This is from the 10/6/16 issue of the newspaper "Livestock Weekly" (highly recommended for ranchers and people interested in rural Texas).

The article is fairly long so I am going to just repeat a few high points.

Study is by the Borderlands Research Institute and involves Davis Mountains in W. Tx and has been ongoing since 2011.

The average movement rate was 2.32 miles per day. There was no difference between females and males or between different seasons.

.....most movement was adult male moving 4.68 mpday.

The average home range for adults was 151 sq. miles. Their 95% use distribution was 68 sq. miles and their 58% utilizatioin was 27 sq. miles....males had larger home range sizes than females.

....largest home range was a male with 382 sq. miles.

They attempted to determine diets by finding kill sites.

Over the course of the 5 yr study, 200 kills made by 16 different lions were located and four known scavenged sites. In total, 14 species were preyed upon, none of which were livestock. Average time using kill was 51.5 hours.

The big 5 prey species were mule deer, elk, white tailed deer, javelina, and feral hogs, which respectively accounted for 25, 26, 14, 12, and 11% of the diet. Remaining prey included aoudad, coyotes, and other scavenged prey species.

Using biomass, the elk became much more important, making up 42% of the diet, mule deer at 25 %, and feral hogs at 10%.

For males javelinas accounted for 43% of their diet.

Good stuff! Thank you for posting this!

I read a study about lions in British Columbia. What amazed me was that one large, male lion, about 180lbs, would only kill moose and elk. He was never documented to kill anything else.

Tough animals, for sure.

I was raised in the Big Bend on large ranches and I ranched the Rosillas Ranch that borders the Big Bend National Park..

I figured a Lion would make a 125 mile circle and kill a deer every 3rd day. He would travel in the big arroyos as the footing was soft. there pattern would be to come out of Mexico and kill in the park, come thu me and kill on my neighbors, happened all the time within that pattern..I trapped many Lions there that were passing thru, I had more than 50 hides in my deep freeze, they were thin haired and worthless compared to the larger prettier Pacific NW Lions. they primarily killed Javalina, and deer, and a few calves from time to time...Elk? the only place I know of for elk in in any numbers is the mountainous area behind Marathon, Texas, The Blakemore ranch, the old Cap Yates, and that area on the Ft. Stockton road out of Alpine that borders the other two ranches.. n
Not familiar with any elk in the Davis mountains, but its been a long time since I was there..They must have been planted there, sometime after the 1970s or there abouts, as there are no native elk in the Big Bend..but elk have been known to migrate many miles, and from The ranches named it would be maybe a 75 to a 100 miles as the crow flys is my guess.

Always interested in whats going on at home! thanks for the interesting post.

Interesting for sure.

I wonder. When they say "average time using kill" are they referring to time feeding or from time of kill until they abandon it?

Also strikes me funny that the males kill so many Javelinas. You would think they would be killing the Elk and mulies.

quote:

When they say "average time using kill" are they referring to time feeding or from time of kill until they abandon it?

The latter.

A friend killed a 137 pound cat not far from my ranch in Val Verde County. His is on the Pecos River. I'm not all that up on cats but I think that's a big cat for W Tx.

Ray, there are elk all over that country now, not huge numbers, but widely distributed. Wiley Dabbs, who works for the Eppenauers, had an article in Eastman's HJ about a 400+ bull he killed last fall in the Davis Mountains. Lots of elk in SE New Mexico, whereas 50 years ago there were none.

Incredible animals. My wife and I saw one last nite----literally laying next to the road that goes to the camp where we have hunted for the past 22 hrs. The big kitty makes our deer REAL nervous ! When you watch them move it is almost as if they do not touch the ground !
I made a deal w/ them. As long as they do not jump on me or my 4-legged girl, they get to live and eat organic meat regularly ! But I do not believe they 'live' here. Most likely just passing/roaming thru. Strange occurance. This is the first year we have seen one that was not Dec or Jan.
We have kids here for the 'youth' weekend. More eyes to search. We'll see--no pun intended.

Squeezenhope,
I'll be darned, I worked summers for old man Eppenauer, he was quite a twister, I spent summers cowboying on his Madera Canyon ranch, just down the road from the old racetrack by the Observatory..

There were no elk there in the 1950s, but the place was crawling with Whitetail and Mule deer..I also worked for him at the Marfa ranch during the winter on week ends and after school. His cutting horse trainer Orvil Braswell taught me a lot about cutting horse training and I got to ride George Hancock, Ceasars Pistol, and Bar Hug, all were world champions, what a kick that was...All the elk back then were on the Kicaid, Blakemore and Cap Yates ranches, East of Alpine and North of Marathon..