Board Gives Ok For First Pro-Guided Cougar Hunts

The Idaho Outfitters & Guides Licensing Board has given Jackson, Wyo., guide Ridge Taylor permission to be the first man to lead professional cougar hunts in Southeast Idaho.

They are allowing Taylor to guide two clients per season into Unit 73a and western Unit 73 to shoot the big cats. They are limiting him to BLM and state land, and expect him to only lead hunts in more remote portions of the units.

Unit 73a encompasses central Power and northern Oneida counties. Western Unit 73 spans southwest Bannock and central Oneida counties west of Interstate 15, and part of southeast Power County.

Taylor, an internationally known guide, is leading big game hunts in Tanzania until April and was not available for comment.

“We appreciate their consideration and are pleased to have this authorization,” Taylor’s wife Lisa said on hearing the news.

The decision comes a week after the Idaho Fish and Game Commission increased the allowable number of female cougars killed during 1997-98 in units 70, 71, 73 and 73a combined from the present limit of four cats to seven cats.

Unit 70 encompasses Pocatello and areas immediately south and west of the city. Unit 71 spans northwest Bannock and northeast Caribou counties.

The season will close in the four units after seven cats are killed.

Because two males typically are killed for every female killed, this means the harvest in the units will likely be 21 cats.

Biologists have no firm numbers on cats and commissioners declined to support a proposal to study how cougar and coyote are impacting deer south and west of Pocatello.

But commissioners increased the kill quota anyway, in response to recent opinions of area ranchers and deer hunters that an overpopulation of cougars are a big reason deer are not rebounding from the harsh winter die-off of 1992-93.