Belly Deep and BuzzH, I don't want to get into a whizzing match here with you because there's a pretty good chance you both know more about this than me.
First off, I know very little about lions, but I do know that after the rut, both buck and bulls split off from the herds and are feeding constantly to try and put some weight back on, so they are excellent targets for cats. If you watch some of Ryan Hatch's videos he walks all over the strip finding lion-killed GIANT bucks. Lions are really hard on them.
Second off, I'm not against cat hunting at all, but like I said in a previous post, most everyone who buys a hunting license of some sort buys a deer/elk tag. A small percentage buy lion tags, yet creating trophy lion units impacts our deer and elk herds in a negative way. A few trophy cat units would be fine by me, but to have them all over the western part of the state--just to provide opportunity for a small group of hunters--seems a little unfair to me.
Third, I'm not trying to rake you over the coals for this so, please don't read any animosity into my posts.
Fourth, I actually think the wolves are just as damaging. I'm not disputing the numbers Buzz put out, but think about this. A lion comes into an area where deer are in the winter and picks one off here and there. Wolves come in and chase the deer all over hell until they get one down. Then they do it the next day and the next. While they may only eat a certain number of them during a winter, I wonder how many they end up inadvertently killing by making the prey waste precious calories out running them? As it is, big game animals are barely hanging on by the time spring comes. Running them all over day after day has to have an impact. There would be no way to measure that, but wolves seem to be a much more intrusive predator.
