The 7-minute YouTube video below was posted by wildlife biologist Dr. Grant Woods of Growing Deer TV. His friend Jack Huston from Midwest Deer Survey recently captured this amazing footage with his thermal drone of a mountain lion stalking deer in central Missouri. Huston uses his drone to help landowners understand how many deer are using their property at any given time of the year, and this information helps them make land management decisions.
As Grant explains, mountain lions aren’t common in Missouri, but young male cats have been known to wander into the state occasionally from out west. To date, there haven’t been any kittens found in Missouri, which likely means there isn’t a breeding population.
Grant does an excellent job of explaining the lion/deer encounter. My biggest takeaway is it appears clear why mountain lions don’t regularly inhabit this type of terrain; a lion’s chance of successfully stalking a healthy whitetail in this patchwork of woods and agriculture is very small. Sure, a lion could easily take out a newborn fawn that can’t run away shortly after birth. But as you’ll see here, these Midwest whitetails don’t have any trouble detecting and then outrunning the lion.
