New Mexico Game Commission Amending lion and bear quotas

[Mike Leonard]

Back in the 1960 and 70" Sourdough these units boasted some of the best mule deer hunting in the west. Elk were not very plentiful and wild horse herds had been kept at a managable numbers. As we pressed into the 80" and 90" the industry boomed in the area, fire suppression and over all drough conditions resulted in a dwinding deeh herd. Mush the tren all over the west but who easier to blame than the coyote and the lion. However you caould pull up on many well site locations in those days and find carcasses off in the brush from poached animals. The elk were ncouraged and elk numbers jumped during this period but deer numbers remained low. Lions being driven to the larger species by neccessity began to raise generations of elk killers and that trend is still active today in the few lions left. However elk numbers have really dropped of in the past few years. Drought, and over grazing by cattle and un-checked rampant wild horses has trashed the range. Still easy to blame the predators but in fact it has been a combination of weather and industry factors as well as the constant of rather poor manangment that has caused theelk to fall off. The deer have seen a little revival in some areas but this is more due to better quality deer mgt. for trophy hunts and also the cyclic nature of things but the good old days of the mule deer will never return to the west.

Another point that has often been touted concerning the cougars in these game Mgt. Units is the idea that tons of lions migrate in from the north when the deer migrate south with winter. A but it is very limited. The San Juan River to the North and the Navajo Resivour make up boundries that are sided to the north by the Southern Ute Indian Reservation and to the east by the Jicarilla Apache Reservation.The exposure or migration path from the So. Ute. is very small and the heaviliy hunted areas of Caracus Mesa to the east and Arkansas Loop and Cox Canyon to the west are pounded out quickly. As for the Jicarilla migrants there is much broader areas of contact but the Jicrailla Tribe manages for trophy mule deer and elk hunts with high prioce tags so they have encouraged lion hunting as another cash cow. In recent years Jicarilla Apache lion hunters have begun to thin out the cats that might have migrated over to a great degree. So you can pretty much throw this baby out with the bathwater as another argument for raising quotas in these units.



IT IS HERE THAT, IN SEEKING THE DEMISE OF PREDATORS, THE DEER OR ELK HUNTER HAS MISSED THE POINT. HE TRIED TO FIND WAYS TO MAKE HIS HUNTING EASY. HE HAS APPLIED A MECHANISTIC APPROACH OF HIS SOCIETY TO HIS SYMBOL OF INDEPENDANCE FROM IT AND HAS ASKED, ONCE MORE THAT SOCIETY VIA PREDATOR CONTROL MAKE THINGS EASY FOR HIM. IN SO DOING HE IS SUBVERTING HIS WHOLE PURPOSE FOR BEING AFIELD......Quote: Harley Shaw from ( Soul Among Lions ).

[pegleg]

a education of any credible type is always worth the effort to get it. people as a species have advanced as far and fast as they have because of the ability to learn from other individuals not just from their own experiences. if your experience with dam building shows that timber dams last twenty times as long as concrete and holds more psi even though everyone else has seen and experienced different results does that make you right? not hardly. science is built on these principles something must be proven in a real scenario and on top of that it must be repeatable using the same formula.
this also applies to game management or animal husbandry. what happened in the grand canyon area when our forefathers removed all the lions to protect the deer herds? the deer over populated and ate everything available until they starved themselves. this turned out to be more disastrous for the sport species then the lions. this isn't the only example of the negative effects of imbalance.
this shows while the people making the game harvest decisions in new mexico might be holding a diploma they aren't using even the first years worth of purchased knowledge to make their decisions. predator populations are generally the hardest to manage correctly. We know that unchecked they cause game density cycles to become very pronounced resulting in extreme highs and lows. this cycling also increases the occasional predator human conflicts in the time right after prey falls and peak predator numbers. when prey numbers hit a high before the predators numbers cycle up also people complain of damage and conflict caused by prey species.
so management requires a large staff of educated, intelligent and fair people. which isn't likely to happen as many of the new biologist are finding themselves on one side of the debate or the other and the more polarized they become. the more likely it is that the uneven numbers favoring one group or the other will have pronounced negative impacts on management decisions. smaller game management units lessen the overall impact of piss poor decisions of one persuasion or another by giving the game numbers a chance to even out by using a properly controlled neighboring area. my experience is extremes are just that!! and lead to extreme results. i spent the time writing this so even if some points are the same as mikes or not i'm still posting it.

[Conejos]

Mike I would have to agree with you on most of your points. I think as far as the mule deer go everyone including biologist are beginning to see the effect of booming elk herds on the deer population but don't think the dow is going to give up their cash cow anytime soon its much easier to blame the lions. I think most houndsmen would much much rather see a pursuit season than an increased kill quota. JMO

[Mike Leonard]

You are correct on the elk having some impact on the deer, but the argumanet will remain that elk are graisers and deer are browsers,

As far as a pursuit season goes yes most hound guys would love it but it will never happen in this state. The enforcement division is so strapped right now that the very thought of having wild and crazy guys with dogs out in the woods all thru the years gives them chills. It is assumed that just about every lion and bear hunter carries a high powered rifle unders his seat and poaches deer and elk. We know this is largley not true but a few A-Holes have sure set the tone for the rest of us.The only way it would happen is for the state to reclass lions once again as predator/varmints and open year round season on them like coyotes.

I use to think this would be a bad idea but the more I look at it I think taking the trophy big game status away from the lion would probably cause them to lose the glamour to the clients and the guys that snow hunt only would still only go when it was right and the bare ground guys would have some more opportunities to train and work their dogs. Texas is this way and it seems to work for them. Yes I know they are largely private land but it might work even better on public land.


Back in the days when they were classified this way in the state there were very few lion outfitters around and the bulk of the lions taken were by ranchers where stock losses were prevalent. At one time just about every larger ranch in southwest New Mexico had a pack of hounds, to protect their investments.

[Big Mike]

Back to an unprotected predator? interesting thought and not so unrealistic as one might think. If we get a republian gov ive heard rumblings of this, never know what might happen. Wouldnt help the lion pop in your area but a guy could hunt alot.

Deer and elk are cash cows so they will get more importance put on then than the longtails.

Mike I dont think lion hunting will ever go back to the way you remember it. Jim Bobb tells me the same kind of senarios here.

Mt take on it is in the 80-90's was what I call they HAY DAY of lion hunting. Lion pops were on the rise because of becoming regulated game animals with protection. Not too many guys out hunting lions and the outfitting industry hadnt exploded into the big business of today and the better electronic gizmo's we have has made the game easy attracting more folks. I started in 90 and i saw the change start to take place. I could drive around in the snow and rarely see another hunter. Today i run into guys dry grounding 5 miles in a wilderness.

Like our deer herd circumstances have changed where what produced that great hunting will probably never be relived. Huntn still not to bad though

[Big Mike]

Proposed quota changes are now up on NM game and Fish website. On the home page on the leftside it will say Attention proposals for commision consideration. Click on that it will take you to group C, the bear and lion matrix's and justifications.

Ruidoso public meeting in scheduled for Aug 3. There is another public meeting scheduled for Aug 2 in Roswell or Carlsbad

[Big Mike]

Also proposing Spring bear seasons in April.

[Big Mike]

Carlsbad meeting is Aug 2nd at BLM office at 5:30pm
Roswell meeting is Aug 5th 5:30pm at Game and Fish Office
Ruidoso meeting is Aug 3rd at Forset Service Fire building at 5:30

Other meeting will be held in each are of the state call your local office to find out.
The anti's have started raising cain about this so make sure you show your support

[KLS]

You guys don't know how good you have it!
Our fish And Game is ran by anti's and it's just a matter of time
before they will shut us down.We have way too many lions over
here,Wish we could hunt them but we will never get the season back.
The F&G are scared of the anti's so every time they want to make changes they back down because there scared of beging sued by peta or the mountain lion huggers.If a Lion kills a hiker or mountain biker here they shut the area down and kick the people out.
I am shocked that we can still hunt Bear even though our population is one of the largest in the country.
I wish we could send you guy's some of our cats and maybe Utah as well, IMO you guy's need to work together and stop the fighting nobody wants to kill everything they catch and if you do then your not a true hunter but a killer and they make us all look bad.
United we Bargain,Divided we Beg!!
I hope real soon to move out of here and i really like N.M.
been there twice, last month around Sante Fe before that so N.M
Hopefully you can talk some sense into your G&F before it's too late like here!

[Mike Leonard]

Meetings in Estancia and Farmington tonight at 6:30.



Conejos sorry I missed yesterday the meeting was last night in TA.

Civic Center in Farmington and Administative Bldg at 205 9th. St. In Estancia.

[razorrb]

Ya know before my great grandpa passed away last year of 93 years of age I had the pleasure of hearing the hunting stories that he told. He told me countless stories of the deer population booming when he was young and later on in the years. He said as the years went on that there were more and more and more elk. By the time he quite hunting due to loosing his sight (not completly) he said that the deer were disappearing. He had showed me pictures of the deer they used to kill around Taos and such. I can't speak for the rest of the state but I am really positive that elk have just about moved out the mule deer in that area. When I hunted it in high school and stuff it was rare to see one deer, one deer whether it would be a doe or buck out while we were hunting but we did see alot more elk. I believe that there is a "healthy" population of lions in the Taos area. It just kind of chaps my ass to hear that they want to talk about changing regs and stuff for lions and bears when its obvious that the deer need attention around there. Again I can not speak for the rest of the state but I am sure there is something else that can be done to help balance things out. I am not really saying that I am against what they want to do just don't agree on some of thier points. I think of I was told right in the Kaibab there used to be a big population of elk in that unit and once he game and fish saw that it was hindering the deer populations they just about erraticated the heard. I was told that there are only just a few elk left in the kaibab. If this is true I wonder what it would take to bring back the deer herd to a "healthy" population. I realize that we can not have the quality of bucks like the kaibab, however the new state record came from unit 53 last year!!!! Again those deer in there are sparse and I don't like it.

[cessna152]

Mike,
I attended last nights meeting at the Civic Center. Thank you for bring up the questionable quota increase for 2-7. I felt you made some very valid points. I found the reasoning behind such an increase somewhat lacking. Anyway, well done.