Killing Toms

[Mike Leonard]

This is a good post an I sure can't add anything but a little personal expereince.

I agree with Randy's finding on overlapping areas. I have treed three mature toms in one canyon before with a queen in heat in fact two toms and the female were in one tree and the other was treed about 100 yards away. Not one of these that we could tell by looking had a mark on them. that country was so scraped up in was unreal. Dick Ray well known lion outfitter and a man who has kep captive lions for many years has had the same thing happen to him. Now then I have found other lions killed by lions. In fact we found a 176 pound tom along side the road that had been killed by another lion, it appeared to be a terrible battle. But on the other hand at times they will gang up a bit around a hot female and not much fighting. The theroy that no mature tom will entire another tom's territory is striclty the theory of somebody that really hasn't been out there much but has read a lot of studies by other educated idiots and called it a fact.I have seen sub territories inside a dominant's large circle and not too much pressure happening. A recently collared large male was studied for a bit and the consensus was his territory was about 700 square miles. Now folks that is a lot of country to cover.

climax lion population in adequate to ideal envoirment is said to be one cougar for every 12-15 square miles. That is pretty thick if you ask me. When many of the dominant toms overlapping these areas are harvested approximatly on less mortality will occur in a given litter. Most but not all litters of kittens from mature female is three cub. Natural mortality which can range from sickenss predators or for the most part and biggest factor has shown that sibling rivalry ius the largest cause. It appears that the largest kitten usually a tom kitten will at some stage attack the smallest and weakest cub, and usually the other will pile on and that becomes their first kill. So we are down to two kitten many times a female and a male so we have a 50/50 deal going. Ok with maruading sattelite toms coming around we usually lose one more but sometimes both. Knock these toms out of the picture and the lion numbers go up, Until a dominant structure is reformed, and sometimes this can take a few years. Lion numbers go up. Ok no big toms around lets take the smaller ones or a big female makes a nice trophy on the wall as well. Start knocking all of them off you cross and you really add more water to the soup. Nature is never a stable thing and it changes with cycles. In the most remote wilderness areas that are seldom access or hunted you will find cougar numbers do not fultuate as much and you have a better study. However it will prove that many times these areas hold far fewer cougars in overall numbers than do the areas that hit the high and lows thru harvesting regularly.

It is not easy to count, manange or even study one of the most secritive and cryptic creatures alive.

I guess we could do like the deer bilogists do in this area to check deer density. The stand in one spot and throw some rings of different sizes over their shoulder. Not sure which shoulder. LOL! anyway then they go and count the number of deer fecal pellets inside each of these rings and that determines the areas density. How scientific! Wow ! that old sheephereder just scratched his head when he saw them down with their calculators buzzing in an area he had just moved about 300 sheep thru. LOL!

[thomas]

I think the only big impact I have seen to cat habits lately is the wolves entering an area and putting pressure on all wildlife, so the cats travel plans if they have any may be interupted until the wolves move on.

Good info though in this post

I agree with the analagy cats will be cats and all cats will change patterns as the enviroment changes.
Thats what is so cool about cats nobody can predict what they will do.
Watch what a lion will do with a big tin pie plate hung in a tree out on a ridge spinning in the breeze.
If they see it they can't ressist to take a closer look.

Thats why I'm such a cool cat

[bearcat]

Yea I've noticed the wolves affect the lions, if the wolves move in an area where the lions are and there's another area close that doesn't have wolves they usually move into it right away, but if there are wolves everywhere so the lions can't get away from them they seem to coexist alright. I've heard of lions becoming mean to dogs from coexisting with wolves but have never seen this personally.
talking about more than one tom being in the same area with a female. A guy killed a tom here locally about a week ago, the next day I turned loose on another tom that crossed the road within 10 feet of where he had turned loose on the one he killed the day before, I treed it, then came back the next day to try and tree it again with some pups, I couldn't find it but I found a female in the same area that I treed, and she only had a tail about a foot long. I was out this morning and treed the same stub-tailed female and she had fresh hook marks on her sides where a tom had grabbed her when he bred her.

[cecil j.]

Yea I've noticed the wolves affect the lions, if the wolves move in an area where the lions are and there's another area close that doesn't have wolves they usually move into it right away, but if there are wolves everywhere so the lions can't get away from them they seem to coexist alright. I've heard of lions becoming mean to dogs from coexisting with wolves but have never seen this personally.
talking about more than one tom being in the same area with a female. A guy killed a tom here locally about a week ago, the next day I turned loose on another tom that crossed the road within 10 feet of where he had turned loose on the one he killed the day before, I treed it, then came back the next day to try and tree it again with some pups, I couldn't find it but I found a female in the same area that I treed, and she only had a tail about a foot long. I was out this morning and treed the same stub-tailed female and she had fresh hook marks on her sides where a tom had grabbed her when he bred her.

There is alot of useable info in your above remarks and probaly each has lots of experience in time too bear it out, but just for currisioty sake I wounde if FIRE has been included into any of these studys and what part it adds to the fullness of any study and movements and dencity of different area ?Large acerage burns surely messes up the area that got burt-down snd surely changes the density of adjoining area not touched by he burns. I`ve been on large southern ca. fire kines and smoke jumpers and its very commen to cross and recrossed lion who like buck hurds if heavy falling snows wonder lost as a goose in it/ thus maybe a large percentage of big cats die in a 10,000 ac burn and higher acerage area fire !? Tell me something about that also I`d like too hear it.

[Mel White]

Tracker, mature males will and do kill there own on occasion. its been seen on most of the ongoing studies. now with the gps collars you can tell when and where the cats are and have been. so it takes the guess work out of many things. good post with some great replies.

[Yaak attack]

Mel, I know you have played an active part in clorring lion in Wa. But what about the lions that reside or visit the area that wear no collars. This is a piece of the puzzle we can't see. To pretend we can predict lion movement and behavior is sketchy at best. Sure cats will be cats but they still are less predictable than other wildlife due to there chaotic breeding cycles.

[Mel White]

yaak attack i agree with you on the possibilities of unmarked cats. i was just saying that toms will kill their own young. and if all parties involved having gps collars it can be and has been confirmed. i was just bringing that up from above in the post where he said he believed toms dont kill there own.

[Darvin Ecklund]

Great stuff! I got one for you- a couple years ago a buddy of mine and I were hunting and we treed a big old Tom with a radio collar on him. He was a great cat, so my buddy harvested him. Actually we thought the collared cat would be easier to handle getting back to the truck Anyway, we talked with the biologist when we returned the collar and he said this cat and a female had been collared sometime ago. The females collar had shown she was dead, so the biologist walked in to her. When they got to her, the Tom was next to her. The biologist told us that the Tom had killed this other collared female. Is there any studies out there that can describe big Toms killing adult females?

[tntoutfitting]

Yep we have an ongoing study in Alberta that is showing evidence of cannibalizim(sp), both of young and females (alone). GPS collars are allowing for some very detailed research.