I don't know why they were surprised at more prey killed during the summer!

Cats like fresh meat, spoils faster in the summer, they kill more and more often. Duh! Maybe some G&F dept's will believe they mt. lions are killing more than they previously believed, such as elk in the Black Hills. And a good reason more and more sightings are occurring in Nebraska, more deer, more cats.

There was a guy/member on AR that was doing a cougar study on and near the Canadian border in Idaho a few years ago. I wonder how he is doing.


Mesilla Valley Sportsmen's Alliance *
http://www.mesillavalleysportsmen.com/Study finds mountain lions may be
eating more than previously
believed<http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/article_d9cf046b-2c47-539f-a267-972e72e570b6.html>
Mountain
lions, the largest members of the cat family in North America, may be
heartier eaters than some researchers originally estimated.

“One of the most interesting things we found was how much more prey they
kill in summer,” said Kyle Knopff, lead author of a three-year Canadian
mountain lion study that was recently published in the Journal of Wildlife
Management. “Just how focused they become on young of the year ungulates was
surprising.”

*GPS aids study*

Knopff is basing his conclusions on data collected from more than 1,500 kill
sites while tracking 54 cougars with GPS collars. The collars allowed the
University of Alberta researchers, including his wife Aliah, to move in
quickly after a kill to identify what was taken and by which lion.

In the journal article Knopff writes that some previous studies “may have
failed to identify higher kill rates for large carnivores in summer because
methods in those studies did not permit researchers to locate many neonates
or because sample size was too small.”

The use of GPS collars enabled Knopff and his colleagues to collect more
data. As a result, he found that mountain lions killed more deer, elk and
moose during the summer by focusing on juveniles and actually killed fewer
animals in winter. The information contradicts previous studies conducted in
Idaho.

“The Idaho estimates differed from our summer estimates by as much as 365
percent in terms of frequency of killing and 538 percent in terms of prey
biomass,” Knopff wrote. “Because kill rate fundamentally influences the
effect predators have on their prey, the discrepancy between studies
represents a substantial difference in the capacity for cougars to impact
ungulates.”

*Built to kill*

The study was conducted over 10 years in west-central Alberta, including the
Bow Valley, Jasper National Park, portions of Banff National Park and in
Clearwater County east of Banff. The terrain of the study area was a mixture
of lodgepole pine and spruce forests at elevations ranging from 2,500 to
9,300 feet. The mountain lions' prey included deer, elk, bighorn sheep,
coyotes, feral horses, beaver and porcupines.

Cougars aren't easy creatures to study. The secretive animals range widely
to hunt - 250 to 600 square miles for males, 60 to 125 square miles for
females.

Adult male cougars can weigh 140 to 165 pounds. One male cougar in Knopff's
study tipped the scales at 180 pounds and primarily fed on moose and feral
horses. Females typically weigh around 100 pounds. From nose to tail the big
cats can measure 6.5 to 10 feet long. The average lifespan for a male is 8
to 10 years, 12 to 14 for females.

Great leapers and sprinters, cougars kill by latching onto their prey with
their front claws and powerful forelegs and then biting the windpipe or
spine along the neck with their large canine teeth. For smaller prey, lions
may crush the animal's skull. On rare occasions lions have been known to
attack humans.

“Our kill rate estimates indicate that adult cougars are highly effective
predators, killing at rates at the upper end of those recorded for wolves in
both frequency and biomass,” Knopff wrote.

In one prey encounter they studied, Knopff said a cougar brought down a
feral horse less than 30 yards from where it attacked.

“I think our study showed they are very efficient predators,” he said.

Because of their adaptability, cougars are found from the Yukon to the Andes
of South America, a larger range than any other big mammal in the Americas.

*Study findings*

In studying cougar kill sites, the researchers publicized a couple of
interesting details. One is that that female mountain lions with kittens
kill more deer; the other is that adult male lions kill larger but fewer
animals.

“We had one male cougar kill 18 moose in less than a year,” Knopff said.

Based on the Canadian data, the cougars killed on average .8 ungulates
(mainly whitetail deer and moose) a week, an average of about 18 pounds a
day. That statistic varied widely, though, based on the individual - from a
low of .24 ungulates to a high of 1.38, or 18 to 41 pounds a day.

Those ungulates targeted tended to be young of the year or adults with
yearlings, largely because they were easier to subdue.

Deer made up more than 75 percent of the diet for adult female lions in
winter and summer. Adult males had a more varied diet, concentrating on
moose (36 percent) in the summer and deer (44 percent) in the winter. All
told, adult males targeted large ungulates for 62 percent of their diet.
Subadult lions also ate more deer than other species, but like human
teenagers they also varied their diet more opportunistically than adults.

On average, adult males killed an estimated 10,300 pounds of biomass
annually compared to 9,400 pounds killed by females with young kittens.

*Humans vs. cougars*

Aliah Knopff said her portion of the study focused more on cougar-human
interactions and the lion's habitat selection.

She said that as people have continued to build in more remote areas,
cougars have had to adapt.

“These are actually quite adaptable carnivores,” she said, from changing
their movements to become more nocturnal and avoid humans, to finding
undisturbed islands within development to live in - such as along pipelines
or well sites. The same can't be said for many other carnivores.

These more urban lions are mainly limited by human tolerance, she said. The
people in rural Alberta who were interviewed for the study valued cougars
highly, but not if they were killing pets or livestock.

“That's the challenge for cougar conservation when the backyard is becoming
more overlapping,” she said.


*Possible uses*

Lion hunting is allowed in many Western states, including Montana and
Wyoming. Hunters track and tree the big cats with hounds. Cougar kills are
carefully regulated by state wildlife agencies.

Knopff writes that the Canadian study could be used by game managers to
better calculate mountain lions' take of game animals and in turn reduce
lion numbers to benefit deer, elk and moose populations. For example,
hunting female cougars could reduce the number of deer taken in a specific
area.

But such management can also produce unpredictable outcomes, he added. A
lion population that is younger may lead to increased confrontations with
humans.

Don't forget that it is during the summer that the females have young. They need more and better food when lactating and then even more when the kits get older. Mama simply needs to kill more when she is raising young.

quote:

Originally posted by kudu56:
There was a guy/member on AR that was doing a cougar study on and near the Canadian border in Idaho a few years ago. I wonder how he is doing.

idaho vandal... i haven't seen him in a coons age.

Yup! That's him. I wonder how he is?

I wonder if the reason the researchers were surprised that the summer kill rates were higher than winter, is because in winter all animals must burn more calories.

Who knows? They didn't comment in this article as to why they were surprised to find greater summer numbers...would be interesting to know.

friar

Cougar prefer fresh meat, with the summer temperatures the meat spoils quickly. If their prey is abundant they will just make another kill and leave the remaining carcuss for the scavengers. In the winter snow conditions play a part in successful hunting. Noisey snow for example brings their success rate down, infact you will see more daytime hunting during this snow conditon. The cats will go back to old kills and eat the bones and hide during a bad hunting spell.