Mountain lions "losing fear of man"?

[FairWeather]

Bart George?

I have no idea what his real name is. This is the guy’s channel: https://youtube.com/@apex-livingwithpredators8379?si=5m4jpFz1PnuaeFYm

 

[Doublecluck]

So what are the comparisons to other similarly populated states (people and lions) where hunting is allowed.

https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=217926&inlin

https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=217926&inline

 

[gouch]

When I go deer hunting, I go out into the woods and every deer runs for its life when they see, smell or hear me. But to get there I drive through rural communities where deer are grazing in lawns, eating rose bushes and resting under trees with people all around them. Cougar are the same. The ones in the wild away from people remain fearful but the ones in or near town learn that for the most part people aren't all that dangerous.

By any account cougars are not really a dangerous animal when it comes to people. Cats and dogs on the other hand, are a menu item.

 

[SAJ-99]

I skeptical of the hunt-to-scare theory on the cats, but watching the Tourons of Yellowstone social media accounts, it is pretty clear that people have lost their fear of wild animals.

 

[Doublecluck]

Montana
147,070 sq miles
450,000 deer
140,000 elk
5300 cats
Just over a million people

California
155,812 sq miles
450,000 deer
4-6000 cats
38 million people

How could they not get accustomed to people?

 

[Wind Gypsy]

I think they do the same in WA. harassing cats into staying away from livestock. I think they use paintball guns and the like.

A number of years ago I was working on a construction project near Tallahassee, FL. There were black bears that would walk around the jobsite parking lot looking for food in peoples pickup beds. I'd shoot them or at them with a paintball gun, theyd run away, then come back. Rinse and repeat. I didn't stay long term enough to figure out if they'd eventually be dissuaded but it sure didn't work over the couple days i tried.

 

[ccc23454]

Animals don't know the difference between a gun shot and thunder, they dont even know what death is. I was always under the assumption that either the sound of an animal getting hit, or animals reacting to an animal that has been hit and is flailing, or running off causes other animals to run. Just a theory

I have seen a griz lift his head at a distant gunshot at look towards it, as the second shot went off bear took off running directly towards where it came from. Never seen a bear run towards thunder(atleast not yet), i understand your point but disagree only cause i have seen it.

 

[brymoore]

I’m not sure cats ever get enough exposure to humans to become wary and if they do get human exposure, they just don’t care.

I’ve trapped bobcats and have caught fox. Canines are way more wary than cats. Dogs will curl up and hide when you approach them. Cats want to fight. They aren’t afraid of anything. 20 pound female Bob will come at you with all she’s got.

I got good enough bobcat trapping that I was attracting lions too. Caught three one season before I changed my trapping methods to eliminate catching lions. Every hair on my body would stand up seeing a lion in my set. A caught lion wanted to kill me. Released lions run away though.

People killed by lions encountered a very hungry cat or the cat was in a position where fight was the best option.

 

[Irrelevant]

My run in was with a younger male, definitely thought I was food. I think it's a combination of things, more people, more cats, and higher tolerance. I mean, it tolerance isn't necessarily something "learned" in a single generation, but as cats adapt to the suburban interface we should expect some to start to think these gangling white bags of soft meat might actually be tasty. I'd love to reinstate hound hunting. I know need cats walking down my driveway.

 

[GrantK]

I've had a handful of random encounters in CO, lions here don't get hunted as hard as in some places but I'd suspect that a significant portion of mortality is from hunting.

Of the lions I've stumbled across all of them that I saw knew good and well that I was there, I've had two that nearly turned inside out getting away and three that couldn't care less that I was there, including one very large tom that came up to 5 yards and sat looking at me for a bit before getting a drink and wandering off, when I was guiding there was also an evening when 3 lions moved in on three clients and two guides quartering a bull and ended up following them until they got to the truck in the dark...

Based on all of that I don't think hunting has much of an effect, lions just don't generally consider humans to be tasty...

 

[Bigjay73]

Montana
147,070 sq miles
450,000 deer
140,000 elk
5300 cats
Just over a million people

California
155,812 sq miles
450,000 deer
4-6000 cats
38 million people

How could they not get accustomed to people?

So we need 19 million Californians to move to Montana to even things out is what you're saying?

 

[MNElkNut]

As I pondered some of these questions, a couple more popped up:
1. Is 53 years enough to lose fear of man? How many generations does it take given that lions have very infrequent contact with humans?
2. Would re-instating hunting take less time? Similar? More? I have to believe that treeing a lion and letting it go with a very negative experience of humans and dogs would have an effect on that lion (thus its offspring too if female). If it is killed, then it never has a chance to pass along that negative experience. However, not all lions are treed and killed so there would be some effect. But it would take some population/hunting models to predict how long it would be before it made a discernable effect.

One comment: Given the low numbers of lion caused human mortality (and someone mentioned how people go missing and we don't know if it is a cat kill) AND the randomness in attacks, it may be hard to tease out a clear picture either way.

I would really love to hear about any lion research that is out there and what it says.

 

[HONEYBADGER]

So we need 19 million Californians to move to Montana to even things out is what you're saying?

California is working on that.

Lions spend enough time around people in California now they are losing their natural fear and show almost more of a curiosity. I would bet this cat was hungry and these poor folks were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[jryoung]

So we need 19 million Californians to move to Montana to even things out is what you're saying?

Make California Great Again.....just need to make sure we keep Santa Clara county's economy in tact LOL

 

[Moserkr]

 

[Redmt]

Make California Great Again.....just need to make sure we keep Santa Clara county's economy in tact LOL

The county isn't likely to go broke anytime soon, not as long as they keep hammering us for land taxes.
On the subject of lions. They have a definite territory they live in. It's huge, as I remember it something like 25 square miles. Of course one cats territory overlaps another. We see lions fairly often but I contribute part of that to the fact my nearest neighbors are about 1 mile away. They don't have much pressure and no natural enemies. I also contribute the frequency of sighting because I'm out checking properties I look after or hunting some sort of furry critter almost every day. The ones that aren't seen live, are caught in game cameras and front bumpers take out a few more often than you would think. There's a LOT of lions back here.

 

[Bigjay73]

I hope that kid knows he did the best he could, his brother was probably gone not long after the lion got hold of him. What a tragedy

 

[Malcolm Brooks]

With the recent fatal mountain lion attack here in CA has many of the California hunting pages on FB filled with comments regarding them “losing their fear of man” because there is no hunting of them.

When I think about this statistically, it doesn’t make sense, and to me it’s just our anthropocentric interpretation of wildlife behavior.

In California Governor Reagan signed a mountain lion hunting moratorium in 1971, which was extended until 1991 when prop 117 was passed. So we have 53 years of no hunting, a population increase of 19 million people (20.3m -> 39.8M), continued loss of habitat yet no marked increase in attacks. Further, at first glance, states with regulated hunting have in general the same number of attacks that we have over the past 3 decades. Surely, if I dug into those numbers they’d be at a much higher rate per capita compared to California.

Certainly all animals have a natural fear of threats, elk and deer adapt to pressure which at its core is just an increase in human activity in their habitat. Conversely, they’ll also adapt and live closer to humans on the WUI type edges. I can understand animals adapting, but if mountain lions have “lost their fear of man” due to no hunting, shouldn’t there be an increase in attacks?

I'm the uncle of Taylen and Wyatt Brooks. The rate of attacks on humans in California has in fact snowballed since 117 declared the mountain lion a "specially protected species," and stripped what was then the Department of Fish and Game of any meaningful management authority. There were only two attacks from 1909 to 1990, both in the same park in So Cal in 1986, and both on young kids. In the aftermath of 117, there have been 25 attacks statewide, including four fatalities. It's important to note that "hunting" in the generic sense (i.e., a lethally taken lion) is NOT the critical dimension governing lion evasiveness toward the human population--even during the kill moratorium ushered in by Reagan, hound hunters were still entirely permitted to pursue lions with dogs on a catch-and-release basis, or what's known in that community as "tree-and-free." I knew a number of people who practiced this right up until 1990, when 117 forbid even that as part and parcel of the total hunting ban. The results are now obvious, with dangerously habituated lions sighted constantly in places and at times of day that nobody could have imagined in the pre-ban era. It's not the lethal take of lions on a sport basis that reinforces their normal tendency to avoid human interaction and habitation zones; it's the exercise of being pressured and treed by hound dogs in the service of human handlers, on a regular and consistent basis. For a compelling breakdown of this, please check out this video presentation from the MeatEater franchise:

 

[Moserkr]

@Malcolm Brooks As a resident of El Dorado County, it really hit home when your nephews were attacked. Im sorry for your family's loss. We are honestly overrun with lions in the foothills and everything you stated is 100% correct.

 

[peterk1234]

More humans. More humans moved to rural areas since covid. More humans going outside since covid. More encounters with wildlife.