Huge reduction of special permits

[Tbar]

I'm hunting out of state this year, but if there were tags I might be tempted to buy a big game license here to hunt cougars.

If there were tags?

[Special T]

I'm still trying to get my head around the health of our herds and the role of predators in their decline.  I've come to the back-of-the-napkin conclusion that our biggest addressable problem is the cougars. 

Looking at wolves, cougars and man only, here are some rough yearly numbers I've come up with to help me 'get it'.

Based on the 2018 harvest stats, combined deer/elk kills by hunters were ~32,000.

Wolves @ 20 deer a year (WI DNR numbers) for 126 wolves, leaves another ~2500 eaten. 

WDFW estimated 2000 - 2500 cougar in the state back in 2015.  At the same 20 deer/elk a year for cats, they would account for ~40,000 - 50,000 eaten a year.   

All told, we would be seeing ~80,000 deer/elk EATEN per year without considering fawn mortality, predator spree killing, poaching, conflict management, killed but not recovered by hunters, vehicle mortality, death by disease / natural causes, or tribal hunting as factors.

The 2018 harvest report showed 220 cats killed and registered by hunters potentially saving 4500 deer/elk.  Almost all of the areas open for hunting cougars met or exceeded harvest objectives for those areas, meaning there isn't much more we can do to limit the largest source of ungulate mortality without more tags.


I also looked at the 300 GMUs and the quota for them is only 23 cougars on the top end while the herd is struggling so badly that many are leaving the state to elk hunt.  It sure makes you scratch your head.

Yes and those numbers are likely conservative. Wolf numbers are almost certainly north of 200, and (adult) cougar numbers are likely closer of 3,000. Add 30,000 black bears and lots of coyotes, and you're possibly looking at predation kill alone of close to 80,000.

I would also add that Cougars and wolves  provide no relief or safe place to hide for ungulates. Cougars are ambush hunters and wolves are sight predators.  Open feild arnt safe nor the timber.  Imo either by themselves are survivable both... killing spree.

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[SuperX]

I'm hunting out of state this year, but if there were tags I might be tempted to buy a big game license here to hunt cougars.

If there were tags?

I probably should have said quota but I don't think it is that - they manage to an objective and when it is done, they close that area to further hunting.  In the harvest report they talked about the 72 hour delay to register hides as a concern for over harvest, and they wanted to go to 24 hours so they could close faster when they hit their objective.  At least that was my reading of it, I didn't dwell on it for longer than it took to get some numbers.