Mountain lion roadkill is a first

Minnesota wildlife officials this week will begin testing a mountain lion killed on a highway near Bemidji recently -- the state's first confirmed roadkill of a mountain lion (pictured to the right) -- to determine if it indeed was a wild animal.

But all indications are that the 114-pound male, estimated at 2 to 2 1/2 years old, was wild and not an animal that escaped captivity. Officials speculate that the lion wandered to Minnesota from South Dakota's Black Hills or North Dakota's Badlands.

It was struck by a car Sept. 18 south of Bemidji, an unfortunate accident for the mountain lion, but a break for wildlife officials. The Department of Natural Resources gets about 50 reports each year from people claiming to have seen mountain lions. Nearly all are dismissed as mistaken identification or are unverifiable. Over the past 30 years, only a handful of sightings have been confirmed as wild lions.

Now officials have an actual specimen to study.

"I'm not glad it's dead, but there is so much more to be learned when you have an animal in hand," said John Erb, DNR wildlife research scientist. "We'll learn a whole lot more than through 500 sightings."

Erb said the tests could determine where the mountain lion likely came from. However, even if officials confirm it is wild, Erb said that doesn't mean there is a viable breeding population in Minnesota.

"One animal does not a population make," he said.

In fact, he said he strongly believes there isn't a viable mountain lion population in the state, but instead occasional lions wander through the state from the Dakotas.

Former Twins great Kent Hrbek can still be seen on TV fishing and hunting with celebrities on "Kent Hrbek Outdoors," but he said he has severed ties to the show and isn't doing any more tapings.

He said he has parted ways with Wall to Wall Media, the Twin Cities company that bought the show two years ago. The company will continue to air shows for the next year that Hrbek had done before he left, said Kristin Geer, company president. This is the show's sixth season.

Hrbek said it wasn't exactly an amicable separation.

"It's too bad it had to end that way," he said.

Added Hrbek: "I loved doing it. I think people liked the show. They talked to me more about it than my baseball-playing years. It's not the way I wanted it to end, but life goes on."

Conservation officer Ben Huener of Roseau was checking Canada goose hunting activity near Badger, Minn., when he noticed a hunter allowed a flock of geese to land in his decoys and walk around for a minute before flying away. Huener approached the hunter.

"It was obvious that he had been sleeping when the geese landed," he reported.

• The inaugural George Wahl muskie tournament is Saturday on a dozen Twin Cities lakes. For information, see www.twincitiesmuskiesinc.org.

• One group near Plainview, Minn., learned the hard way that it's illegal to cut trees down for firewood in a wildlife management area. The tree they cut fell on the hood of their pickup just as conservation officer Joel Heyn pulled up.

• A 6x6 bull elk, missing from an elk farm near Benson for several days, returned home Friday.

Doug Smith • dsmith@startribune.com