By Greg Skinner, for Peninsula Daily News
CARLSBORG — Throughout the summer, Paul and Deborah Hansen worried over a growing mystery on their family farm.
Something was killing their market lambs.
The mystery ended Tuesday evening when two guard dogs alerted the couple to a cougar taking its sixth sheep from the Carlsborg farm in as many weeks.
Hansen ran to a nearby pasture with a shotgun in time to see a six-foot mountain lion bounding away into the bush.
He got off one shot before it disappeared, but is unsure if the big cat was hit.
The breeding ram had a gash in its throat, but it lived.
“Each year, you expect to lose a couple, but not five,” Paul Hansen said.
First, it was one lamb dead, then three more, then another.
He ruled out coyotes because they stick to killing newborns,he said.
Until he saw the big cat, he didn’t know what was killing his sheep.
“It sounds like that cougar has a taste for sheep,” said Sgt. Phillip Henry of the state Fish and Wildlife Department.
The Hansens started raising sheep as a second business seven years ago.
In that first year, they lost four newborn lambs to coyotes.
They brought in an Anatolian sheep dog and a Pyrenean shepherd to protect the flock.
“The dogs solved the problem,” Paul Hansen said.
“I don’t believe you can raise sheep without dogs.”
Although he’s spent a lot of time in the wood, Hansen had not seen a mountain lion before.
