Mountain lion hunting bill advances

Despite Oklahoma having no permanent mountain lion population, SB 1073 would authorize the state's wildlife department to issue up to five hunting permits per year.

March 10, 2025‍

Oklahoma’s permanent breeding population of mountain lions is zero, but that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from advancing a bill that would reopen hunting season on mountain lions here.

The Oklahoma Senate Agriculture and Wildlife Committee passed Senate Bill 1073 along party lines on February 17, a measure that would authorize the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation to issue up to five special permits each year for certain species. The bill's author, Senator Casey Murdock, presented the bill as a vehicle to allow the recreational hunting of mountain lions, a practice that has been banned in Oklahoma since 1957 when ODWC listed the mountain lion as a game species with a closed season due to overhunting.

“I’ve been working on this for several years, and you get up to my district, we have a lot of mountain lions,” Murdock said, noting he wants to set up a lottery or raffle system for issuing the permits, the proceeds of which would go to an unspecified charity. Murdock admitted during questioning that under the bill’s current language, any funds raised by such a program would go to ODWC.

Does Oklahoma have mountain lions or not? According to ODWC’s webpage devoted to the species, “the short answer is yes, sometimes. But we have far fewer than rumors would lead you to believe.” The webpage goes on to say that “although mountain lions, sometimes called cougars, pumas, panthers, painters, or catamounts, were common in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the Plains prior to European settlement, they were eradicated during the 19th century.”

A 2021 article published by The Oklahoman quoted ODWC Senior Biologist Jerrod Davis saying, “They are not a viable local population. We haven’t recorded or had any evidence of sexually reproductive females or cubs in Oklahoma. We can’t really say that we have a reproductive established population here in Oklahoma.”

The state wildlife department keeps track of confirmed sightings of mountain lions, of which there have been eighty-one since 2002, ODWC Assistant Director Nels Rodefeld testified before the Senate Agriculture and Wildlife Committee during SB 1073’s presentation.

According to ODWC’s mountain lion webpage, the cats that are spotted are transient, migrating through Oklahoma from one region to another. “Missing from Oklahoma is the physical evidence that is left by a viable, breeding population of mountain lions,” the page states. “Biologists in Arkansas and Missouri have reached the same conclusion as we have after years of searching: they have documented wandering individuals, but no evidence yet of viable populations. The nearest populations are in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and South Dakota.”

Since 2002, thirteen mountain lions were legally killed in Oklahoma during depredation incidents, Rodefeld testified. State law changed in 2007 to allow mountain lions to be killed year-round when committing or about to commit depredation on any domesticated animal or when deemed an immediate safety hazard. In cases where the big cats are hunted for threatening people or livestock, the kill must be reported to a game warden and the carcass must be presented to ODWC for biological data collection before being released to the hunter, Rodefeld told committee members.

An ODWC spokesperson, Micah Holmes, said in an interview with Kirkpatrick Policy Group that, to his knowledge, the state wildlife department did not request this legislation. “We don’t take stances one way or the other on legislation. What we do is provide information,” Holmes said.

What doesn’t add up is, how can the State of Oklahoma justify hunting any mountain lions?

“Our general philosophy as an agency is we want to provide as much hunting opportunity as we can until it starts to hurt or harm our population,” Holmes told KPG.

Trophy hunting a cruel tourism industry

During the February 17 committee meeting, Senator David Bullard asked Murdock an unsettling question: “Would you be in agreement that the ability to come into Oklahoma and hunt something like a mountain lion would be a very large tourist opportunity for our state?”

“Yes, I would,” Murdock answered.

Freshman Senator Jonathan Wingard asked Murdock why he capped the number of permits at five in SB 1027’s language.

“I think as this hunt grows, and as the Department of Wildlife sees the ability to maybe add more permits, that we can add more permits,” Murdock said.

In neighboring Colorado, where it’s legal to hunt mountain lions during an established season, “wealthy trophy hunters hire commercial guides with packs of dogs trained to attack and tree a lion and shoot the animal off a tree limb,” says the website for Cats Aren’t Trophies, a nonprofit organization established to end the trophy hunting of mountain lions, bobcats, and lynx. “It’s a ‘guaranteed kill’ with the trophy hunter only paying the $8,000 after the kill.”

The methods commonly used to hound and tree mountain lions violates a foundational value of “fair chase” that guides the principles of many hunters and government hunting regulations, said Dan Ashe, former director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, when Coloradans were considering a ballot measure there last year to end the trophy hunting of mountain lions.

For the Oklahoma Senate Agriculture and Wildlife Committee to approve a bill that would generate revenue from the unethical and cruel hunting of mountain lions is unconscionable, Kirkpatrick Policy Group’s asserts.

SB 1073 is now available to be considered on the Senate floor. We urge Oklahomans to call or write the Senate’s majority floor leader, Senator Julie Daniels, and demand she refuse to allow SB 1073 to be heard.

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