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Three different Bills to be hear next week (on the 8th??) on hunting cougars with dogs in Oregon.

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To contact the committee members
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Wish they would bring back hound hunting in Washington for the big cats... The big cats are increasing in number, while habitat is being lost. They are losing their fear of mankind, and it won't be long before there are the type of cougar attacks here that you read about happening in CA. I have one locally that is not afraid of people and walks towards them, even when the person is shooting a warning shot....
 
It's a good example of what happens when people try to mess with the natural balance. Protect the poor kitty cats. Now the population explodes and they kill all the other animals that are lower on the food chain (which is pretty much all of them).
 
"Mess with the natural balance"? Are you referring to the shooting by humans of cougars, coyotes, and other natural predators? Or are you referring to the establishment of ranches on previously wild terrain? Talk about messing with the natural balance. Criminy.
 
T'aint my rant about natural balance and cougars; that was DoubleTap. I'm fine co-existing with predators in some sort of balance. They cull the deer herds, and I keep 'em off my porch. Fair deal.

You wanna kill 'em all? Don't talk to me about not wanting to "mess with the natural balance." Nothing messes with the natural balance quite like a bunch of likkered-up pick up truck boys with scoped rifles and a bit too much to prove to one another.
 
T'aint my rant about natural balance and cougars; that was DoubleTap. I'm fine co-existing with predators in some sort of balance. They cull the deer herds, and I keep 'em off my porch. Fair deal.

You wanna kill 'em all? Don't talk to me about not wanting to "mess with the natural balance." Nothing messes with the natural balance quite like a bunch of likkered-up pick up truck boys with scoped rifles and a bit too much to prove to one another.

I've been hunting on the family ranch for a lot of years. The blacktail deer population is down to nothing, and the mule deer are all that's left. They used to see a cougar a year. Now it's once a week. Nobody goes out for a walk or a ride unarmed anymore.

The hound hunting ban on cougar and bears that is in place now in Oregon is the result of a campaign of misinformation and deliberate falsehoods on the part of the HSUS in the 1994 election. Their description of hound hunting practices is so inaccurate it would be laughable if the results weren't so tragic. There are bad apples in any human endeavor, but to paint all people in that endeavor with the same brush is dishonest. Typical hound hunters do not starve their dogs, nor abandon them in the woods at the end of the hunting season. They do not use locating collars to leisurely drive to the treed game once the hounds have done their work. They do not want their hounds in close contact, or fighting with the game that is pursued. They do not purposely wound animals so the dogs can fight them. All of these things were claimed to be standard practices in hound hunting by HSUS during the election. Indeed you can find those same lies promoted on their websites today.

The big lie, told often enough and loudly enough, becomes widely accepted as the truth. The reality is that my dogs, and those of the people I know lead the life of pampered athletes. Instead of the 25 cents per pound grocery store food most dogs get, with 14% protein and 8% fat content, my dogs get a 68 cents per pound premium food with 34% protein and 24% fat content. They live in a heated, insulated kennel with electricity and running water. They are members of the family with human contact, exercise, and free roaming time every day. A dog in which I have invested countless hours of training, and thousands of dollars in purchase price and veterinary care is not about to be abandoned in the woods when hunting season is over, nor am I unnecessarily going to risk its safety by letting it fight a big game animal. My dogs are outfitted with locating collars when they are in the woods precisely because they are so valuable to me. A good hound can be heard baying for a couple of miles under good conditions, but when the dogs get out of earshot the only way to find them is with a tracking collar. I knew one friend who took a week off from work to find his lost hound. Hound hunting for lions is all about being there with the hounds as they work out a trail, and track down and tree a lion. If I am allowed to take one lion per season, why would I sit in a truck and wait for the dogs to tree and then leisurely walk in and shoot it? Where is there any enjoyment in that? In that example my whole hunting season is over in a few minutes. No, I follow the dogs. I catch up with them at the tree. I determine that this cat is not the one I want because it is a lactating female, a young tom, or because I just don't want to end my season yet. I put leashes on the dogs and leave after taking some spectacular pictures. I go find another lion track and do it all over again. The dogs are not abused. They are doing what they were designed to do, what they love to do, what they do according to instinct. The lion is not abused. It gains some healthy respect for human beings and dogs, and lives to run and climb another day. No hunter I know deliberately acts unethically, or intentionally breaks laws. If I knew of such people I would turn them in myself. No ethical hunter purposely wounds game, or wastes it. Every sport has rules that make it enjoyable and are essential to it. Hunting is no different.

As for the lion situation in Oregon, in 1994 there were about 3000 lions in the state, hound hunting was legal, predation of livestock was tolerable, and there were plenty of deer and elk. Since the hound hunting ban the lion population has grown at a rate of 5% each year, doubling to approximately 6000 lions in 2006. Oregon's land area is 97,000 square miles. About 5% of Oregon's land is urbanized and unsuitable at all for habitat. That means that of the other 95% of the land, each of the 6000 lions in Oregon has about 15 square miles of territory. That includes the 1/3 of the state that comprises the dense western evergreen forests resembling California, and the 2/3 of the state that is the eastern high desert which greatly resembles western Texas. According to the Mountain Lion Foundation, "The American lion is very territorial and their home areas can range from 25 square miles in Idaho and California to 1000 square miles in western Texas." At a population of 6000 lions there is only about half the needed habitat to go around in Oregon, even if we assume that every non-urbanized acre is the best possible habitat. Since lions are so territorial, is it any wonder that the immature, young cats are being pushed onto the least suitable habitat; your back yard, with the least suitable food supply; your poodle or your sheep? Is it any wonder that the deer and elk herd recruitment is very low, and that these herds are dwindling measurably since 1994? According to a research paper by Bickner at UNC, the average number of deer kills per year per cougar in a healthy cougar population is about 33 to 35. This means that presently lions in Oregon are taking about 210,000 deer per year, about 105,000 more than in 1994. From the ODFW website: "In 1979, the Department estimated the statewide black-tailed deer population at 452,000. Population estimates during the next 10 years, based on computer modeling, varied between 400,000 and 500,000. In 2004 [10 years into the lion population increase due to banned hound hunting], the black-tailed deer population estimate for Oregon was 320,000." That is a 25% decline in 10 years. That extra 105,000 deer kills starts to look pretty significant.

Given the pressure from deer and elk hunters to do something, ODFW opened up the season on lions to nearly year round and issued lion tags automatically with every hunting license. This was a dismal failure on two counts. Number one, the success rate for these opportunistic lion hunters is about 1%. Number two, these kills tend to be indiscriminate, with lactating females and yearling cubs being taken as often as any other lion. A deer hunter who happens upon a cougar does not have time to inspect it to see if it is a suitable specimen. Unable to deal with the problem by that means, ODFW then decided to contract with the federal government to hire bounty hunters to hunt and trap 3000 lions and return the population to historical levels. While somewhat successful, this strategy also has its flaws. Number one, the vast majority of these kills are with snares. Snares are indiscriminate. They catch and kill anything and everything that happens along, including female lions with nursing cubs, pregnant females, deer, raccoons, wolves, coyotes, dogs, etc. Number two, when dogs are used by federal agents, how is that different from sport hunters using dogs when it comes to being humane, etc? The only difference here is that it costs the state money to contract for an activity that sport hunters used to pay for the privilege of performing. Does the state government have money to throw away?

I have been a hunter, a trapper, a professional fishing guide, and a farmer off and on for most of my 60+ years on the planet. I'm not a wildlife biologist, but I have decades of practical experience and first hand observation. I'm also a college graduate and my profession is data analysis. As you can see from the above, if you've waded in this far, this is a very complex and complicated issue. The truth lies somewhere in reams of research studies and lists of numbers. For HSUS to win the day with 30 second sound bites reinforcing the big lie, all it takes is money, and they get plenty of that from the folks who don't realize who HSUS really is. It's tempting to say, "Well, I don't like hunting anyway." But realize that once they've disposed of hound hunters nation-wide, their next target will be bird hunters and their dogs, then all hunting, then dogs in general, then livestock in general, including your sheep.

"We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States ... We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state.Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of Humane Society of the US (HSUS), formerly of Friends of Animals and Fund for Animals, Full Cry Magazine, October 1, 1990.

"We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding. . One generation and out. We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding." Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of Humane Society of the US, formerly of Friends of Animals and Fund for Animals, Animal People, May, 1993

"My goal is the abolition of all animal agriculture." JP Goodwin, employed at the Humane Society of the US, formerly at Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, as quoted on AR-Views, an animal rights Internet discussion group in 1996.
 
"Mess with the natural balance"? Are you referring to the shooting by humans of cougars, coyotes, and other natural predators? Or are you referring to the establishment of ranches on previously wild terrain? Talk about messing with the natural balance. Criminy.
The only way you can hunt cougars effectively is to use dogs. They decided to let the Oregon voters (which means Multnomah and Lane county) decide and outlawed hunting with dogs. Now the population of cougars has exploded and they are killing everying. They've even had to hire "professional shooters" to try to kill the things by helicopter with rifles at huge expense to the state, which is way in the hole budget-wise.
I used to hunt deer in Central Oregon. There aren't anymore deer there. One rancher friend in that area told me a full grown cougar kills one deer a week. Guess what happens when the population of cougars, which weren't endangered to begin with, explodes. No more game animals. She said if you see a cougar or coyote, kill it. They are decimating the population of everything else because the massive population in the big citys think they know best. Maybe natural balance wasn't the best verbiage but what I was trying to say is what we had before worked at keeping the population in check. Now we've changed that and the population of predators has taken over. And these aren't "establishment of ranches on previously wild terrain" unless you are going back many generations.
Protect them all you want but don't cry about your dog or your daughter going missing when they finally encroach on your area. I listen to the coyotes yipping every night in this area of 20,000 folks (which has been around for over 100 years).
 
Your people homesteaded in a range of natural predators, and now you complain about natural predators in your area? If you can't protect your daughter from coyotes, wolves, or cougars, your issues are beyond the scope of this forum to help with. How many daughters have you lost to predators (not including local boys in pickups)? I'm guessing it's between zero and zero? Am I right?
 
Your people homesteaded in a range of natural predators, and now you complain about natural predators in your area? If you can't protect your daughter from coyotes, wolves, or cougars, your issues are beyond the scope of this forum to help with. How many daughters have you lost to predators (not including local boys in pickups)? I'm guessing it's between zero and zero? Am I right?

So are you happy with the present situation, or are you just trolling?
 
Not happy with the present situation. Cougars should be left alone. If one shows up on my porch, I'll deal with it. I grant you the same liberty. Going out hunting them with dogs, shooting 'yotes and wolves at 200 yards out of sport or pure meanness or because you're scared of them... wrong wrong wrong. Disturbs the natural predator-prey balance.

BTW, what's with all this "troll" stuff everytime someone disagrees with the extreme-right point of view around here?
 
My thought is, if they're so abundant that you see them every week, why the need for dogs? They should be so prevalent that the luxury of letting the dogs chase them isn't needed. I saw a bobcat the other week, but i've never seen a cougar in my life, and I live in the country. Cougars/bears are one animal I think should be left alone for the most part, they keep things in check. And going out in the wilderness, you should be armed to fend off an attact, its the WILD! Next thing you know, people will want to hunt bald eagles because they stole their neighbors cat.
 
My thought is, if they're so abundant that you see them every week, why the need for dogs? They should be so prevalent that the luxury of letting the dogs chase them isn't needed. I saw a bobcat the other week, but i've never seen a cougar in my life, and I live in the country. Cougars/bears are one animal I think should be left alone for the most part, they keep things in check. And going out in the wilderness, you should be armed to fend off an attact, its the WILD! Next thing you know, people will want to hunt bald eagles because they stole their neighbors cat.

mmmmmm I bet bald eagle tastes just like chicken
 
Your people homesteaded in a range of natural predators, and now you complain about natural predators in your area? If you can't protect your daughter from coyotes, wolves, or cougars, your issues are beyond the scope of this forum to help with. How many daughters have you lost to predators (not including local boys in pickups)? I'm guessing it's between zero and zero? Am I right?


I guess that homestead theory of yours would include the intersection of I-5 and I-84 by the Rose Garden then... 'cuz guess what I saw holding up early morning traffic last week, half hanging over the guard rail wanting to jump off the 50' tall on-ramp (but couldn't)? That's riiiiiiiight... a LARGE COYOTE, and looked like it had been hit in the right rear haunches by a car. (must've been some bubba trying to prove his manhood)


There have also been numerous sightings of cougars stalking the school playgrounds out in the East Gresham area... and I'm not referring to "mature" women looking for a "young date" either.
 
i remember when they made cougar game and banned hound-hunting... and i remember the predictions that were made- and they've basically all been true. declining deer, domestic animal- including pet- attacks, and i remember that rash of kids getting attacked down in the eugene/springfield area a few years ago. any time i go up into the willamette natl i see more paw prints than deer tracks.

what they should have done was a 2 year moratorium, not an outright ban. you need to leave easy options for rectification when you're talking about predators. it was right to try to bring the numbers back up, but it was negligent to go so overboard.
 
I've been hunting/hiking/horseback riding in some of the most remote areas of the PNW for over 30 years and have never seen just a few cougar. A housewife taking out her garbage early one morning in Seattle comes face-to-face with a cougar. Something is definitely out of balance.
 
And the other part of that ban that I disagree with is the use of bait. I've never hunted with hounds, but argue that if that's what you want to do go right ahead. But using bait was a fairly effective way of managing bears. Again, anectdotaly, a few years ago I was bear hunting in Hells Canyon and didn't see a bear. A car on I-90 near Mercer Island struck and killed a bear nearly 300 pounds. Out of balance? I think so.
 

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