For the first time since the Civil War era, a cougar has been killed in the Hawkeye State.A motorist hit and killed the six-foot-long, 130-pound mountain lion around midnight Sunday less than a block from Harlan Community High School in western Iowa’s Shelby County. D-N-R wildlife officer Ed Weiner looked the big cat over and verified it’s a cougar. Its claws were at least an inch-and-a-half long and it had large fangs. Weiner says Iowa’s growing deer population may have been what brought the cougar here for hunting.Weiner says no cautions are being posted for residents or campers in the western Iowa region, as there were no reports of pets or livestock missing to indicate it’s coming near inhabited areas, though a horse was slashed in the Council Bluffs area in February. There’ve been cougar sightings as far north as Sioux City but this is the first one killed in Iowa since 1867.
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