Cougar Hunt ~ 1920 US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Educational Film Service (Patreon)

more at http://quickfound.net/

Silent, with title cards. 'On predator control in Mountain states.'

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cougar

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The cougar (Puma concolor) is a large cat of the subfamily Felinae. It is native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America, and is the widest of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. Due to its wide range, it has many names including puma, mountain lion, panther, painter and catamount.

The cougar is the second-largest cat in the New World after the jaguar. Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. The cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat, than to any species of subfamily Pantherinae, of which only the jaguar is extant in the Americas.

The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer. It also hunts species as small as insects and rodents. This cat prefers habitats with dense underbrush and rocky areas for stalking, but can also live in open areas. The cougar is territorial and survives at low population densities. Individual territory sizes depend on terrain, vegetation, and abundance of prey. While large, it is not always the apex predator in its range, yielding prey it has killed to jaguars, American black bears, grizzly bears, American alligators (Florida panther predation mainly), and to groups of gray wolves or coyotes. It is reclusive and mostly avoids people. Fatal attacks on humans are rare, but have recently been increasing in North America as more people enter cougar territories, and build developments such as farms in their established territory.

Intensive hunting following European colonization of the Americas and the ongoing human development into cougar habitat has caused the cougar populations to drop in most parts of its historical range. In particular, the North American cougar is considered to have been mostly extirpated in eastern North America (the population referred to as the eastern cougar) in the beginning of the 20th century, except for the isolated Florida panther subpopulation...