My 10mm vs. a Mountain Lion

[Pitdogg2]

I have killed two Western cougars in my time and both with a single action Ruger in .22WRM. (Both were treed and I was on horseback.) I also live in Illinois and have encountered both bobcats and bobcat tracks despite the IDOC's pronouncements regarding bobcats in Illinois. All of that said I think a .22WRM would kill any native four legged predator we would likely encounter in the woods of Illinois except a very rare black bear.

In my youth in the mid 70's while out late at night c o o n hunting( big c o o n hunting family) twice we treed Bobcats. Another time the dogs went on a long chase and several times treed something. Just as soon as whatever it was seen our lights it would bail out of the tree and the chase was on again. We never layed eyes on the critter but we had always suspected it was a cat, suspicion fell on a lion. We'll never know as we never actually seen it.
Fast forward to mid 90's trail cams had pictures of an actual lion in the Decatur area. One lucky farmer actually had it walk up on the porch and sat outside the sliding patio doors a few times ( they had videos) and it would watch them inside for minutes. As far as I know it never killed any farm animals or pets. It did kill many deer which many folks had found. Talk around the area was they wanted to get a bunch of people on horse back and try and flush it out to kill it. When I heard that I couldn't help but laugh, it was doing what nature designed it to do hunt and kill deer, and we have herds of deer, way too many deer. The posse never materialized and it must have moved on as the cams no longer snapped its pictures.
DNR consensus was young male cat pushed east by pressure from older lions out west or north.
If it's not killing pets, attacking people I'm in the let live and prosper camp.

Edit very strange c o o n censored