OT...off topic...goes without saying, but might as well try to obey netiquette, eh?
My uncle is an old lion hunter.
This summer he told me that the period of bans on lion hunting awhile back resulted in dominant toms
surviving to rule their roosts for years, driving off all new tom-kits every year into new areas further
and further from the homelands. The dominant toms pushed the young toms into THE HUMAN SUBURBS. Disaster
results.
A dominant tom claims a hundred square miles of turf. He kills every tom-kit he breeds, every year, or
forces them off his territory. If there is an active predator above the tom, then the tom territory is
opened up every year or two. Big, old toms hog TONS of territory. LOTS of tom-kits (100 POUNDS AFTER ONE
YEAR!) can fit into the territory of an old tom. But the hunting ban let these guys live FOREVER in cat
years. Nothing replaced them. The kits were forced into small areas. They weren't hunted either. Lots of
(BIG) kits, all around people! --Trouble!
The problem was that Man is on the top of the food chain in terms of habitat but was not behaving as if
he was on top in terms of dominance and territory. You can't do one without the other without throwing
things off. If you're not going to hunt toms, then you can't live within 200 miles of them. Plain and
simple. Rule of nature. A few old toms occupy the first 100 miles, dozens of big young toms then crown
into the remaining 100 miles: trouble.
Solution: let the trophy hunters knock off a few old toms and the young ones have LOTS more elbow room.
Manage them in a way that fits critters that each need 20 miles.
If you let the Kings rule the roost, you have their big kits in your backyard.
Interesting stuff.
---
Jeff Potter
****
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