Yesterday it was reported that this paticular Jag was picked back up and uthenized due to kidney failure. Just thought I would up give an update.