A cougar made off with a deer that had been just killed by a hunter near Dead Man’s Flats last week.
The incident led provincial conservation officers to close the area north of the Trans-Canada Highway between Canmore and Dead Man’s Flats, including the Stewart Creek wildlife underpass, on Oct. 14 to let the cougar feed uninterrupted and keep the public safe.
“We closed off the area to let the cougar feed on the deer,” said Jay Honeyman, a human wildlife conflict biologist with Alberta Parks and Environment. “The cougar still hasn’t cleaned it up yet.”
Honeyman said a bow hunter took down the deer, then went to his vehicle to get something to haul the deer out of the area, but when he got back the deer was gone.
“The deer had been dragged into the forest and he knew something was up so he got out of there,” said Honeyman. “We put up a camera in the area and sure enough, it was a cougar.”
Honeyman said the closure near Dead Man’s Flats won’t be lifted until conservation officers confirm the cougar has finished the deer carcass.
“It’s hard to say how long the cougar will be on it. It really depends on how hungry it is,” he said.
Sleek and graceful, cougars are solitary and secretive animals rarely seen in the wild.
In Alberta, cougar sightings have been confirmed across the entire province, although they are most common in the mountain and foothill regions. In recent years, sightings in prairie, parkland and boreal regions have become more frequent.
Cougars are efficient hunters that prey on deer, elk, moose, sheep and other mammals. They can be active any time of day, but most often hunt at dusk, night and dawn, stalking and rushing their prey from the ground.
They are generally shy and wary of humans, avoiding human activity and populations whenever they can. For this reason, calculating population numbers and mapping cougar range are difficult.
