How to get CA to allow Mountain Lion hunts?

[MidnightRun]

Its no secret, deer hunting in California is not what it is in other states. I know there are still some really big deer but its not a great deer state. I won't blame it on too many hunters & tags, poachers or just a lack of feed. Nearly every fish and game official I've talked to says there are too many Cougars in the state to have a large deer population. My question is:

How can we get either the state legislators, the governor or the state fish and game department to introduce a plan or strategy to allow hunting of mountain lion for the purpose of increasing the deer herd? This could be done as a lottery similiar to how Elk, Pronghorn and Bighorn sheep are hunted. Any ideas?

Do I need to contact a local official's office and start a petition? I assume other people have tried this before, could anyone offer some history on the topic?

[Rimrock]

No hope. In 1990 proposition 117 went to the polls. By vote mountain lion hunting was banned. In 1996 an attempt to repeal this law as voted on. It was defeated. The Fish & Game Dept. has no say in the matter. The liberal tree huggers of California were, and are, behind this. Don't expect it to get any better.

[Big Mike]

Get rid of about 15 million greenies and you might have a chance

[outlaw13]

Funny how i was thinking about the same thing. I asked the question below to someone through private message.

I was wondering what would need to be done to get something like prop 197 going again. Or if there is something that is like prop 197 right now what can i do to help. Any info you provide me will be greatly appreciated.

Prop 197 was to get a Mt. Lion season again and it falied to pass. I believe something like prop 197 needs a 4of5 vote i might be wrong about that but i know it takes more than a majority vote.

[outlaw13]

This was a helpfull reply that i recieved:

I looked up the Initiative Guide at http://www.sos.ca.gov. It tells you what it takes to get an initiative on the ballot. It is bureaucracy at its' best. It takes some major funds and organization, too bad no California sportsmens' group has had the balls or money to do it since 197.

The way i seen it was that it is going to take a lot more help than what a local hound group or the CHC would be able to provide. As was stated you would need a lot of money and i believe one hell of a media push with real facts not enviromentalist B.S.

I believe it would take at least 5 steady years of planning and fundraising before anyone could propose something like 197 and make it have any kind of chance whatsoever.

One major problem i see is that with the shear size of enviromentalist power and money in this state as soon as you were to bring something up the houndsmen of this state would be attacked in a big way by groups like; Mt. Lion foundation, Sierra club, wilderness society, Natural Resources defense counsil, and a whole lot more.

I fail to believe that trying to sneak something like 197 by will ever work. Someone is going to need a plan a big plan and a lot of luck.

If anyone has other ideas or any ideas at all please feel free to post.

[MidnightRun]

Thanks for the info; that was really informative and is a big help. Something has to be dobe about this. I'm still going to look into it. It may be a pipe dream but it has to start somewhere.

[Dale T]

Not only was the management of California Mountain lions taken out of the hands of Fish and Game but there is 30 million dollars a year of our tax dollars being spent in habitat restoration. Fish and Game hasn't even been able to do a proper study of the current population since 1994. they estimated then that we had between 4,000 and 6,000 lions in the state, and if you look at how many they estimate we have today it's 4,000 to 6,000 lions, how does this happen, for 18 years without a hunting season and the only population control is road kills and depredation the population hasn't changed B.S.

[TreeInc]

besides fish and game are more worried about trying to get people getting pigs on private land then worry about deer on public lands!!

[MidnightRun]

Clint:

After researching the Internet link you provided I am along the lines with you in that I don't have the resources and more importantly the money to get my own bill introduced with the now required 500,000 signatures to even put it on the ballot.

Could not a Ca. Assemblyman write a bill that could be voted on by voters if we were lucky enough to get it passed by the lower and upper house?

I think the only way environmentally friendly people might even remotely considered voting for the idea would be to state that the main purpose of this bill was to prevent some 15,000 or more from being eaten by cougars annually thus improving the deer birds to the point where you could actually see a deer during a trip to the mountains.

[MidnightRun]

Deer herds* - not deer birds.

[Rimrock]

Midnight,
Those that were instrumental in getting lion hunting banned couldn't care less about the 15,000 deer. Their mindset is that if the deer are decimented, there will be no more hunting. That is their ultimate goal.

[FullCryHounds]

I worked hard back in 90 to prevent 117 from passing. I couldn't believe the lies and bs that the other side used to get this passed. But it only passed by a margin of 52-48 percent. It actually was a very close vote. Everything written here so far is right on as far as being factual. The 30 million a year is true also.

Now, everyone, when I still lived there in the early 90's, we continued to hunt lions and you can too. Find a warden that will write you a depredation permit for the ranch you have permission to hunt. We had a permit every day we hunted for many years. Not all wardens will give you one but if you can find one that is on our side, then you can hunt them all year long. They won't write one for public land but we never had any problem finding ranches to hunt on. We ran hogs, bobcat bear and lion. There were a lot of places up around Paso Robles and also east in the Sierras that welcomed us. The hunting throughout CA was excellent and I'm sure it still is.

[Dale T]

You would think that with over $600,000,000.00 being spent of our tax dollars over the last 20 + years that would be enough to piss off every body thats out of work in this state to make changes.

[Benny G]

If you will recall the events that led up to the vote being put before the general public back in 1996, you will realize that there's no way that California will ever hunt lions for sport again. Remember the people that were killed and partially consumed by lions in 1994? How about the little boy that was atacked in the mall parking lot in Mission Viejo? His dad had to physically fight the lion for his son...also in 1994. Not only did the general population vote down the hunting of lions, but it's now a felony to even harass a lion. GOOD LUCK !!

[outlaw13]

Benny,

Stop being the pessimist. Usually when things are easy they are not worth trying for. I am not saying it is likely that something like 197 will be passed first try but i believe it is a step in the right direction for houndsmen. Anything that tries to allow houndsmen more opportunities to pursue is good in my book.

MidnightRun,

There are a lot of things about this that i am looking into right now. There is also a lot of other things i am doing at this time so it might take me a while. I am going to ask some people who i know are a good wealth of imformation and see if i can get you an answer to your question. Hopefully someone will look at this before then and already give the answer.

Rimrock,

You are correct in a sense. But at the same time i know there are non-hunting people out there that are starting to wonder why they had "all of those beautifull deer in there yard dissapear over the years", There words not mine. I politely remind them that it is more than likely due to a lack of predator management in the state.