For California Deer Hunters

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I lived and hunted in California for some years and have to agree that trying to find common sense within the Fish and Game dept. is a futile endeavor. Unfortunately a lot of states seem to have someone sitting behind a desk somewhere making rules and regs that have no real basis in facts.
Unfortunately I think we face some of the same types of rule and regulation makers here in Texas. Just no real common sense can enter into the situations, and they don't seem to be open to considering any options to their thinking.
In my area we have antler restrictions that are somewhat ridiculous and we cannot seem to do anything about it. I keep a lot of game cameras out year around and watch lots of small bucks with malformed and tiny racks that have to live out their lives on our properties as we cannot cull them from the breeding stocks. Our F&G dept says the antler restrictions allow the bucks to grow bigger racks before they are harvested and that is the end of the discussion as far as they are concerned.
I have shown pics of damage to deer similar to the horses shown in the article, and shown them to our local game warden. He simply stated that there was no way a big cat could have done it as we don't have any in this area....period...end of discussion.
 
Stony said:
I have shown pics of damage to deer similar to the horses shown in the article, and shown them to our local game warden. He simply stated that there was no way a big cat could have done it as we don't have any in this area....period...end of discussion.
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Can you shoot the big cats you don't have in your area?
 
Grumulkin.....I haven't personally seen any of the big cats around here, but we have some really dense cover and lots of stuff living in there that I haven't seen. I see bobcats pretty regularly on cameras and now and then one out in the open, but I don't shoot things like that as a rule. I did have to shoot an albino coon the other day that was stuck in a trap with broken front legs. I would have let it go just because of it's scarcity, but it wasn't an option at the time.
Lots of folks around this area claim to have seen big cats personally....I don't doubt them.
 
They are still (Officially) in denial that we have big cats here as well, but too many people have seen them.

They say 90% of fawns are being killed by Coyotes, and that may be true, but the Coyotes might be having a little help lately.
 
Back in the 80's the CA Fish and Game Dept. was becoming highly politicized, and the actual science of game management was becoming irrelevant. I'm guessing it's gone through about 30 years of getting worse.
 
Mr. Simpson sounds like just one more unsuccessful deer hunter looking for an excuse as to why he came home empty handed. Funny how those same unsuccessful deer hunters want predator populations controlled, but then want deer populations uncontrolled and inflated so they come home with something in the back of the truck every time.

Deer live in town because they are protected from hunters. Predators can and do come into town to prey on them. Deer also live in town because the food there is more plentiful and preferred. They are becoming like rats, learnig that humans habitation means food and shelter.......and believe me, the predators will follow them.

Two/three decades or so ago, my state also thought that every deer hunter needed to get a deer to keep hunter numbers up. Then came the protests from farmer and insurance companies. So the focus changed. Liberal seasons meant "if it's brown. it's down!". As the populations dived folks started to blame the DNR and wolves. This at the same time you heard "We only saw one deer all season and we shot it!", as if it was the honorable thing to do.

Managing wildlife populations is complicated, and managers have more folks to answer to than just hunters. Seems to be just as many folks out there that want to just look and photograph wildlife as those that want to kill it. Apex predators make for great pics. Insurance companies could care less who gets a deer this season as long as none of their customers hits one with their car. Farmers looking to make a profit have little tolerance when they see a herd of deer grazing in his prime alfalfa field. They too care about deer populations, but their concerns are different than most hunters. California has been said to have some of the highest poaching numbers in the country, while at the same time, budgets for enforcement and wildlife protection is being cut. Deer populations in California reflect the populations here in Wisconsin. Odds are they will never be at the record numbers they were at in the early nineties, for obvious reasons. The populations are now being managed for all, not just for hunters. Does this tick off those hunters that are continuously unsuccessful? Obviously. But there's more to blame than just apex predators.
 
Stoney,

Perhaps you ought to direct your friendly warden to his own website, which states

In Texas, the Mountain Lion is found throughout the Trans-Pecos, as well as the brushlands of south Texas and portions of the Hill Country. Sighting and kill reports indicate that Mountain Lions now occur in more counties than they did 10 years ago and appear to be expanding their range into central Texas.
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http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/mlion/

And here's a record of cougars killed......in East Texas

http://www.cougarnet.org/sites/original/southeast.html

Edit: on second thought, it probably wouldn't do any good to show him. Like mother-in-laws, Game Wardens know everything and are never wrong
 
TimSr said:
Back in the 80's the CA Fish and Game Dept. was becoming highly politicized, and the actual science of game management was becoming irrelevant. I'm guessing it's gone through about 30 years of getting worse.
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Here's a hint; it's no longer the Dept of Fish and Game. It's now the Dept of Fish and Wildlife
 
Perceptions and reality: Often 180 degrees apart. :)

Texas wildlife biologists have stated that if available, a cougar will kill a deer every week to ten days.

The Chisos Mountains of the Big Bend National Park are about 120,000 acres. The Park folks wanted a survey of the cougar population. All the experts guesstimated two pairs in residence. Two pairs. That's four, count 'em, four.

Roy McBride, an internationally noted cat-catcher, wound up with 22 cougars trapped and collared.

Maybe that's why the mule deer and Del Carmen whitetail numbers were well below the carrying capacity of the land?
 
Walkalong said:
They are still (Officially) in denial that we have big cats here as well, but too many people have seen them.

They say 90% of fawns are being killed by Coyotes, and that may be true, but the Coyotes might be having a little help lately.
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Had to reply to this as basically all my life all the locals basically called my grandfather a liar and a drunk because he told them he saw a cougar while deer hunting.

I have had game cameras up around their property for the last several years and have three separate pictures of a very large cat(s). The first time I got a picture of it I immediately called the local biologist and sent him the picture. Got a response back in less than an hour that it was just a normal house cat close to the camera.

So I set out stakes with 6" yellow and black stripes painted on them every 10 feet out to 50 feet. The next picture the cat was in front of the stakes so you couldn't see them. The one after that it was between the 20 and 30 foot stakes so I sent that picture to the biologist, and his response was basically that there was no evidence of large cats in north Alabama so it must not be a large cat.
 
When we left northern California in 1993, things were already going bad. Each year, a hunter had to buy a special way overpriced stamp to mark the packages of his venison. Then when you send in your deer kill info, they'd use that data for a search of your freezer for un-stamped meat. Adolf Hitler would be proud of this scam by the State.

TR
 
There is no question an increase in predators will result in a decrease in game numbers. This is why our great grandfathers did all they could to eliminate all predators....to eliminate competition from them. This is the same reason modern day hunters look down their noses at apex type predators, especially when they come home empty handed. Back in great grandpas day, the meat was an important staple and the only folks in the woods and interested in wild animals were hunters and that is how game was managed. Nowadays we have hikers, photographers and other folks that enjoy the outdoors without hunting. They also enjoy seeing not only game animals but those apex predators that prey on them. They pay taxes, pay access fees and buy park entrance stickers also, thus nowadays wildlife is managed for them too. This means hunters are not the only one game managers listen to anymore. Then there is the problem of limited access to hunters on private lands or hard to access public lands. Game managers have no way of controlling prey animal numbers there other than the use of apex predators. Like prey animals, apex predator numbers need to be controlled also, to maintain the balance that is most beneficial to all involved. This again means hunters are only one of many that are considered. Sucks not to be the only child anymore, but that's how it is.
 
When deer and elk populations are documented to be in decline, with steeper declines in the take by hunters, the de facto total protection of apex predators is aimed toward serious conflict with humans. But, a few hikers mauled might be what it takes to return to a balance, instead of looking at cougars as cute little kitties. And here in the west, bears do serious damage to fawns as well, and with the reintroduction efforts regarding wolves, we are about to achieve a population crash of deer and possibly elk. Management decisions are now political, and are not made for the betterment of the managed populations. And, we mustn't forget, that hunting and fishing licenses provide the bulk of management monies in all states, and few tree huggers have any monetary skin in the game.
 
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