South Dakota Mountain Lion Public Opinion Poll

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Mountain Lion Management in South Dakota Analysis of Public Comment Larry M. Gigliotti the most productive way to harvest the cats. I feel only a select few would benefit from using dogs, the wealthy and the dog guides. I have hunted in the hills for thirty some years and have never seen a mountain lion, but I would buy a license with the chance of seeing a mountain lion. Otherwise keep up the good work. Allow Mountain Lion Hunting with Dogs • I believe that the only way to harvest the number of lions you want you need to have DOGS in this. All you are doing is proposing the opportunistic killing of a big game animal. Where is the sport in this. With dogs you have time to study the lion, you can sex it, age it and see if it is suckling young. I also have concerns about hunters taking bad shots at a lion and wounding it. We all know if a lion is wounded it still has to hunt to survive and they will look for the easiest prey they can find. I just hope it ain't a child. I have spoken to a lot of the Conservation Officers and they believe that dogs should be used. I also think that if the public can't use hounds then the Game, Fish and Parks should not be able to use their hounds to catch problem lions they should have to get them the same way that you want the public to harvest them. I have been to 4 of the meetings and believe that the public support for hounds is there the people that didn't want any lions harvested sided with the houndsmen by the end of the meetings. • I am a houndsmen, and I spend a lot of time in the woods. I can tell you that the amount of lion sign is everywhere. A season is needed to gain control of the cats. The proposed season will do very little to help, and it might make more problems. The use of hounds is the only way to effectively hunt a lion. I believe you already know that because the GFP uses dogs. If you truly want to manage lion hound hunting must be a part of the plan. Every other state that has al ion season uses dogs. Why would SD be any different? OR and WA have tried not using dogs and are now both going back. If you are not going to allow dogs for lions fine but do not take away our bobcat hunting!!!!!!!! If you would only listen to your own houndsman you would get the truth about dogs. I have attended 2 meetings and I don't think dogs are as controversial as you think. PLEASE COMMON CENTS AND MANAGE LIONS NOT SIDE STEP THE PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Questions/Concerns/Issues Raised by the Public Support for a mountain lion season While the vast majority of South Dakota citizens can support a mountain lion season there is a large disagreement on the details of how the season should be structured. One controversy centers on the use of dogs for hunting lions. One of the guiding 18
Mountain Lion Management in South Dakota Analysis of Public Comment Larry M. Gigliotti principles that GFP applied when developing a mountain lion season was to provide maximum participation and opportunity. Using dogs is very efficient. To reach a quota of 20 mountain lions only 20 hunters would be able to have an opportunity to hunt. This would require having an annual drawing and having thousands of hunters being unsuccessful and collecting preference points for a hunt that they may never have an opportunity to participate in due to the large number of interested hunters and the small number of tags available every year. Another option could allow dogs with unlimited entry but closing the season when the quota is reached. This option results in a very short season as everyone heads out the first day for fear that the season will soon be closed. This type of season structure results in a high number of female lions being killed because after treeing a lion hunters are reluctant to pass it by if it is a female because the season may close before they can tree a male lion. A big issue with hunting with dogs is trespass. Once the dogs starting chasing a lion there is no way to keep them from crossing over private land. Lion hunters using dogs claim that this is usually not a problem because most of the time they don't get caught trespassing and when they do most of the time they only get a stern verbal warning. Based on the types of comments received it appears that there are a number of hunters that think they can run lions with their "regular" dogs. Hunting lions with dogs requires dogs specially trained to run lions and the handler also needs to have experience running dogs on lions. A mountain lion season with dogs may need to include some type of certification that the hunter and his/her hounds are experienced/trained to run mountain lions. Question: Why did the initial 2005 experimental mountain lion season not include the use of dogs? • The first point to make is that GFP is not opposed to considering the use of dogs for mountain lion hunting in the future. However, for the first year it was decided to go with one simple season design to evaluate the impact of harvesting some mountain lions. Once some things are learned about the impact of harvesting lions on the South Dakota mountain lion population more complex season designs can be developed that include some harvest by using dogs. • For the first year the goal was to provide a maximum number of hunters an opportunity to hunt mountain lions and using dogs would not meet this goal. Mountain lions are an important species in the Black Hills ecosystem and providing 19
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South Dakota Mountain Lion Public Opinion Poll

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