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When game is plentiful cats will kill a lot more game than we think. A biologist out west collared a few cats and there were a couple of toms that averaged 2 or 3 deer PER WEEK. they prefer fresh meat and are not into the really ripe stuff unless forced to eat it when times are tough.
My dad had a cat rip the face off one of his mares. The cat got a couple of claws in just between the eyes and tore the skin from there all off her nose down to the nostrils and it was hanging in a big flap with all the nasal bones exposed. Plus there were several good cuts on the neck and scratches on the back. It looked like the cat was on the mares back and got shook loose, then went over the head tearing the face as it fell off. Took my wife and I a lot of novacane and about 100 stitches to repair everything. It wasn't fun stitching that horse up until 3AM by flashlight let me tell you.
Some friends of ours near a town named Lytton raise paint horses. They always foal their mares out on pasture in May and June. A few years back a cougar move in and it managed to kill every last foal within a two day period (9 foals).
Biologists collared a couple of cats in a California bighorn sheep area in BC to see what kind of damage they were doing to the sheep herd. Mature rams were getting to be hard to find but hunters were on a draw. They found that a couple of the cats specialized in killing the big rams and left the ewes alone. There was some speculation that the cats had learned to use the vision obstruction the horns cause on the big rams to their advantage.
Another friend of ours in central BC had a cougar come in one night and it killed over a dozen sheep in one pen. I guess the big cat got excited by the blood and the sheep were confined so it went on a bit of rampage.
They are fantastic animals, but they do have bad days!
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