When it comes to mountain lions, everybody might not agree on how to best manage them – but one thing seems certain, Wyoming has a lot of them.
“I live near Hartville and several people posted (about) lions in their yards chasing deer and killing pets,” avid hunter, trapper and angler Adam Ashmore told Cowboy State Daily.
There are similar stories from across the state. The Black Hills region is said to have mountain lions galore.
And near Story, a tiny town in the Bighorn Mountains, there have also been reports of mountain lions gobbling pets and small livestock animals.
Rep. Mike Schmid, R-La Barge, previously told Cowboy State Daily that he’d introduced a bill proposing essentially unlimited hunting and trapping of mountain lions out of concern for Wyoming’s struggling mule deer herds.
Some argued that would be overkill. The bill essentially died in the House Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, after no one called for a vote to send it to the House floor.
But the problem of mountain lions preying on mule deer remains, Ashmore said.
“The problem is the (mountain lion) quota in this area never even gets close to being filled. I can attest to the herd of deer on my property in the last four years has gone from 30 down to about 10 left. We find the lion kills, so I know they are lethal,” he said.
But beyond the debate over how aggressively mountain lions should be hunted, there might be another solution. Just let mountain lions kill each other, retired Wyoming Game and Fish game warden Benge Brown told Cowboy State Daily.
A study of mountain lions in the Snowy Range Mountains during the 1990s suggested that the big cats can control their own population just as well, or better, than hunters can, he said.
“What they found was, mature male mountain lions were killing kittens, just like house cats – a tom cat will kill kittens given a chance,” he said.
“If you want to control the mountain lion population, don’t kill males,” he added.
Saw It Play Out
The study rolls into a larger argument that leaving large males alone can be effective in controlling the mountain lionpopulation and lessening conflicts with humans.
Brown said he saw that play out when he was a game warden in the Thermopolis area from 2007 until his retirement in 2022.
“When I started there, we had a three-lion quota (for the hunting season) and it didn’t get filled,” he said.
But there were reports of numerous mountain lions, and lion-related conflicts.
So the seemingly logical next step was to up the quota of mountain lions that hunters could kill, Brown said.
“My philosophy was, we had enough lions that we should just up the quota until we couldn’t hit the quota.
So it was boosted to eight lions, then 10, and hunters managed to fill it.
By the time Brown retired, the quota was up to around 20 mountain lions, but that still didn’t seem to be achieving the goal. There still seemed to be plentiful mountain lions – and trouble with them.
Then he thought back to the study. And he realized, that – much like teenage boys tend to be prone to shenanigans, it was juvenile male mountain lions that were causing the most ruckus.
With hunters focusing on killing mostly big, mature male mountain lions, those toms weren’t around to keep the younger ones in check, he said.
“It’s those 2-year-old males. They’re the ones that are getting into trouble all the time,” such as killing pets and livestock, he said.
But switching management policy toward letting more mountain lions go proved impossible, Brown said.
“It’s counter-intuitive. It’s difficult to get people to manage wildlife that way,” he said.
“You’ve got a landowner who is losing 50 sheep to mountain lions, and you’re trying to tell him, ‘We’re going to reduce the lion quota so we can reduce the number of lions,’” he added.
Still A Place For Hunting Big Males
Carl Boykin is a seasoned houndsman – an outdoorsman who uses hounds to pursue mountain lions. He hunted the big cats for decades in the area around Saratoga and Encampment.
He also recalls the Snowy Range Mountain lion study. In fact, he sold the researchers some hounds to help with the pursuit, capture and radio-collaring of mountain lions.
Although he appreciated the work that went into the study, and the conclusions it reached, he questions the broad application of those principles.
Refraining from killing large males might work in some specific areas, Boykin said. But overall, he still favors the approach of targeting large males during hunts.
“It’s the best for the population,” he said, because killing female mountain lions will make the population crater.
Many of the huge males that hunters kill had already lived long enough to fulfill their primary roles, he said.
Those roles being, spreading their genes by mating with numerous females, while also taking out some of those troublesome younger males, Boykin said.
He also thinks that harsh winter weather probably kills more deer than mountain lions ever could. So the big cats get scapegoated when mule deer numbers plummet.
Let Mountain Lions Devour Coyotes
What’s more, mountain lions help control what Boykin sees as the real culprit – coyotes.
Mountain lions kill and eat more coyotes than many people realize, Boykin said.
“We’ve seen mountain lions that were on a pure-coyote diet,” he said.
And as far as people finding deer killed by mountain lions, he blames coyotes for that too.
A mountain lion will gladly take the chance to kill and devour a lone coyote, he said. But coyotes sometimes form packs.
Boykin said what he’s seen happen is packs of coyotes moving in to claim a deer that a mountain lion kills, before the mountain lion gets a chance to eat much of the carcass.
“The lions aren’t going to fight an entire pack of coyotes. So they’ll just go off and kill something else,” he said.
So, the end result is, coyotes push mountain lions to kill more deer, he added.
Trapping Has A Place Too
It’s not legal to trap mountain lions in Wyoming, although Schmid’s bill would have allowed that.
Ashmore said he’d like to see at least some trapping of mountain lions allowed.
The reason being, hunters without hounds usually have very little chance of even seeing a mountain lion, much less getting a clear shot at one.
“Mountain lions are super nocturnal and elusive. Ask most hunters if they’ve ever seen one in the wild. It’s rare,” he said.
So letting trappers take a few mountain lions would help, Ashmore said.
“There’s too much private land, and landowners want them (mountain lions) gone. But guys with hounds only take big trophy toms, which leaves the females, which are better hunters,” he said.
“Plus most guys can’t afford to pay for a guide. This where trapping could be an effective method of helping get the quotas set. Give half of the quota to trappers,” Ashmore said.
“Trappers get a bad rap, but they are just important as hunters in management, especially for predators,” he added.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
