Pateros area deer ??

[bigmacc]

At our IST they had a section on the Cougar study they've been doing.   VERY interesting!!  To bad they haven't put that much effort and money into the decline of deer.

Its also amazing how many don't grasp the "bear's" roll in low deer populations.   It has also increased in numbers in the Methow.

Absolutely!  I myself have eyewitnessed 3 separate bear attacks and kills on fawns over the last 5-6 years, watched them happen, very hard to watch. The issue is, I had never seen it happen in the previous 50+ years in the Methow, have only seen maybe 8 to 10 bears total in the previous 50+ years, I,ve seen over 15 in the last 5-6, roughly the same thing with cougar numbers, needless to say I have started buying bear and cougar tags the last couple years. If you add up the numbers that just bears, cougars(found 20 cougar kills in the area we hunted this last year in a 10 day period) and coyotes are taking, there is a lot of deer being killed each year(heck a cougar will kill one every 7-10 days), bears and yotes get em when their young, and the cats get them young and old, add all that to growing wolf numbers and that herd has and continues to take a real beating. There is a lot of predators that are packed into that valley, its busting at the seams with them, people are seeing them in there yards, their pastures, under bridges, in barns etc., IMHO I think an emergency measure of allowing hound hunting needs to take place to do some serious predator thinning before someone gets hurt, they have already devastated that herd.   
 

[Skyvalhunter]

I read a RMEF article stating that cougars don't necessarily kill just one deer a week but given the opportunity will kill as many as possible. While doing this they rarely eat much of their kill.

[bigmacc]

I read a RMEF article stating that cougars don't necessarily kill just one deer a week but given the opportunity will kill as many as possible. While doing this they rarely eat much of their kill.

 ....Ive kind of heard and read similar, it seems I remember one cougar on average will kill 40 to 50 deer per year, eat, bury or cover the kill and basically eat on it until it spoils and then kill another. Plain and simple, predators including cougars, especially in the north part of the valley(thats where we found a lot of cached kills this last year)  are killing a lot of deer from Pateros north to 30 mile and everywhere in between.