MarvB
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Associated Press — Sept. 23, 2005
RAPID CITY, S.D. — A tracker for the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Department shot and killed a mountain lion recently after the cat wandered into a Rapid City neighborhood the night before.
Residents spotted the lion in an area near the hospital, said Mike Kintigh, regional supervisor for the GF&P.
On Wednesday, tracker Jack Alexander pursued the lion with trained dogs, treed it and shot it about 6:30 a.m., said Kintigh.
The lion was about 18 months and weighed 100 pounds. Kintigh doesn't think it lived in the area but had been separated from its mother and was passing through.
Neighborhood residents said they were relieved the cat had been killed.
"I'm tickled they found him and got him," said Judy Welte, the mother of a 6-year-old. "I hope there aren't any more in the area, but we know they're around."
Kintigh said GF&P policy is to kill mountain lions that wander into city limits.
If the department were to tranquilize and relocate the animals, there would be few places where the lions could go, Kintigh said.
"We don't have any place to go with them. If they show up close to homes, anywhere I take them in the Black Hills, they're going to have the opportunity to do that again," said Kintigh.
The lion will be taken to a lab at South Dakota State University in Brookings to be examined.
The shooting comes just days after a mountain lion was spotted Friday on the eighth fairway at the Lead Country Club during a high school match. The big cat stopped for a bit at the ninth tee box before it ran into some trees.
It also comes less than two weeks before the start of South Dakota's new mountain lion hunting season.
The Game, Fish and Parks Commission approved the season last month as a way of reducing a growing number of mountain lions in the Black Hills.
Hunters can shoot lions from Oct. 1 through Dec. 15 in the Black Hills, but the season would end early if a total of 25 lions or five breeding-age females are taken.
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