6 Mountain Lions of the Black Hills
when they approached campsites, and because of this trait, he labeled the animal “a
most arrant coward.”
Not long after these initial expeditions to the Black Hills region, a bounty was placed
on the mountain lion (in 1889), and by the early 1900s, the animal was considered
extirpated from the state, although this was never confirmed. No official reports of
mountain lion sightings in the South Dakota plains occurred at that time, and in the
Black Hills, only three mountain lions were killed in the early and mid 1900s. One
mountain lion was killed in 1930 at the headwaters of Stockade Beaver Creek, in
Weston County, Wyoming (the west side of the Black Hills region). Another, a female,
was killed in 1931, 8 km (5 miles) south of Hardy Ranger Station in Pennington County,
near the South Dakota– Wyoming border. The last reported killing of a mountain lion
during the bounty period in the Black Hills occurred in 1958; a male mountain lion was
killed on Elk Mountain in Custer County, also along the border with Wyoming (Turner
1974). After 1958, and until the bounty was removed, verified mountain lion reports
were rare. From 1964 to 1965, four mountain lions were sighted in Wind Cave National
Park, and in 1965 tracks west of the town of Custer (the southern Black Hills) were
positively identified as mountain lion; a mountain lion was also sighted southwest of
Hot Springs, South Dakota (Fall River County). In 1968 a mountain lion was sighted
near Big Crow Peak (Lawrence County, South Dakota) (Turner 1974) (fig. 1.5).
figure 1.5. One of the many mountain lions captured in the Black Hills region.
Photo by Dan Thompson.