We have way to many mountain lions in the Black Hills of SD but not enough cougars. The state sells unlimited tags for the lions on a kill quota but none for nonresidents. They don't allow the use of dogs in the Hills except for some of the draw for tags in Custer State Parks but the cougars only hang around there from Memorial Day to Labor day and the lion season is in the winter. Sure I'll bet there are some cougars in the northern hills ski areas and gambling joints of Deadwood just prowl at night dress nice, use lots of money and be well endowed usually gets them. But the lions are harder to come by most are taken by calling electronic and mouth calls. The more successful guys don't just get lucky but do their damndest too locate individual lions and pattern the ranges of indiviuals after it snows. They get a pretty good idea how often the lions pass thru an area and try to be setup in that time frame.
A good friend of mine has a pack of dogs for coon hunting that has gotten experience on bear and in CSP on lions, he has more than a few buds who also run dogs. They all got smart bought non resident Wyo tags and waited for it to snow and it did from 11/7 on. Took their vacations and treed 9 lions in 9 days killing 7 of them. Some of these lions range overlapped into SD so we came up a winner on that deal for sure. Too many lions and antlerless deer tags sold in the Hills for the last 7-10 years have decimated our deer herd down to a 1/3 of the BH tags we used to have. Just like the bulls*t numbers on our pheasant pops the GFP allways says they need to study the lions more before being proactive in reducing their numbers significantly. Just like coyotes we need a 365 ,24/7 shoot on sight anywhere any time to get the cats under control. Probably won't happen till they get rid of the current GFP Secretary who is a big cat hugger.
Still plenty of cougars if you look in the right places with all the right prerequisites and physical abilities though. Magnum Man
