Proceedings of the Seventh Mountain Lion Workshop

30 MONTANA MOUNTAIN LION STATUS REPORT · DeSimone and Jaffe
Table 1. Montana lion hunting statistics, 1998-2002.
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
License sales
Resident 5421 5886 5138 5116 6337
Non-resident 510 519 493 421 281
Total 5931 6405 5631 5537 6618
Lion Quota
Harvest
868 758 661 620 581
Female 417 335 293 252 188
Male 351 319 291 257 219
Unknown 8 0 0 0 0
Total 776 654 584 509 407
Harvest is regulated through quotas and
only one lion can be taken per hunter per
year. Quotas include any lion, male and
female, and female sub quotas. During the
fall hunting season (last week of Oct
through Nov), the use of dogs is not
allowed. Harvest during the fall season has
been in affect for 4 years and less than 10
lions were harvested each year (Table 1).
Hunting with dogs is allowed during the
winter season (Dec 1 – Apr 14) and accounts
for over 95% of the harvest. Licensed
hunters are also allowed to chase lions
during the winter season. Recent legislation
will allow the purchase of non-harvest chase
licenses.
DEPREDATIONS AND HUMAN
INTERACTION/CONFLICTS
MFWP’s Mountain Lion Depredation
Table 2. Montana mountain lion incidents and removals, 1998-2002.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP
and Control Guidelines are used to deal with
different types of incidents. Depending on
the situation, management actions include
education, relocation, and removal (Table
2). Montana does not pay for losses
attributed to lions.
RESEARCH
Garnet Mountains – Mountain Lion
Research, 1998 – present.
The goal is to document the influence of
hunting on population characteristics and
evaluate the ability of various survey
techniques to detect trends in lion
abundance.
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Incidents 1
Public safety 41 18 37 30 20
Depredation 2 58 44 35 37 29
Total
Removals
99 62 72 67 49
Public safety 20 2 3 5 2
Depredation 30 20 20 11 14
Total 50 22 23 16 16
1
Incident: A conflict between a human and lion that may have serious results (i.e. a lion killing a dog or a lion that must be
forced to back down).
2
Depredation: Includes death of pets and death and injury of livestock.