VIDEO DOCUMENTS MISSOURI'S FIRST WILD COUGAR SINCE 1927

ELLINGTON -- When David Morrison heard a commotion in his field Monday night, he thought his two longhorn bulls had gone after each other.

But when he investigated, he found the carcass of a freshly-slain doe, with deep claw marks on its back and belly and a broken neck.

What David Morrison heard was a mountain lion taking the deer down.

While several visual sightings have been reported, Chris Yarbro, an 18-year-old senior at Ellington High School, caught the big cat on videotape. His tape was the first documented sighting of a mountain lion in Missouri since 1927.

David Morrison's wife Pattie said her husband had been at the barn about 8 p.m. Monday when he heard what he later learned was the scream of a mountain lion, or cougar.

Pattie Morrison said he found the dead deer -- a large one Pattie Morrison estimated at about 145 pounds -- at the back side of their pasture, 200 or 300 yards from their house.

David Morrison called Missouri Conservation Agent Jerry Elliott, who realized when he saw the claw marks on the deer a large animal had killed it.

Pattie Morrison said they waited for a while, hoping to see the mountain lion return, and then she went back to her house.

She called Yarbro, who first took photographs of the deer and later videotaped the mountain lion.

"I didn't expect to see no cougar," Yarbro said.

Elliot walked up the ridge with his flashlight. "I saw a large pair of yellow eyes like I'd never seen before," he said.

He went back down the hill and watched the carcass for a while.

Elliott then called a friend, Jimmy Bass, to join him, and with Yarbro and David Morrison again waited near the carcass for the mountain lion to return, which it did.

Elliott said he watched the carcass through his light-gathering binoculars and saw it begin to move.

Yarbro said the mountain lion took the deer by the neck and threw it around, "like a rag doll," as it tried to get it out of the pasture.

Elliott tried to photograph the mountain lion with his Polaroid, but the flash was too weak.

Yarbro then went after his video camera. After waiting in the pasture until 11:30 or so, the group moved up the hillside.

There Yarbro, with Elliott, Bass and David Morrison behind him with guns, taped the mountain lion for five to 10 minutes.

Pattie Morrison said Yarbro was "far too close" to the animal, which she said was "very bold.".

Yarbro and Elliott estimated they were between 15 and 25 yards away.

Steve Hardin, a graduate student at Southwest Missouri State University, where the videotape is being enhanced, looked at Elliott's tape Thursday.

"It's positively a mountain lion," said Hardin, who has been investigating reported cougar sightings in Missouri as part of his master's degree research. "It's healthy and it's a big mountain lion."

Hardin called it "pretty exciting to get confirmation of one living out in the wild and feeding."

Biologists need more proof before they can say that a reproducing population of mountain lions exist in the Ozarks, John Smith, a wildlife research biologist for the Department of Conservation, said. They need more verified sightings, including those of a female with young.

Lynn Robbins, Hardin's adviser and a biology professor at Southwest Missouri State, recently spotted three young mountain lions in a rural area near Neosho in southwest Missouri. He was uncertain where they originated and where they went.

Yarbro's videotape suggests cougars might be making a comeback in the Midwest.

"In the five months that I've been here, I've had people call with a half-dozen sightings," Elliott said. "We've got at least one, and that's all I can say for sure."

Pattie Morrison said she was told any livestock she and her husband lost to the mountain lion would be replaced, but they were not to kill the animal unless it attacked them.

She said she was told the federal penalty for killing a mountain lion could be as much as $100,000 and a year in prison.

Gary Cravens, supervisor of the Conservation Department's Ozark Region, said without checking that was probably an accurate penalty. State penalties are generally less severe than federal penalties.

(Some information in this story came from the Associated Press.)