Aside from gray wolves, there may be no more contentious animal in the Rocky Mountains than mountain lions. And now a new controversy is brewing over fair means of hunting the big cats.
Cougars, pumas — call them what you will. Just don’t call them electronically.
So say the regulations currently on the books published by Colorado Parks and Wildlife governing the legal methods of harvest by sportsmen. Sport hunting season for mountain lions opens the day after the close of combined deer and elk rifle season — Nov. 21 this year — and lasts through the end of March in most game management units.
Like deer and elk, mountain lions are managed as big game in Colorado, having evolved from varmint status on which a $50 bounty was offered since 1929 to the more appreciated stature in 1965. As such, the use of mechanical hand calls to draw out the stealthy cats is deemed acceptable. But, as is the case with elk and other big game, the use of an electronic game call — recordings strategically placed near a hunter’s perch — is forbidden.
A coalition of lion hunters led by Chad Kinkade is petitioning the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to change that regulation. The popularity of predator calling is increasing rapidly nationwide, they say, and restriction of “mechanical calls only” heightens the potential for a lion attack on a human.
It’s a safety issue, Kinkade told the commission at its monthly meeting in Colorado Springs on Thursday. When a hunter is using a hand-held mouth call, he is inviting the cat right into his lap, placing himself in an almost indefensible and hazardous situation, especially if the lion stalks in from behind.
Others don’t buy it.
“I’ve called in more than 20 mountain lions over the last 30 years, and I don’t believe that it is an individual safety issue or a necessary tool, considering the fact that lions are classified as a big game animal,” Dan Gates of Cañon City said, speaking on behalf of the fledgling Colorado Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife. “Those rules were set for a reason. If you change them for a special interest group, it becomes an issue of where do you stop? The next group is the bear hunters. Then someone says, ‘They do it for predators, maybe we can do it for elk.’ It’s all about how we manage big game in this state.”
According to CPW carnivore biologist Jerry Apker, 3,500 to 4,500 “huntable” mountain lions are believed to inhabit the state, enough to increase seldom- achieved GMU harvest limits by 26 cats to 618 statewide for the 2011-12 season. But a rare few attacks have been documented between lions and people with firearms, significantly diluting the hunter safety argument.
Although the use of electronic calls is allowed in some states, the customary technique for hunting pumas in Colorado involves a pack of up to eight dogs, a distinct differentiation from other big game regulations approved by the former Colorado Wildlife Commission years ago. Without the use of dogs, odds of a successful hunt are minimal. Harvest rates hover around 20 percent.
All that points to the underlying debate of what constitutes “fair chase” within the realm of big game and predator hunting.
Clearly the cats have the upper hand. But it seems that a certain degree of daring should be an expected byproduct of hunting predators. Isn’t that ultimately part of the attraction? Otherwise, every lion hunter would unleash the hounds and shoot one out of a tree.
Do the rules change when hunting hunters? Obviously, to some degree they do, although as technology continues to creep into the woods, the question of where it ends remains on the table. Or maybe somewhere in a camouflaged iPod.
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
