PREDATORS — Wildlife Services agents dispatched a 175-pound mountain lion near Helena, Mont., recently after the cat killed at least six llamas and left them uneaten.  Sport-killing behavior is rare for cougars, and officials don't have an easy answer.

Read the Helena Independent Record report. 

HUNTING — The flap continues in California over the Fish and Game Commission president who came to Idaho for a legally guided cougar hunt.

His home-state anti-hunting creeps are wailing for him to resign since cougars can't be hunted in California. Forty state legislators sent him a letter saying he should quit.

Do they send letters to residents who go to other states and enjoy things that are prohibited in California?  Can California officials go to Nevada and enjoy a casino?  Can they go to Montana and drive a rental car that doesn't have California pollution equipment?

Can they come to Eastern Washington and enjoy driving a highway without a traffic jam?

Read the latest on this state-endorsed hunter discrimination here.

See this story for comments from the Idaho outfitter who encouraged the cougar hunt.

HUNTING — Californians love and protect their mountain lions, even though the state is among the few where cougars have attacked and killed people in the past 20 years.

But the president of the California Fish and Game Commission is getting pressure to resign after he booked a perfectly legal mountain lion hunt in Idaho and filled his tag.

The incident is highlighted in this Huckleberries post by Dave Oliveria.

HUNTING – Washington’s most popular deer-hunting season opens Saturday morning in Eastern Washington, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife has made a point to remind hunters that cougars also are fair game anywhere in the state.

Under this year’s rules, deer hunters with a valid cougar license and transport tag can take a cougar during the modern-firearms deer season in all 39 counties – including Okanogan, Chelan, Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille and Klickitat.

That’s a change from recent years, when general cougar-hunting seasons in those six counties were delayed to accommodate a pilot program that allowed hunters with special permits to track cougars using dogs.

“In those six counties, we’re back to relying on general hunts to manage cougar populations,” said Dave Ware, WDFW game manager. “We can make that work, but it does present some different management challenges.”

Ware said permit hunters using dogs generally took male cougars, while those who encounter cougar during general hunts – without dogs – are less likely to discriminate between the sexes. Under state law, it is illegal to kill spotted cougar kittens or adult cougars tending kittens.

Using dogs to hunt cougars was banned by a citizens’ initiative in 2006, but later allowed by the Legislature under a pilot program in counties reporting increasing conflicts with the big cats.

More than 100,000 hunters are expected to take to the field this month for the modern-firearms deer season that runs through various dates around the state. Cougar hunting is open through the end of the year, although few are taken outside of the major deer and elk hunting seasons, Ware said.

WILDLIFE WATCHING — An Arizona couple recently witnessed a wildlife spectacle outside their home hear Gold Canyon as a mountain lion launched an attack on a bobcat.

In a desperate escape along the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, the bobcat sprinted up a very tall and very stickery saguaro cactus. The mountain lion called off the chase at that point.

Curt Fonger tells the story and shares photos with an Arizona TV station.

The photographer seized the opportunity to capture photos of the bobcat on its perch. One of the photos from a distance gives a good perspective on the height of the cactus.   The bobcat just hunkered on the saguaro for hours until the coast was clear, and then departed, seemingly impervious to the sharp cactus spines.

Fonger said the only way he'll top that wildlife photography experience is if the mountain lion comes by and gives him a pose.

WILDLIFE ENCOUNTERS — Two men kept their cool and successfully retreated from an aggressive cougar near Hoquiam, Wash., on Sunday.

According to a KING 5 report, Puget Sound salmon manager Steve Thiesfeld said the two men were completing a habitat survey on the Little Hoquiam River when they spotted the cougar following them, with ears back and hissing.
  
The two faced the animal, waved their arms and inched toward the road for about 20 minutes.
  
Theisfeld told reporters the cat came within striking distance several times before they made it to the roadway, where they climbed into their truck.

PREDATORS — Mitch Friedman of Conservation Northwest has concerns about hunting cougars.

Nevertheless, he was disappointed by the Washington Legislature's failure to pass a bill to extend a pilot program that has allowed the use of hounds for limited cougar hunting in Northeastern Washington.  The bill died on the vine last week despite bipartisan support.

On Friday, Friedman wrote his well thought-out reaction to the situation and where the state and people in northeastern Washington should go from here.

“Cougar hunting can’t not be controversial,” Friedman said. “On one hand, they are gorgeous cats that, as apex predators, play critical roles in the balance of ecosystems, assuring that conservationists and animal lovers have strong feelings about them. On the other hand, this silent and powerful stalker gives people who live or raise livestock around them strong feelings of a different sort.”

WILDLIFE — RIchland law enforcement officials on Friday killed a cougar after workers found the six-foot-long cat in the basement of a south Richland home that’s under construction.

Richland police said they were called at 9:15 a.m, according to the Tri-City Herald. An officer from the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department also responded.

The home is in the framing stage and when workers arrived they discovered the cougar hiding in a basement nook, police said.

Because of the location, the number of people in the area, and other safety concerns, officers determined there was no other option but to shoot the cougar.

A similar incident occured earlier in the week in Wenatchee.

WILDLIFE — Mountain lions don't eat hay, but this veggie bar spready out near Chewelah this winter likely attracted plenty of deer. 

Cougars like an all-you-can eat buffet deal as much as anyone.

This photo is amon several snapped of cougars in February and March by a motion-activated camera about 45 miles north of Spokane.

PREDATORS — An Angus bull that died last month from injuries after fighting with another bull near Missoula attracted the who's who of non-hibernating predators into the unblinking lens of a motion-activated camera.

A lone gray wolf spent just 18 minutes feeding on the carcass above Missoula's South Hills, apparently cowed by the fact that a mountain lion had already claimed the prize — and often slept by its feast.

Click here or read on for the Missoulian's detailed story.

WILDLIFE — A trail cam photo that shows eight cougars in one frame (click “continue reading” below) has been going viral on Northwest websites and e-mail lists since a hunter shared it with friends on Christmas day.

As usual, not all the the information in the anonymous e-mails is correct.

But Wednesday, after tracking down the man who made the photos, and collaborating his info with wildlife biologists who looked into matter, the real story is even better than the made up stuff.

All the details are in my Thursday outdoors column.  But first a few facts to dispell the misinformation in the circulating e-mails, of which I've received at least eight:

— The images are from a motion-activated camera a hunter placed on a private ranch near Moses Coulee northwest of Quincy.

—The cougars were not feeding on a carcass.  No carcass was in the area.

“Cougars are notoriously territorial,” said Jon Gallie, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department's biologist in Wenatchee. “Seeing eight in one spot is a wildlife jackpot.”

OLYMPIA — Fifteen years after Washington voters banned using dogs to hunt cougars, lawmakers want to set permanent hunting seasons allowing licensed hunters to use hounds to track the cats, according to an Associated Press story.

The proposed bill, sponsored by Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, is the latest step in a seven-year process of addressing the 1996 ban through a pilot program aimed at testing cougar hunting seasons with dogs to stem the cougar conflict complaints that spiked after the ban.

The original three-year program has been extended twice so far.

Representatives from the Fish and Wildlife Commission say the pilot program has resulted in a 75 percent decline in confirmed complaints about cougars killing pets or livestock, or causing other problems.

Still, opponents of the bill say the use of hounds is cruel and inhumane, and is not being limited to public safety concerns.

The major opponent to the bill is the out-of-state-based Humane Society of the United States, which was a major funding source for the initiative campaign to ban hound hunting for cougars and bears.

HSUS is not affiliated with the “Humane Society” pet shelters that do the hard work of taking care of stray pets on a local level. Instead, HSUS is a multimillion-dollar conglomerate that mainly creates issues to feed its fundraising mission. 

I elaborated on this with details from the HSUS tax returns in this recent column, one of several on the subject.

Meantime, read on for more of the AP story from Olympia.

WILDLIFE — Wolves are not bloodless killers, but they can appear to be, according to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Russ Morgan.

Wolf kills can appear perplexing because often they barely have a scratch.

The state’s wolf program coordinator explained why — and much more — during a recent presentation about wolves at a meeting of the Union/Wallowa county chapter of the Oregon Hunters Association. The following story was reported by Dick Mason of the LaGrande Observer.

WILDLIFE — While the Rocky Mountain reigon’s wildlife control agents are forced to focus on wolves, coyotes, grizzly bears, black bears and mountain lions are making a killing on livestock.

“Our wildlife control people spend so much time with wolves that they’re being taken away from the other predators and our ranching industry is getting hammered,” Montana state Sen. Greg Hinkle (R-Thompson Falls) said in a Sunday story by The Helena Independent Record

For example, in Montana:

• Coyotes killed 1,348 calves in 2010, up from 111 calves in 2006. They killed 2,488 lambs and 422 adult sheep this year, up from 698 lambs and 135 adult sheep in 2006.
• Grizzly bears killed 32 calves in 2010, up from five in 2006. They killed 12 lambs and 29 adult sheep in 2010, up from no lambs and two adult sheep in 2006.
• Mountain lions killed four calves in 2010, up from two calves in 2006. They killed 91 lambs and 36 adult sheep in 2010, up from nine lambs and 14 adult sheep in 2006.
• Wolves killed 454 calvs in 2010, up from 51 calves in 2006. They killed 48 lambs and 728 adult sheep in 2010, up from six lambs and 22 adult sheep in 2006.

Read on for more context from the Helena Independent story.

WILDLIFE — A cougar was seen around 9 p.m. Wednesday night chasing a deer across Government Way near Mukogawa-Fort Wright Institute in Spokane.

The large, healthy looking cougar was in hot pursuit of the deer when a vehicle interrupted the chase. The cougar leaped about 20 feet in the air off the side of the road.

Be aware that the week’s snowfall will concentrate deer, and deer are a cougar’s primary prey.

The Spokane River area is a beautiful escape in the winter, but this sighting reminds us that solo hikes are risky especially for people of small stature that are more likely to be targeted by cougars. Stay in groups and keep the kids close by.