Mountain Lion - Statistics
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Mountain Lion Hunting Statistics
Harvest Reports
Mountain lion harvest reports include information on the number of hunters, recreation days for all seasons, and the number of lions harvested.
Tooth Age Data
During mandatory checks Colorado Parks and Wildlife will extract and collect a small tooth located just behind either upper canine tooth. This tooth is sent to a lab for age determination. Mountain lion age data is provided online so hunters can look up the age of their harvested animal by seal number. This is the only way for hunters to find this information. For privacy reasons, hunter’s names are not posted. Lion age results for the prior year are typically posted by late July or early August.
The results also include some animals that died as road-kills and other forms of mortality. The age is reported as an age class. This means a 0 = cub or kitten, 0 to about 9 months old, 1 = about 10 to 18 months old, 2 = about 1.5 years to 2.5 years old, and so on.
About Harvesting Lions
All harvested lions and bobcats must be physically checked by trained CPW staff. These mandatory checks allow us to collect important biological and law enforcement data, as well as place a seal on each animal to make possession legal.
Annual statewide mountain lion harvest has averaged 505 lions in the most recent 3 years (‘20-’21, ‘21-’22, ‘22-’23).
There is no evidence to suggest statewide lion or bobcat populations are decreasing under current sustainable management. In fact, a number of current studies and projects underway on both species in Colorado suggests that the actual densities of both species are at, or above levels needed to maintain current population sizes. Limits on lion harvest, season length and harvest methods are all set to make sure Colorado’s lion and bobcat numbers are not decreasing.
The science on this is undecided. A few correlative studies claim to show a counter-intuitive increase in human-lion conflicts under high harvest scenarios. Very few places in Colorado have high harvest levels, but our human-lion incidents data doesn’t show more conflicts in areas of harvest.
In fact, some of our higher conflict areas (Glenwood/Roaring Fork, Durango, Front Range) have relatively low harvest. To answer this question, CPW Mammal’s Research is in the final 3 years of a decade-long study in the Arkansas River designed to look at human-lion conflicts under different hunter harvest levels. CPW recently examined the last 4 years of statewide lion harvest and human-lion conflict data by GMU and found no evidence that high harvest correlated with high human-conflict levels.
Lion hunting with hounds is far more selective of gender than other encounter methods employed in states that have banned hounds. Statewide annual harvest proportion of females in Colorado is generally at or under 40%, whereas in states that have banned hound hunting, it can approach 60%. This difference indicates that Colorado hound hunters are selecting to pursue or harvest female lions at a much lower rate than they are encountered in the population. Lions regularly evade hound pursuit, but if treed, this data comparison also shows that a significant proportion of lions are selectively not harvested and are allowed to escape.
CPW regularly considers methods of hunting such as population objectives, previous year’s harvest, equipment types, season length, based on the best available science.
Lion hunting with hounds is far more selective of gender than other encounter methods employed in states that have banned hounds. Statewide annual harvest proportion of females in Colorado is generally at or under 40%, whereas in states that have banned hound hunting, it can approach 60%. This difference indicates that Colorado hound hunters are selecting to pursue or harvest female lions at a much lower rate than they are encountered in the population. Lions regularly evade hound pursuit, but if treed, this data comparison also shows that a significant proportion of lions are selectively not harvested and are allowed to escape.
CPW regularly considers methods of hunting such as population objectives, previous year’s harvest, equipment types, season length, based on the best available science.