US SIGHTINGS: Using tranquilizer darts too risky for dangerous mountain lion in Bourbon County tree, wildlife experts say

BY JIM WARREN AND KARLA WARD

jwarren@herald-leader.com and kward1@herald-leader.comDecember 16, 2014 

A mountain lion killed in Bourbon County this week was a young, healthy-looking male that weighed 125 pounds, according to preliminary results from a Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources examination Tuesday.

If it can be proved that he was a wild, free-ranging animal, it apparently would be the first such confirmed mountain lion in Kentucky since before the Civil War, said Mark Marraccini, the department's public relations officer.

"But that is a pretty big 'if,'" he said. "They took some measurements today, but that's certainly not enough to go on without looking at everything in total."

Marraccini said Fish and Wildlife biologists and veterinarians performed a necropsy — essentially an animal autopsy — on the cat Tuesday afternoon in Frankfort.

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