Trackers Kill Mountain Lion Near Fillmore : Wildlife: The cat may be the same animal responsible for deaths of two dogs in recent months.

Lion trackers hunted down and killed a 130-pound male cougar Wednesday, hours after it carried off a yelping 85-pound dog near Fillmore.

State Department of Fish and Game officials said the mountain lion may be the same cat sighted numerous times and responsible for killing two dogs in the south Fillmore area in recent months.

“But we just don’t know for certain,” said Lt. Chris Long, a warden who helped track the mountain lion.

The lion was shot hours after it carried off Lewis), a dog of Labrador and pit bull mix, into the pre-dawn darkness behind Robert Berrington’s( house on Guiberson Road. The dog was rescued by Berrington and survived the attack.

“I let him out to do his thing about 5 this morning,” Berrington said. “He got done chewing on some dog food when I heard a couple of sharp, not normal barks.”

Berrington said he grabbed a flashlight and handgun, and about 100 feet from his house found the cat clutching the dog in its jaws.

“He was facing me and he had the dog by the neck and a paw on his back,” Berrington said. “He wouldn’t let go.”

Berrington said he fired a shot over the cat’s head and the mountain lion dropped the dog and fled. Lewis was taken to a Fillmore veterinarian and received more than 50 stitches over his bruised and battered body.

“He’s pretty well mangled up,” Berrington said. “He had puncture wounds all along his back.” The 7-year-old dog is expected to make a full recovery, Berrington said.

Berrington’s wife called state Fish and Game officials after other authorities had been notified. Trackers with the U. S. Department of Agriculture on a hunt for a mountain lion in the La Crescenta area raced to Fillmore after hearing of the dog attack. An Akita had been killed in the area earlier this week and the trackers were staking out the dog’s carcass throughout the night, hoping the lion would return.

“When a mountain lion kills, it usually buries the carcass and keeps returning to it,” Long said. He said the two trackers had little sleep because they spent Tuesday night hunting for the La Crescenta cat. Mountain lions are nocturnal.

When the two trackers and Long arrived in Fillmore about 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, the “walker hounds” picked up its scent almost immediately.

“There was a little chase,” Long said.

Nearby resident Larry Shiells watched the pursuit from his Guiberson Road home.

“First the mountain lion went by, then the dogs and then the trackers,” he said. “It was like a choo-choo train.”

The cat climbed a tree in the Santa Clara River bed and was felled by three gunshots to its chest and head, Long said. The cat’s body was taken for examination to a laboratory in San Bernardino.

While Long could not conclusively point to the cat as the culprit that attacked all of the dogs in the south Fillmore area, residents were still relieved that a lion had been killed. All of the dog attacks occurred within two miles along Guiberson Road. Mountain lions typically travel alone and roam a 60- to 80-mile area.

“We are all very happy that it is over,” Shiells said.

Area residents’ fears over mountain lions materialized Jan. 2 when Paul Glen Neuman watched a large cat snatch his 75-pound Siberian husky from his front porch.

A month earlier, a 60-pound dog disappeared from another Guiberson Road house and its owner suspects a mountain lion killed the dog. Since then, several close brushes between mountain lions and residents have been reported.

But Long said the number of recent sightings is not out of the ordinary. What is unusual, he said, are the three attacks on dogs in less than four months.

“Maybe it doesn’t have the fear of humans that other cats do,” Long said. “Or maybe we are dealing with a lazy cat. Dogs are a lot easier to track than coyotes and deer.”

Times correspondent Jeff Schnaufer contributed to this story.