Photo credit to http://www.biology-blog.com/Sometime in the 1980’s cougar hunting with dogs was banned because many anti hunters and animal rights activist voted this sport off as they said “ This sport gives the animals little chance to get away from the hunter” with this statement made there was much dispute and misunderstanding as hunters and protesters quarreled the statement. It did come to the agreement that the use of dogs made bagging of the animals possible, but it was the only way to hunt a cougar and keep the population in check because they have no predators in this area. As this was going on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife did a population count on the cougar and found that the population in the state of Oregon was around 1,500 cougars where they would liked to have had 3,100 cougars in the state this quickly lead to the banning of using dogs in the state of Oregon.
Over the last 20 years the cougars have had no threat of any kind to their population and have exploded in population. Which in turn has caused the deer and turkey populations to drop and a extremely fast rate however the quick drop of animal populations has just been noticed in the last 4 years.
There is simple proof that cougars were the cause of the dropping effect after a survey taken proving that one cougar alone will kill 4 to 5 deer and up to 18 turkey in a week of time (5 days) this is very hard to believe however it is true. Now go figure that a deer only has one to two babies every year where a cougar has 3 to 5 offspring in one year. Thank goodness for turkey or they would quickly run our deer population dry.
The cougars have recently been seen more often by people because there are so many they are running out of territory in some places. In result we are having record high threatening cougar encounters in Oregon. Luckily there have been a high number of cats killed in the last few years without the use of dogs at a number of 250 cats which is nearly 6% of the population. This seems like allot of animals but as soon as they have offspring in one year they create those numbers and more very fast.
In recent year’s livestock has been hammered very badly from cougars who are old and cannot sustain the power to take wild deer down so they kill typically sheep, cows, horses and chickens around houses.
It’s unfortunate that dogs aren’t used because the cats are currently at the number of approximately 5,100+ cats they are currently hunted by calling them in which can be threatening to the person calling them in, but for now you can shoot 2 cougars a year for 10 dollars a tag. The problem is that not many people see a cougar in their life because they are so elusive… This is until recent years when many cats have received rabies and been found stalking children.
If dogs could be used we could take the population to the correct 3,000 cougar mark within a few years.
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