Not a problem where you live?
 

125 pound pussies that eat you???

Cougars are hot topic at town hall meeting

I really thought that was from The Onion for the first three paragraphs :)

Nope..VERY legit, from our small town paper..

Yes, cougars are a big problem here...

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/c...54/cougars.jpg

We have cougars in our area, but I haven't seen one. We did have a bob cat on the front entry a couple of months ago, and another (about 6 mos. old) last weekend. It was being stalked by one of the wild turkeys. I was thinking about making a chicken coup until one of my neighbors told me he had one but got rid of it. It drew foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and others. He said he didn't think too much about it until he spotted a cougar one day around it. Mostly people around here don't seem concerned by them.

We have a ton of the human variant around here, not that that's a bad thing.

Aside from that our critter issues are limited to snakes and those big swimming lizards...

In CA population control of lions by hunting has been made illegal by a ballot initiative. It is now getting pretty crowded with cats which is an issue close to towns, when they get used to people and some of them get curious about feeding on us. What is crazy is that several hundred of them have to get killed by paid depredation officers every year here in CA. What do you need biologists at the department of fish and game if you can have the general population (concentrated in two large urban areas) vote on wildlife management decisions? ;)

George

Exactly what happened in Oregon...the "greens" of the large cities voted to ban cougar hunting with dogs...the only effective method.

Now these cats are losing their fear of man....and since a male cougar needs a large area of territory, they are moving into people areas.

Only when/if one moves into Portland's forest park, and begins feeding on what's available, will the voters there maybe realize they made a bad decision.

actually, cougars are proliferating because clearcutting creates mores scrub for deer

deer = cougar food

Paul has been watching too much Fox

Cougars, beavers, ...

The issue is that these "majority rules" ballot initiatives are dangerous to our diversity and freedom. Anyone with enough money can start an initiative and get the votes on their side with a big TV ad campaign.

George

i hung with a guy that watched a cougar track him after his mountain motorcycle broke down in N Calif

If your camping in Oregon it's best to find a camp with kids so the cats don't bother you. If you're solo & off-season and you're take a midnight wiz you can scan the bush with a flashlight for entertainment.

at one Or camp i have a series of pics from my site to a spot along the river 50 yards away where a cat comes to water at daybreak or dusk.. kinda feels like a walk into the twilight zone

The DNR's official policy here used to be that cougars didn't exist. They based this on the fact that no DNR employee had seen one. So if you reported one they would tell you either you had seen a lynx or were mistaken.

That changed when a guy called them and said I'd like to report a cougar. The DNR told him he was mistaken/lynx. He told them Really, then what do I have locked in my garage? He came home and pulled up to the open door of the garage and in his headlights was a 100 lb cat. He hit the remote door closer and went and got his camera.

This happened in a residential area of a small farm town South of here. :)

We have them in reno but we can kill them :-)

I was talking with a ranger in mid Calif and he said that from Sac north to the border is cougar "infested"

many good stories around

This is why we carry a 45ACP, semi-automatic, spoon, when in the woods.

Man it sucks when evidence proves the "experts" wrong. :D

yep, we got in droves.

We had the same sort of ballot initiative here in Washington years ago; it outlawed hunting black bear and cougar with hounds, and black bear with bait. I guess neither sounded "fair" to the general, non-hunting population.

How many here have actually run bears or cougars with a pack of hounds? I have. I'm here to tell you, you will never spend a tougher day doing anything. I was in my mid 20's when I was doing it (before it was banned), in top physical condition, and it was all I could do to get through a day of this. A second day, back to back, was never happily anticipated.

In the years since, both our bear and cougar populations have increased. The guys who owned the dogs that we were paying to hunt behind still run dogs after bear and cougar. They kill more of both every year today, by a significant margin, than they did when us hunters were paying them for their services. The only difference today is that our tax dollars are paying them. The game department hires them to go after bear and cougar identified as "problem" animals.

There has been a significant increase in numbers of these "problem" animals. The debate rages on as to exactly why, but the fact reamains everyone agrees there has been an increase. I'll leave the arguments as to "why" for others; I'm more interested in what to do about it.

It is clear there is still a need for hunters to kill these animals. It is clear that hunters are still killing these animals. It is equally clear that our game department would like to get out of that business, and turn it back over to sport hunters. They should be allowed to do so. They should be allowed to manage with the best practices available to them. Uneducated, emotion driven public opinion should not enter into this. We should allow the game managers to manage what we have hired them to manage, to the best of their abilities, without tying their hands.

Fortunatly we don't have bears in our area, but we a TON of deer. The deer population is exploding because the general population think Bambi, not smashed fenders and broken windshields.