How many lions have you seen together?

[Yard Dog]

Generally it is left to the officers who will cite/arrest

I had a question several years back on wording that was unclear. The regional law enforcment supervisor was a member in our church. When asked, he told me that it is always left up to the officers judgment and that although they may personally disagree, they are basically obligated to stand behind their officers in these types of matters.

On another note, I am glad that this has been brought up as I had no idea that they had placed such wording in the guidebook. Hopefully this can be addressed before they issue next years proclamation.

[Idaho Bison]

In Idaho we have Administrative Rules which are laws on how things are conducted within the state. These are official not the phamplets you pick up. You might want to check and see if your state has one.

I read the law again in the guidbook. not much to interperet, any cougar accomponied by another adult. that is exactly how it appears in the guidbook.

Thanks for the concern on this issue Ike. I know if anybody can get to the top and get this changed it will be you. let me know what you need me to do.

[Kevin D]

Looks like we found something we can both agree on huh Ike?? How many times has that happened over the years??

I'll try to be a little more specific in my argument. When you read the line in question in the proclamation, you have to view it in the context and semantics in which it was written. The key from the legal prospective is that the phrase "or any cougar accompanied by an adult" was put in parenthesis, tying it to the sentence preceeding it, which was of course, the subject line is the pursuit of kittens with spots. Look at the clause prior where they talk about running females with kittens, again they put in parenthesis a line to include the pursuit of young without spots.

Clearly that is the intent of the law, to forbid the running of female or kittens with or without spots. The legal genius that wrote this clause (of course the state Attorney General only assigns the sharpest legal minds in his office to write our cougar proclamations) could not substitute the word "kitten" because by legal definition spelled out in the proclamation, kittens have spots. Instead, our legal whiz kid substituted the more generic word "cougar" to also cover those kittens without spots.......hence the confusion.

A better choice of words would have been "subadult," but that would have entailed writing up and adding a new definition to the proclamation. But with current budget shortfalls, lunch dates with the receptionist and what not, it is understandable why this was left out.

Most of the time law enforcement officers do correctly interpret the laws as they are intended. But as Ike correctly points out, there are instances where they are wrong. I'll guarantee any competent attorney would make a fishcop look like an idiot in court for trying to cite you for running two adult lions traveling together based on the wording in the proclamation. I doubt, however, a county prosecuter would ever let a case progress that far before dropping charges.

I am still good friends with my former attorney who is now a state district court judge for Cache, Rich, and Box Elder counties, I'll run this by him next time I see him.

[George Streepy]

We have a similar confusion with our concealed weapon law. I was threatened with a ticket for violating the law even though as far as I could tell I was legal. With a brother in law school at the time I printed out the law and asked him. He sided with me. He brought it up at school, it was a split where half the people sided with me, the others with the officer. It all came down to the way some one interprets the intent of commas and parentheses. The students to settle the debate consulted university professors from around the country. The English professors all saw it the way I did. I have talked to several law enforcement officers and they all decipher the law incorrectly. At Least in contradiction to proper grammar in respect to the English language. And all the officers said that is how the law was explained to them. It doesn't make sense to me. We then asked the magistrate in that county, he said the law would be unenforceable. So the officer would issue the citation or arrest, then you get to hire an attorney, all so the prosecutor can drop the charges. Sounds like a big waste of time for you, the officer, the prosecutor and any one else that trips over laws like these. When you fellas get this one hashed out, another poorly written law will expose itself. Just do what you think the law intends and then hire an attorney to back you up. With the on going discrimination towards houndsmen that is about the only way to do it.

[houndnem]

I like the way you are looking at this kevin. the only problem I can see with your rational is that looking at the tracks, you are not always going to be able to tell a subadult from an adult. for instance, a subadult tom traveling with a female may have a larger track than the female. I know that guys that have been doin this a while might be able to tell what they've got there, but most youngsters are gona dump the box.
I think because it is to hard to tell the size of a cat by the tracks left behind, they broadened the law to leave a gray area.

[BEAR HUNTER]

In Ca I dont trust Fish and Game. An example. A few years back they decided that the Condor were dying from lead bullets being eaten accidentally when eating wounded game that died. They decided to pass a law to stop it. The law would keep you from having any lead bullets while hunting in most of Ca. The main section read "prohibited from carrying any lead projectile or firearm capable of firing a lead projectile". As all guns can fire lead bullets, This would have made it archery only. I called Fish and Game. They passed me onto their Leiutenant who told me Fish and Game was going to interpret this as "carrying lead ammo with a firearm". I told him the law didnt say that and any warden could cite someone for using a gun. I told him that F & G may be telling the public now that they are interpretting the law that way but in a few years they will just cite everybody in order to shut down hunting. The Leiutenant laughed and said he had been getting calls all week from people who were concerned about the same thing. He didnt deny that this was a possibilty. Luckily enough people complained that the wording was changed. My point in all this is DONT TRUST FISH AND GAME. No I have never been cited and dont have a personal grudge against them. There are some good ones out there. If you ever hunted Ca with hounds you would understand my feelings.

[Ike]

..

[houndnem]

I aggree Ike. so what do we have to do to get the wording changed???

[Yard Dog]

Page 14 of Utah cougar proclamation: "Is the cougar leagal? The cougar is not legal if it has spots, is accompanied by young or is accompanied by an adult."

Page 22 of Utah cougar proclamation:
you may not
"Pursue or take a female cougar with kittens (or any cougar accompanied by young)."

"pursue or take kittens with spots (or any cougar accompanied by an adult)."

Notice they say "any cougar accompanied by young", not "a female accompanied by young". this would apply to a tom and a juvenile.

On page 14 they give you descriptions to help identify cougars in the field:

-"Juvenile cougars are about the same size as a dog"
-"Young males and adult females are about one-and-a-half to two times larger than dogs"
-"Adult males cougars are two to three times larger than dogs"

Ike, from what I have heard, the CO's don't really have to prove anything. They write the ticket and then you are basically guilty until proven innocent. Sure you can fight it, and you may even win, but I have heard it can be costly.

[Kevin D]

'Reasonable jugdgment' is the legal standard that would be applied in determining whether a multiple track is legal to run or not. This isn't going to change regardless.

Here's another scenario we're all familiar with; a kill site where an area is saturated with lion tracks coming and going. There may be only one lion, but you have multiple tracks of varying sizes depending on whether the print was made by a front foot or a back foot, or whether it was walking with it's toes spread or not. Under the strictest interpretation of the law and misreading the track evidence, a fishcop could still try to cite you for running an illegal track even if it was made by a single adult lion! Again, you have to rely on reasonable judgment.

I'm personally glad the state forbids the pursuit of kittens and females with kittens with or without spots. But at the same time, unless the tracks are obvious, it is a law that is tough to enforce.

[Ike]

I guess that I hunt the wrong places but I've never had a fish and game officer check me on starting a track unless they were in my truck hunting with me! I have had them call me time after time again to come find and run down a lion for them, but never once had one question what I started or how many lions were traveling together. Maybe a guy needs to develop a better relationship with some of those guys and situations like this won't even come up?

I haven't taken the time to visit with some of the big cheeses as yet, but like I said I will. And if the big cheeses support your interpretation of the law (rather than mine) I will have another visit with Don Peay and we will look at changing the word use in that clause. However, My take on it would be that those guys believe people are starting females with kittens, or they don't understand that the topic is female with kittens in the procalamation.........

ike

[houndnem]

It's not the wardens Ike. most of them down here could care less about a lion or lion hunter with the exeption of one guy who has a hardon for them. It's other jealouse hunters. down here they're all lookin for any way they can thin out the lion hunters. also the guy who does the lion study down here has a pretty big chip on his shoulder towards any other lion hunters and is always trying to get somebody in trouble. down here if you dump on any two tracks in the snow, your getting turned in for chasing kittens garrantied! dry groundin down here you're pretty safe cuz you hardley see a sole and the tracks are harder to see.

On a side note, what do you think about this lion study guy being a guide and selling dogs too? he has 40 + collared cats and his brother and him guide on all of the ajoining units. I have seen half a dozen or more collared cats on these other units. he has tranques, how hard would it be to trank a cat and dump him out some other unit close by and make a quick buck killin him? in my opinion it is a huge conflict of interest. they don't let those preditor controll guys do it so why can he?

[Mike Leonard]

Well he has a good gig there amigo but if you got balls enough and know his name call him in on it. Dept. of Interior. Don't go State.

How in the sam hell did we get so far off the track of this thread? Who caused all this?Was it one of our usual suspects? Or possibly a new protegee?

No Matter how many lions you all seen?

[Benny G]

I personaly have still only seen three, and none of those walked away that day as they were killing sheep by the 30's and 40's in a night. If I live long enough, and hunt hard and far enough, maybe I can see more. I know a Gov't guy that caught a grown female with probably her mother that had 4 kittens ready to be born. By the old standards that would be 6 running together, and he had just caught a male in the exact spot the day before. So would that count as 7, or maybe just 6 1/2 ?

[Mike Leonard]

Well good greif Benny don;t get consumtion over it. Ok? LOL! Hell she might have aborted three of them little shitters and ate the other one for the road. who knows what a lion will do? That's what keeps it interesting.

Just fuzzin yer blanket a bit there pard! Talk to you tomorrow. LOL!