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Posted by David Sherman on Friday, December 14, 2007 at 15:17:01 :
In Reply to: OT Sorry: Difference between 22 & 22 "magnum" posted by Doinco on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 15:12:32 :
At least one of them seems to have been adequate. These were some of my Oregon ancestors, probably around 1910 somewhere near Dickey Prairie.
My grandfather was a big cougar hunter there in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when the Oregon Stockmens & Cattlemens association gave a $20 bounty. My grandmother's scrap book is full of stories from the local paper about him and his cougar hunting. He and his brother always hunted with hounds and he told me he never in all his years of hunting saw a cougar other than when it was treed. There were no radio collars back then and not many roads. They'd just follow the sound of the dogs through the woods, sometimes 20 or 25 miles in a day. The dogs bark differently once they get on a trail, and then differently again when the cat's treed. I've seen two cougars in my life, and got a good long look at one, but I sure believe they are just about impossible to hunt without dogs. The one I watched was stalking a squirrel in a dry pine forest with lots of dead twigs and needles all over the ground and even still it didn't make a sound as it moved. They are definitely very stealthy hunting animals. They say they'll follow a hiker for days without being seen, and I don't doubt they could.
Bear baiting or hound hunting of bears is a different thing, it seems to me, since it's pretty easy to find bears. They leave lot of sign (torn up logs, poop, and tracks) and are pretty noisy when travelling. Cougars on the other hand leave very little sign and don't make any noise. I think the main reason there are such generous bear seasons and baiting and hounds are allowed for bear hunting is the big timber companies. They don't like bears because in the young tree plantations they mess up the trees in the spring when they come out of hibernation by eating the bark off them. In an old forest of mixed-age trees this is no big deal, but in a 10-year old fir plantation they can do a lot of damage. I think Washington outlawed baiting and hounds for bears a few years ago. California, I believe, still allows cougar hunting but doesn't allow hounds, which is as good as banning the hunting.
What I think will be interesting around here is to see how the wolves and lions work things out with each other. Wolves have been back for a few years now and the first thing they did was kill off most of the coyotes. Now the wolves and cougars are competing for exactly the same prey. That certainly means less elk, but I'm wondering if it might also mean less cougars.
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