I know there has been much discussion of late re: lions & shooting criteria, and I came across this article on TGT's website:

Known Age Lions

Just thought it would be interesting reading.

S,

Thank you I am reading all I can find...

Mike

TGT is acknowleging that their "success rate is currently very low." They only had four lions taken in 2005. They are hoping that the number of young lions seen this year bodes for improvement in the future.

I also know that TGT will not hunt a lion if the cubs he fathered is younger than 1 year old. The reason for that being, another male will take his place and kill the cubs to get the females in oesterus.

Very interesting. Not much discussion of how to judge age in the field, though, which is where it counts.

Thanks for posting this.

I thought a mature male's nose was all black and that's how you tell if he's reached maturity--not sure if it's true, but I have that info stored in my noggin for some reason--can anyone verify this tidbit of info---chris

Sorry, forgot the page with photos in the field.

aging lions in field photos

IIRC there was an article posted here or on another board that said if a males nose was more then half black it was a good bet it was of age to be taken. This characteristic does change with different area's. I think they were referring to Serengeti Lions where if the nose was 50% black they were generally 5 y.o. so taking a Lion with more then half a black nose would meet age requirements. I have the article on disc so if someone knows how to post it here I can send it to them.

You use a couple of things to determine the age of a Lion.
Body size
Colour of the nose, the blacker the older
Facial scratches
The mane. When looking from the front, a young Lions mane is in the centre of his head between the ears. As they age the mane becomes wider towards the ears. When the mane has passed the ears, IOW the mane covers the ears, he is usually old enough to be hunted.

While we must take into account that those pictures are from Serengeti lions which have superior mane genetics in most cases, I find very interesting the 4 and 5 year old lions. This represents the majority of lions seen in outfitters catalogues and web site galleries! What that actually means is that most of the lions being taken are under 6! If the Anti's get a hold of such articles, they just have to add 2 and 2 together and we will all be treated to world wide negative propaganda.

The time to do something about it is NOW!

mrlexma,
Judging age in the field is your PH's perogative! If he can't then that is a problem. And from what the pictures show, most can't - or don't care

Spring,
IMO success rate for 6 years and older lions are always going to be very low; under 40% as in the wild lions struggle to surpass 6-8 years of age. Then you have to ask : ok that lion looks over 6 but is he part of a pride with cubs? Are there any immature/sub-adult in the pride? In most cases the answer will be yes.

Thanks for the additional page, gotogirl3. Very, very interesting.

The younger lions pictured generally have exceptionally good manes. Having spent some time hunting and observing lions, I KNOW that those manes cannot be typical of younger lions. They must be due to strong genetics for good manes in the localized population of the study.

Moreover, I am virtually certain that many, if not the overwhelming majority, of PHs would say "Take him!" if most of those "too young" lions were in his client hunter's sights. After all, it is mainly mane that matters, to PHs and to clients, wrong though that may be.

I am in favor of taking only 6 year old plus lions. The evidence that such a policy is best is overwhelming, in my view.

But this report really does highlight the problem of implementing that policy: There is no truly reliable way to age a lion in the field. It's all guess work. Some educated guess work, to be sure--but still guess work. And a lot of uneducated guess work, which only exacerbates things. Those photographs of "too young" lions really emphasize that fact.

And as we know from aging lions using the teeth, Zambezi Valley lions have pink noses until they die of old age... What works in one area isn't good for all. The biggest lion I have ever shot wasa 5 year old mainless lion!

The "pink nose" theory was never a definitive theory and is out of date in that it was put forward as a "possible" way of determining age and was circulated publicly around 2003 i believe! The authors themselves will agree now in 2006 that that theory is not conclusive by any means.

This whole "ageing" issue is still in it's infant stage. Only a few male lions when seen in the wild can be confidently labeled as "over 6" and those are the real obvious ones! There is a very large "grey area" in ageing live 5-7 year old males to the nearest few months and that is the difficulty.

However, with the overwhelming evidence that shooting male lions 5 years or younger will negatively impact population dynamics one should actively endorse the statement "when in doubt do not shoot". All PH's and clients should try as much as possible to pass up when confronted with a "marginal" lion until research comes up with a more accurate ageing system.

mrlexma is right when he says the majority of ph's would allow a client to take the underage lions in the pictures. In defense of the ph's i would say that a certain % of them were not aware of the "6 year" theory and some of them might change their approach from now onwards. Others of course don't give a damn and will proceed to shoot every single male lion they come across that is over 2!

I for one, will try to "educate" ( )every chance i get.