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surprise to Bill Jorgenson, a North Dakotan who came face to face in January of last year with a 130-pound female cougar and her three cubs in a storage barn on his property, where he has 20 horses and some 1,000 head of cattle.
• Fearing for his safety, Jorgenson shot and killed the animals.
• "They're so thick out here, it's unbelievable," Jorgenson, 58, said of the mountain lions he blames for "wiping out" the deer population around his home near the 1,700-resident town of Watford City. "Two years ago, it'd be nothing to see 200 to 300 mule deer out there; this past winter, we never saw more than 20. We have carcasses all over where they've been killed."
• Missouri's Department of Conservation said recently the 14 confirmed cougar sightings in that state this year compares to a dozen cougars confirmed there over the previous 16 years.

• Since 1996, Missouri has deployed a specially trained, evidence-collecting "Mountain Lion Response Team" of wildlife experts, law enforcers and biologists whenever there's a credible sighting of cougars.
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• PLATTE, S.D. (AP) -- Authorities have identified a husband and wife found dead in a cabin boat on the Missouri River

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