Mountain Lion 
257 
also be found in the eastern part of Las Animas County, much of 
which is rough and broken country and an excellent place for an 
animal of its habits, but as yet we have no information as to whether 
it is there or not. 
The species ranges quite high in the mountains, to above 10,000 
feet, but is probably most abundant in the western part of the State, 
in Rio Blanco and Routt counties. 
Habits. — The Mountain Lion is an animal of predaceous 
habits, hving on flesh, which it prefers to procure for itself 
rather than to take carrion which it finds ready to hand. 
This food varies from animals as large as colts, deer, and 
young elk, down to rabbits, and very likely wood-rats and 
such small fry when pressed by hunger. Where game is 
abundant it is very destructive to both the elk and deer. 
In the Yellowstone National Park and in Jackson Hole, 
Wyoming, it kills elk in winter by lying in wait on shelves 
in the cliffs and bluffs along the valleys above the trails on 
which the animals travel, and leaping down upon its victim, 
which is usually a calf or yearling. Many elk are thus 
destroyed during the winter in these localities. So great 
have been its depredations in the Yellowstone Park that 
hunters have been employed by the government to kill the 
lions to preserve the elk. 
Horse flesh seems to be very attractive to this animal 
and many colts fall victims to their taste for this sort of food, 
and in some localities serious loss has been caused by the 
lions. Cattle do not seem to suffer so much, but are killed 
to a certain extent. 
The breeding season seems rather indefinite, or at least is 
spread over quite an interval of time, judging from the notes 
obtained by Mr. Roosevelt in Rio Blanco County. He killed 
a mating pair January 28th; January 15th he captured 
the mother of three small kittens, apparently three or four 
days old; January 31st a female was killed which contained 
three foetal young, which would have been born in a few 
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