Montana lion permit system failing?

[iinvno1]

Well gonna jump way out on a limb here. Ill get hung I know but it is what it is and thats jmho. I for one was all for this when it was introduced but now not so much. I see a thriving lion population for sure but maybe too much so. What I am seeing is a bunch of juveniles and pussycats and more and more of them getting in trouble. In a small valley not to far from me there were 14 lions spotted in a short amount of time some captured on camera and some video. None the less that is far too many. 2 juvi's and a female were killed in a chicken coup. Other youngsters in a HORSE ARENA and more yet on a fellas deck! Now that's just mentioning youngsters, if ya hadn't noticed I've said nothing of tomcats. Well there is a reason why! Can't seem to find many at all. Used to be I could find a bigger tom fairly often but not anymore. In two seasons I've treed one or two decent toms. So is this really what everyone wanted? Lions in trouble because of overpopulation, starvation, large mature toms to be few and far between? Just not too sure this permit thing is all its supposed to be? What do you all think?

[catdogs]

You hit the nail on the head. With quota you get a diverse age range killed. When a hunter has a permit, they all hold out for a good tom.....No big toms left anymore.

[BIGBLUES]

I agree with you 110%. I have noticed this as well. Imagine hunting elk for 4 1/2 months while they are in the rut the whole time. What will you be left with??? Glad to see others have an alike opinion.

[dhostetler]

I consider the lion management in Region 1 to be a major disaster.

Following is what I e-mailed to Jim Williams the Wildlife Manager in Region 1 yesterday.

Hi Jim,

Following are some of my suggestions about problems with the lion populations in Region 1.

I hunt primarily in Unit 100, so I will reference mainly what is happening in Unit 100. Within the 1st several years of the permit system virtually all the large toms were harvested out of Unit 100. It is known that mature toms help control populations by killing the young. With the removal of these mature toms the lion population has exploded. Many hunters have to apply for years to draw a tag and once they draw a tag they want to harvest a tom and not a sow.

During the quota years if you wanted to harvest a lion in a given year there was competition to get your lion harvested before the season closed, which caused a good cross section of lions harvested.

The permit system, has caused virtually everyone that is lucky enough to draw a tag to become a trophy hunter and refuse to harvest a sow. If these people were able to buy a tag every year they would be far more likely to harvest a sow. The current proposal of a 12 - tom sub quota in Unit 100 might help however if that sub quota isn't filled by mid - February, deteriorating snow conditions might not help to get more females harvested.

A week ago me and a fellow houndsman were called by a citizen close to Libby, saying he had permission to get a lion killed that had killed a deer 30' from his front door. We rushed down and turned the dogs lose at the kill and they promptly treed the female.The homeowner than admitted that he didn't have specific permission to shoot it. So we called Tamie Laverdue and she said no we can't shoot it, we need to find somebody with a tag. We knew of several people with tags but nobody that wanted to shoot a female, so the female was let go. Several days before that tracks in the snow showed a tom and a female circling several residences in the West Kootenai and a friend of mine had a tag so we treed the tom and he harvested it, however we couldn't find anybody with a tag willing to harvest the female.

Since the permit system there have been many more lions observed in Libby and the West Kootenai close to residences.




My suggestions for Unit 100

Proposal 1: Have a drawing for 12 - tom permits

Sell female permits over the counter with a quota of 12



Proposal 2: Have a drawing for 24 - permits with 12 - tom & 12 - female permits with a 1st & 2nd choice option. If there aren't enough applicants for the female

permits they could be sold over the counter until sold out.




Like all houndsman, I like a high lion population however we need to figure out how to reduce these residential lion populations or I fear we could end up with a major public out cry to drastically reduce our lion populations. With so many lions hanging around residences I fear a person could eventually be attacked.




Thanks,

Duane N. Hostetler

900 Mule Deer Dr.

Rexford, MT

[cbolerja]

You guys are seriously complaining about having too many cats to run? I'd give anything to have some sort of permit system that encouraged people to only harvest good Toms, instead we have "houndsman" by name only who kill anything they put up a tree, and the next year there isn't shit to run. I guess if your in it to kill a good tom every time you tree a cat then that wouldn't make you very happy, but thats not going to happen anyway. If there's females there mature toms will come, but I know we sure wouldn't be complaining down here if we had a system like that...

[dhostetler]

I don't think we have an over population, we just have to many of the wrong kind. In 2006 we went to a permit system before that it was all quota with around 20 lions per year harvested in Unit 100, these 20 were a mix of females, males, and sub adults. According to the FWP website in the 6 year period from 2007 to 2012 31 females & 54 males were harvested for a total of 85. This is a 30% decline of the quota year averages. The 6 year permit period 36% harvested were females and 64% harvested were males. Those 6 year period numbers look great if you want an increasing population however a landscape can hold only some many lions before they run out of food etc. A landscape with fewer mature toms will also support more lions. One thing not reflected in the above numbers are the amount of lions killed because of depredation as far as I know the FWP doesn't release those numbers. I know of 6 lions in the last 6 months that were killed in self defense or depredation. Five years ago you heard of a problem lion about once every 2 years now there are many every year. Every depredation lion that gets killed is one less lion that a hunter can kill.

During the quota years there used to be a huge competition with non residents outnumbering the residents and in the late 90s the quota would sometimes stay open only 48 hours. The last several years of the quota the non residents were limited to a draw of only a few tags, this allowed the quota to stay open from Dec. 1 till about Christmas.

One benefit of the quota it was competive so forest service land surrounding private land has the best access and the easiest hunting so that is where the most lions were harvested. Now if you draw a permit you have all season and you want to shoot a nice tom and tag holders refuse to burn there tags on these residential problem lions, so the fish and game or homeowners just kill them without tags.

I would like to go back to the way the quota was when the non residents were limited. Our bobcat quota closed today after being open only 18 days I wonder when the FWP will start forcing us to draw bobcat tags.

[Doogie]

Wow you Libby boys are a real class act. Apparently calling people into trees to kill cats is ok in district 100. Livestock killer or not calling people into tees to kill cats is unethical and illegal, your not even supposed to use two way radios once the dogs are cut loose. Hope you end up with a nice ticket, if not I know a region 1 warden that loves writing tickets to houndhunters.

[iinvno1]

Um I must have missed something Dookie? Where are you pulling that info? You start yapping about turning folks in life gets pretty lonely. I'm not sure what the heck your talking about but as in most cases these days people would be a lot better off minding their own business.

[dhostetler]

Doogie, I also don't know what you are talking about. I assume you somehow came up with the assumption about the Libby cat. We thought the homeowner had permission to kill this cat at the tree he becomes iffy about the fact if he has permission or not. So we call dispatch which contacted the gamewarden for us. The game warden showed up at the tree fired up like a bull in China Cabinet, saying she definetily didn't give authorization to kill it. She was excited enough to give us a ticket over anything she could find but she didn't even ask to see our liscences.

I live 1 1/2 hours from Libby, so I am not a Libby boy. Not all Libby boys are cut out of the same cloth, there are a lot of hound guys from Libby. If you consider all people the same from where they come from, you probably consider everyone from Arkansas to be inbreds and everybody from Browning a drunk.

[Doogie]

[dhostetler]