{"id":21025,"date":"2020-01-19T13:00:33","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T20:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=62595"},"modified":"2020-01-19T13:00:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T20:00:33","slug":"mountain-lion-hunting-expands-near-aspen-hope-is-to-lessen-conflicts-with-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/mountain-lion-hunting-expands-near-aspen-hope-is-to-lessen-conflicts-with-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain lion hunting expands near Aspen; hope is to lessen conflicts with humans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
A large female mountain stares down at hunters and the dogs that treed her. <\/strong>
Elizabeth Stewart-Severy\/Aspen Journalism<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When a mountain lion has been treed by hunting dogs, the animal looks distinctly catlike: powerful, annoyed and, yes, bored.<\/p>\n

Whit Whitaker and other winter sportsmen have hunted mountain lions in the Roaring Fork River valley for decades, but until this week, a small triangle of land above Aspen has been off limits.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Parks and Wildlife commission voted Wednesday to open the tract of land \u2014 officially called Game Management Unit 471 \u2014 for lion hunting. The change gives hunters more flexibility and range, and is designed to push the big cats away from town and reduce encounters with humans.<\/p>\n

Whitaker gets up at 4:30 a.m. on snowy mornings to look for mountain lions in fresh powder. Last Saturday, a friend and fellow hunter, Ron Christian, called Whitaker after he spotted promising tracks near Woody Creek.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m saying this is a 120-pound female,\u201d Whitaker said, laying three fingers inside pawprints found along the side of the road.<\/p>\n

This cold, gray morning is perfect for the hunting of mountain lions. Whitaker, Christian and another friend, Jay Sills, let their five hounds smell the prints and then set them loose to follow scent through the snow and scrub oak up a rocky drainage.<\/p>\n

The hunters followed, using GPS trackers on the dogs\u2019 collars. About 540 yards from the road, the movement stopped. The hounds forced a mountain lion to perch about 30 feet up a skinny aspen tree.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to like that tree,\u201d Whitaker said.<\/p>\n

QUOTA SYSTEM DICTATES HUNTING<\/p>\n

The dogs barked furiously around the base of the aspen, and Whitaker scooted under the branches for a closer look under the mountain lion\u2019s tail. Sure enough, it was a female, about 120 pounds. She was stretched across several branches, glaring down toward the dogs and humans.<\/p>\n

Once Whitaker confirmed the lion was a female, the hunters didn\u2019t even discuss the next step; it was understood they wouldn\u2019t be pulling out their guns.<\/p>\n

Females maintain the population and care for the young. They\u2019re smaller, and most hunters want the biggest male they can find. Also, mountain-lion hunting is based on a quota system. This game unit, 47, has a one-lion quota, so when someone kills a lion in here, the season is over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like chasing them, I like seeing them. I typically don\u2019t fill my tag,\u201d Whitaker said. \u201cThat\u2019s another reason why I don\u2019t like to shoot them \u2014 because I don\u2019t want to stop hunting. Even if you don\u2019t intend on harvesting them, you can\u2019t pursue lions in that unit once the quota is filled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Jay Sills, left, and Whit Whitaker, right, are local hunters who use dogs to pursue mountain lions. They determined that this lion was a female and did not kill her.
Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, Aspen Journalism<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

COMMISSION AIMS TO REDUCE CONFLICTS<\/p>\n

There are four hunting units (43, 47, 471 and 444) in the valley, but only three (43, 47 and 444) had allowed mountain-lion hunting. The season runs from mid-November to the end of March.<\/p>\n

Now, the Parks and Wildlife commission has voted to open the fourth unit (471) and allow more flexibility in the quota system.<\/p>\n

Next season, instead of each unit having an individual limit, three units \u2014 43, 47 and the newly opened 471 \u2014 will have a combined quota of up to seven lions.<\/p>\n

Officials say this could spread out hunting over more of the mountain lions\u2019 range and increase the harvest in areas where conflicts between humans and the predators are on the rise.<\/p>\n

Matt Yamashita, the area wildlife manager with Parks and Wildlife, said he\u2019s getting more calls about human encounters with lions close to town and homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these ones are being reported as not afraid or less afraid of humans, more tolerant of people \u2014 and that\u2019s a red flag for us as well as managers,\u201d Yamashita said.<\/p>\n

Mountain lions have a large range and follow their prey species \u2014 elk and deer \u2014 throughout the year. The newly opened unit, 471, is bounded by Castle Creek Road, Highway 82, and the Continental Divide \u2014 think Richmond Ridge toward the pass. Mountain lions there probably move in and out of adjacent hunting units \u2014 sometimes that just means crossing a road \u2014 as they track their prey.<\/p>\n

Yamashita said he\u2019s not expecting to see many mountain lions killed in unit 471 because of the high elevation, deep snow and limited access, especially in the winter, the season for lion hunting. Still, local hunter Christian said it\u2019s worth checking out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of mountain lions on 471, but I don\u2019t know if they stay there in the winter,\u201d Christian said.<\/p>\n

No one really knows that. Hunters haven\u2019t been allowed in there to scope it out, and it\u2019s difficult for biologists to get a handle on population estimates of stealthy, wide-ranging predators such as mountain lions.<\/p>\n

The most recent management plan for mountain lions in this area was completed in 2004. It estimated a total of about 300 lions in the Roaring Fork and Eagle river valleys. But hunters such as Whitaker, who has been hunting in the area for 20 years, say it\u2019s clear that the lion population is growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen more females and females with kittens or multiple kittens, which tells me it\u2019s a healthier population,\u201d Whitaker said. \u201cWe\u2019re finding lion tracks in areas where, in 20 years, I haven\u2019t seen lion tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

CPW officials say it\u2019s an agency priority to draft a new plan in 2020 that reflects the realities of mountain lion biology.<\/p>\n

via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A large female mountain stares down at hunters and the dogs that treed her. Elizabeth Stewart-Severy\/Aspen Journalism When a mountain lion has been treed by hunting dogs, the animal looks distinctly catlike: powerful, annoyed and, yes, bored. Whit Whitaker and other winter sportsmen have hunted mountain lions in the Roaring Fork River valley for decades, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 09:38:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}