BigGameHoundsmen.com

FYI, the meeting dates I posted earlier have been postponed to later dates. i will post the new dates when I get them

Hey M. Leonard, you are truly in fine form today.lol.

Well Papa maybe it's from all that fence I been fixing today while my buddy up north of me is sending me photos of a lion he caught this morning. He is out running hounds and I am twisting wire, and setting posts, moving hay, hauling hay burners from one pasture to another and then there is always that dang water to contend with. so maybe I am in a little rare form today but at least I took a break here for a bit between loads.

I got a feeling if the creek don't rise and the Good Lord is willing I may be a little hard to find tomorrow. LOL!

Well, after cleaning dog pens...repairing dog boxes...checking out my slab headed mules...and now sitting in the recliner with a far away look in my eye dreaming about them critters I have chased across the arid wastelands of the southwest behind a pack of hounds that would make the Lee bros. turn green with envy...I am being made to realize that you actually have to do it before it counts! Downright dissapointin! Oh well, maybe the rain will stop and I can actually load the dogs before long. That could lead to more dissapointment.

Any hound hunter that exccepts there state raising quota or lengthen there kill seasons needs the head examined.....Fight them hard on it MIKE or new mex will have no lion just like utah and everybody needs to remember it takes 3 times longer for a bear population to come back then it does lion..

Interesting thought there Bplott. Yes it does take longer for bear to replenish than felids but then again felids are what this thread is about. Bear draw tremendous public approval while lions are dread and dark in the public eye. Cuddly little cubs ar adorable but they can cause more havoc than lions would dream of. I recently had a call from several friends who care take a great old historical cabin in the Carson. This Cabin has been lent to me for my base for lion hunting activities in the winter months. It is in a quiet cove with horse traps, windmill and even has generator and indoor plumbing. Very nice so many miles out in the bush. Recently several bear decided they liked it as well and totally destroyed the cabin. Yes destroyed to the point after 60 years it was bull dozed to the ground this weekend. They said they will build again and I am sure they will at great expense. Bear can be a pain in the butt. But when they get on a livestock kick look out. There cuddly little creatures can take a large steer or or heifer down no problem.

I can take you out tomorrow morning and before noon show you six or more different fresh bear tracks, but in the same zone I can't tell you we could go and ride a week and find a fresh lion track. Yet they are proposing raising the kill limit on lion in that area to 43 but still not allowing any regular bear harvest season in that area. Do you think they beleive we are stupid? No, they know we are stupid.

I hear ya mike i have never understood the dwr and there thinking...other then here in utah they get bought off by the SFW and give them what they want....So they plead the lions killed all the deer...when its obviously highway,coyotes and the over population of elk in this state...

Mike, you know what is going on in your unit and I can appreciate that. But In other units changes should be made. Raising the quota in zone C needs to happen (imo). It is over sized and does not have a lot of public land. It also has large tracts of private ranches that do not get hunted till most of the elk hunts are through. So what you get is a lot of lions being killed on the little public land, and smaller ranches that allow hunting. So last year when the quota was filled and there was still 28 lions left out of 53 something has to change. I would really like to see it get cut into smaller sections.

And as far as the bears go, we do not want a mass slaughter on them we just want to have a controlled population. So that when you go wake up in the morning and walk out to get the news paper you don't step in bear land minds. There are so many bears in towns anymore it is just ridiculous. They have been cutting our bear seasons down more and more ever year. And now we have to kill more bears in a shorter amount of time than we had 5 years ago. Maybe if we had longer seasons people might be more selective and kill more boars. I don't know, but we shouldn't bitch about raised quotas when there is more bears now than before.

I am fine with that Joe raise the quota in those areas you gave sound reasoning why. But they shouldn't raise them in areas where the population is in crisis. I could cite pages of reasons why but it wouldn't matter to anybody. New Mexico manages lions by the broad brush of the MATRIX SYSTEM and that is pure bull pucky!

Joe, i agree with you in having smaller units. Im not a big fan of the zone management scheme. I would like to see us go to the game management units. that way you could address localized populations and problem areas.

Mike, i agree with you that trying tp apply the results of a study that took place in the south part of the state to the whole state is not going to work well. The north and south parts of the state are just to different in habitats and i bet lion densities vary alot. They are working to get a good study in the north end of the state but wont have any good results for a couple of years.

Mike about what year or time frame did you notice the lion population in your area decreasing?

Big Mike,
Why don't you guys covince the commisioners to go right back to how things were just before our prize governor got into office and started worshiping the predators? The bears were being harvested, there weren't any more 93 year old women killed and eaten in thier own beds, the lions in the normaly dry areas were harrassed all year long, keeping thier heads low so as not to draw too much attention, and we were able to keep our dogs going a little easier. It just seems to me that there must be an awful lot of idiots and jackasses making the rules, since they go back and forth and back and forth. Maybe I'm just miffed because these things seem to get changed without any true and HONEST science.

Yeah the back and forth, back and forth is caused by the political pendelum.

If we can get the change of Governors im hoping for we got a good chance of getting some of the longer lion seasons back. I would like to see the southern zones stay open until the quotas fill. That would give us year round again.

The purposed changes have good science behind them (as good as we have) all we really did is change some harvest percentages and designated zones to decrease in populations.

First off kudos to Mike. Well put about the degree and such. Nothing more frustrating then watching some of these people walk around with a degree and think they are God almighty just becuase they went through four years of education. Two of which was spent on classed that have already been given. The true "biologists" are us hard hunters that spend alot of time in the field and have many many years of experience. We know what it takes to keep a population healthy and such. I have yet to see a Game and Fish in any state be top notch. Expecially here in Utah. There are many days that I wish I could go home to NM. All of you gents have mentioned some good stuff and the Game and Fish need to here the hard working people for once instead of these pencil pushers that call themselves politicians. Again well put Mike.

Big Mike,

You asked about the trends and timelines I have seen in GMU 2 & 7 of New Mexico. Here you go:

My 29 year reflection of the cougars in New Mexico GMU 2 & 7


I moved to New Mexico in March of 1980 so I did not actively hunt cougars here until the 1981 season. Coming to New Mexico I already had a pack of hound and had been actively training and following my hounds for 10 years in several other western states. Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah.

I must admit my hounds at that time were not the best in quality or performance yet with the abundance of cougar sign I found in this area I was still able to tree 15-20 lions annually with many escaping never being caught.

On thru the mid to late 1980’s we found abundant sign and seldom had to hunt more than a day or two to find a trail to work our hounds on. During this time several Outfitters were active in the area. Dick Ray from Pagosa Springs and Cecil Ralston from Bernalillo, NM were often seen. They harvested numerous record book tom lions during this time and those records began to draw the attention of other start up outfitters and clients on these areas. Younger Outfitters followed their lead and the Outfitters and Guides of Robert Seeds of Espanola and Mike Archuleta of the Los Alamos area became more prevalent. As the early 90’s rolled on the coal bed methane natural gas drilling boom hit and the forest area was slammed with increased industry activity and hundreds of new access roads were cut into the landscape. This made things ideal for the outfitters when they fresh snows hit they had their trucks rolling. Not to criticize these Outfitters for they were business men who took things a step farther than their older counterparts had done. They knew if they had five pickup trucks out running the roads on fresh snow their chances of cutting a fresh snow lion track were just that many times better.

Well as the dominant tom lions were harvested out of the area we saw a bit of what some might say a population increase of younger aged and sub adult lions for a short period. This was as a result of the older toms that cause a lot of kitten mortality being wiped out. Soon however with the larger trophy lions thinned out the Outfitters had to turn to smaller, younger aged or even female lions to satisfy their clients and stay in business. The many access roads made client hunting ideal for even the overweight out of shape client could be driven around and usually brought to a place where he could make it to the treed lion and dispatch it to claim his trophy. In the mid to late 90’s lion population seemed to dip as many of the weekend warrior hunters decided that they could wait no longer for a trophy sized lion and they better kill the first one they tree or the Outfitter coming down the road would seize the opportunity and the lion would be gone. This created a type of competitive nature to the road hunters in this area and you would see trucks fueling up with dog boxes in the evening to drive all night long cutting roads to find a lion track before somebody else found it.

I lost interest in the racing and killing aspects of the sport and no longer would I even spend time in the prime lion habitat areas during the snow seasons. I would head into the lower country where there were no roads, or no vehicle access and go horseback or even on foot and work my dogs. Lions were scarce in these areas as game was also scarce but at least I found solitude without having to compete like a NASCAR race for a track. Although I did capture some truly huge lions in these remote areas training opportunities were slim and it took many days and hours in the saddle to even find an old track to train the young hounds on. I can say with all honesty however in all the years I have spent out there on my horse with my hounds in the dry country I have NEVER ran into another lion hunter on a horse or mule hunting the traditional way. From the early 2000’s to today they lion population has continues to dwindle as each year the breeding population and what few females make it there are harvested on the first few good snow covers in the higher country. This is a double edged sword because most of these females either have kittens totally dependant on them or sub-adults who have not fully developed their killing and survival techniques and these will usually find themselves drifting into urban areas or rural areas with livestock and causing problems and sending up the alarm. WE HAVE TOO MANY LIONS!

Very well stated Mike, this is a trend that is occurring across most western states other than those that have put an end to lion hunting with hounds altogether and that in it’s self has it’s own set of problems as you are well aware of. How have the deer and elk herds responded to the decreased number of lion? As I believe predator management is a great tool and a sound biological aid in recovering our big game populations but, in the big picture only a Band-Aid and a short term fix for a much bigger problem. 100 years of fire suppression has led to undesirable feed conditions for our deer couple that with reduced timber harvest on our public lands as well limited grazing and you have a recipe for our failing big game herds. I guess the question is what can we do about it? There are all kinds of watch dog groups out there with good intentions as miss directed as they are that put the pressure on the powers at hand that lead to more and more of our liberty being taken away with out really doing anything to address the real problem. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be as active as one can be when decision are being made on our big game species we do have a voice we just have to use it in numbers large enough for people to listen. We as hounds men can not be just concerned about our sport, because what happens to prey species will ultimately affect our opportunity to harvest that once in a life time tom. Well I have stood on my soap box long enough.

sourdough