Dave
Well-known member
Alan":davixe2l said:I think in our area of the northwest it has little to do with cats from no. Cal. There may be some cats drifting up but not enough to come close to the effect we are having. Dave is 100% right, Oregon and Washington elected to ban using dogs to hunt cougar a few, or many now, years ago and since then the sightings and problems with cats have gone insane. While I have never had a problem with them (knock on wood) in the last ten years or so I have seen two cats and heard one scream...... Late night walking up from the barn without a dog or gun, I'll never forget that, you hear it you'll always remember it.
Alan
In the early 80's the Game Dept in all there wisdom went to a permit system on cougars. But the area west of I-5 and south of Olympia (my area) they issued no permits. That was nearly 30 years ago. Then in the mid 90's they outlawed hound hunting for cats which is the only effective method of hunting them. So there has been no cougar huntin in my area since the early 80's. It use to pretty rare for one to actually be sighted. Now nearly everyone who lives in rural or semi rural areas as seen one or two. And people having scary run ins with them are not uncommon. It is only a matter of time before we have someone ate by one.
One of the other interesting things about them is how far they travel and how quickly they do it. I had some friends caught one for the Game Dept near the Northeast corner of Mt Rainier park. It was tagged and turned loose. Three days later it was road killed down by White Salmon on the Columbia River. That is 150 +/- miles as the crow flys, at least 3 major rivers and some real nasty mountains that the cougar travel through.