Your right man, as I said, I used to guide for about 11 years, the flats was my stomping grounds since I was 13, and I gotta tell yah, when I saw more kats then mature bucks I knew I had to quite guiding.
I found a lion kill last season, a mature buck at that 150?s, what was left of his body was covered with tree limbs and stuff.
My nephew use tah trap on the flats back in the early 80's and he would trap a big cat bout one a week, couldn't hold 'em of course but they've been populating from Cali. Since they haven't hunted them since the 60's and needing more territory they migrated up here, its sad for me cause i remember seeing even elk on the flats in winter, no more of that either.
If I were to make a guess, I would say were bout @ 30% of what we had just 10 years ago, but I think with this selective logging and not clear cutting anymore has hurt ?em a bit also.
The timing seems to be right about when the tree huggers were crying about the spotted owl (which was another lie on their part, fruit growers proved that) ?
