I saw a recent news item in American Hunter describing an 80+ year old Rapid City woman's encounter with a mountain lion in her back yard. Her dog and the cat were in a noisy standoff, and she came out with a rifle and killed it.
The growing population of mountain lions in the Black Hills and increasing encounters like these lead to resumption of very limited mountain lion hunting there in the past year or so. I think the kill was capped at 5 or 6 cats.
My wife and I have a few acres of land in the southern hills west of Hot Springs that will probably be our retirement home. Our 35 lb. springers would make a nice lunch for a hungry cat, so I'm interested in mountain lion management there. Several years ago in March we found prominent cat spoor in the snow across our prospective homesite. We're encroaching, but they're also expanding their range.
