Interesting.
Have balls, show your pride & joy in all it's bloody, gory grander. Show the blood spilling out of the animals body. In fact I say snap a pic of it taking it's last breath, gasping for air and a smile on your face. Record that kodak moment!!!!!

Dude, I can see the veins in your forehead popping out. :p

You know Don, yeah I get worked up. It's the lack of understanding on my part. The need, sense of accomplishment, the joy of killing an animal. I suppose it's even more pics of said joy. I hope Joe Football/hunter got cougar shyte all over his hand. :D

I don't understand the joy in killing an animal at all.

When Ma nature sends her coyotes to eat my dogs and cat, mink and herons to eat my fish, and deer to eat my garden, it's way more that a nuisance.

My dad was a rancher. So was his father. Ranchers always overestimate the impact of predation on their herds. Always.

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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1389455926.jpg

Yes, agreed - I'm sure they do. However, "the times they are a-changin'". Today, determining whether or not a particular animal was lost to predation has taken on a political side that I suspect your father and grandfather probably did not have to navigate.

Speaking with ranchers and land owners here in Washington, over in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, I hear a common theme. They find a calf, or a lamb, or whatever killed by predators. They contact the game department. The game department sends out an "expert" whose only job appears to determine that the animal was not killed by whatever politically charged local predator is in the limelight. Wolves seem to be the most immediately ruled out; it's reached the point that even if you shoot a wolf that is feeding on one, it's up to you to "prove" that wolf actually killed it, or risk fines or imprisonment.

Mountain lions are a bit further down the scale politically than wolves (probably not "majestic" enough...), but there is still pressure to assign kills to anything but. Coyotes are the current scapegoats. No one cares if you kill coyotes - they are not "majestic" at all. Anyway, even in this politically charged environment, they can't help but charge Mountain lions with the crime in an awful lot of cases. Witness the number of depredation permits aigel mentions above. Granted, his data covers quite a period of time, but it is indicative of the problem.

That, and like I mentioned earlier, game department agents now kill more Mountain Lions in a given year than hunters ever did, ostensibly based upon complaints received from ranchers and land owners. It is a problem, the taxpayers of California are paying their game department to take care of it, where they could have paying hunters taking care of it. Either way, the cats die. Just seems like a bass ackwards, completely emotionally driven, uninformed, and expensive approach.

One is an African Lion; the other is a cougar. No comments on that yet.

The kill or the "shot" is not what drives hunting for most. It is the preparation, the pursuit, being in nature, becoming part of it and following an ancient instinct that is deeply engrained in man's soul. One can even add a dimension by including the first domesticated animal: the dog. The connection and team work between human and dog are incredible. Hunting has nothing to do with "enjoying killing" or posing with dead animals on a photograph while wearing douche-bag sports make up or blazing white veneers.

G

Then one could argue you can do the same... preparation, pursuit, being in nature, and use a camera. I will agree it is deeply engrained in some men's souls.

Whoa. Who was there first?

Well, one part of hunting is that you can eat the animal. You can't buy genuine game meat at the store. But you can get pictures of animals pretty easily on the internet. :)

That said, I have been out in the off season for scouting, and hiking, and a high quality camera with a large objective would be a lot of fun to have along.

G

Mountain lions have made a pretty strong comeback in the North East. They are not endangered in any sense of the word. Deer and coyotes are actually over abundant.

Then I was a kid, a mountain lion hadn't been seen in much of the East for many years. They are regularly seen today by casual observers. Coyotes were nonexistent. I live on the Hudson river 2 hours from NYC, and I have a pack of them in my back yard on a regular basis.

I have seen mink, black bear, fox, otter, fisher cat, bob cat, and all the usual small mammals all from the road within 6 miles from my house. These species have all made amazing comebacks in the last 40 years. Fishers in particular are voracious predators, and an area has to have a particular abundance of small game to support them.

Mountain lions are not really endangered in the US. They aren't suffering loss of habitat. They don't take 2000 years to mature like some trees, and they aren't being harvested out of existence.

Here, here is your outrage. Wait. I seem to be experiencing gratitude that there are enough that some guy with a bow can go out and find one. They are notoriously hard to hunt. However, when there are enough of them, they will start encroaching on suburban areas, because they have no natural fear of humans.

Everybody has an opinion. In this case, I really don't feel outrage. I am not a fan of outrage in general. I much prefer a reasoned and rational response.

I was in a Diner yesterday. Someone was eating chicken. Where is the outrage ?

Good or bad, who can say ? Give me pros and cons. Many of the responses I get from people every day aren't measured or considered. They are not a response so much as a reaction. A preprogrammed reaction that has been regurgitated many times over many years, with no additional thought or information given to its formation.

We miss Dottore because he thought about things. We miss Zeke because he was always willing to speak up and call BS, and would willingly admit that he didn't always know the answers. Many of the responses I hear here are pretty much the same as they were last year, and five years before that. But the world changes.

Hey, nobody ever said chickens were majestic.

I always thought it was all about getting away from the old ball and chain for a while....

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I have seen a guy camped in the deer woods. He'd be having coffee in the am when we came by, prime hunting time, reading a book. :D. Opening day too. I am sure he never got anything in previous years, didn't want to bother, but enjoyed the alone time on a set yearly schedule. :D

G

I'll never understand how somebody can hate hunting, yet eat meat. I guess if you refuse to watch it happen, you're not responsible for the animals' deaths.

It' not hunting if you shoot a sitting duck with a rifle. The animal doesn't even know it's being 'hunted'. It's just minding it's own business going about it's daily life when some a-hole with a scope at a safe distance extinguishes its life. Chase the animal down like all good predators and kill it with your bare hands. Then you're a hunter.