[pct-l] mt lions

[Sandra Smith]

Since I live in mt lion country year-round, I may have a slightly  
different perspective.  Their presence doesn't keep me from hiking  
alone (after all, one small one was literally at my back door with a  
raccoon in its mouth when I yelled and my mother and I chased it into  
the woods where it dropped the only-slightly-hurt raccoon and ran  
off) and there have been no cases in the Olympics that I know of  
where the lions have attacked hikers.  Yet....   they don't always  
seem to be particularly afraid of people.  A fellow hiker has been  
stalked by a lion on a popular trail a few miles from here.  One  
farmer 4 miles away looked out his window to see a lion "riding" one  
of his cows, which just bucked it off.  One went into a garage and  
ate a cocker spaniel in a small town 7 miles away.  And in our area,  
this cannot be attributed to growing human presence, because the  
small town is actually smaller now than 40 years ago, and much of  
these Olympic foothills have no more people than lived here in 1950  
or in 1898, and most is still government or private commercial  
timberland.  And lion hunting is a popular sport!

Personally, I think the lion population DOES rise and fall with the  
deer population.  I've also come upon a half-eaten deer covered with  
leaves, on my own land, and figured the  lion probably took at least  
one deer a week, judging by how long it took to eat that one.  The  
area has had a lot of clearcutting within the past 20 years, and the  
browse is abundant...and so are the deer.  For 25 years, we never saw  
a mt lion, and in the past 5 years, I've seen 4 different ones (the  
same ones a couple of times more).  What is the difference?  More deer.

We have a couple of months of deer hunting here...between black  
powder, archery, and modern firearm seasons.  Lots of hunters, too.   
But deer reproduce REALLY fast when there's plenty to eat.  And I  
suspect the lions do, too.  When the timber grows too tall to support  
much browse underneath, I'll bet deer and lions both will decrease.

Sandy from the Olympics