Living here in Oregon and growing up hunting cougar with hounds. Cougar numbers have skyrocketed in the last ten years. Ever since the tree huggers in Portland and Eugene voted in the ban of hound dogs.

There is an article in this weeks Sunday paper how elk numbers are down here in Oregon and they can tie it directly to preditors, particularly the cougar.

Here is a link to the article if you would like to read it.
Local fishwrap article

Just four years ago while deer hunting my oldest son was with my brother-in-law in a stand and they turned around and saw a huge cat 40 yards away sneaking up on them. Luckily my brother-in-law had time to shoot and he did get it.

They say the cougar numbers are around 5000 but I am sure the numbers are much higher just in the last two weeks I know of two people who have seen cougars.One was on my Father-in-law's ranch in northeastern oregon they lost 3 calves to a cougar and a friend of mine has a friend who lives in the foothills of the Willamette Valley saw a cougar tracking a doe on his property. When I was a kid and we could still hunt with hounds we used to drive 6 hours from the Willamette Valley to La Grande to hunt cougars because there were so few of them west of the Cascades now they are common place.

Sorry to ramble on but this whole cougar thing is kind of my soap box and it really upsets me. I get really upset with the people who voted this stupid law into affect and they never ever get out of there concrete city and even get out and enjoy this beautiful state of ours. Most of them wouldn't even know what a cougar looks like, but if this keeps up they will someday when that cougar is killing there cats and dogs and maybe even them because the numbers are out of control.