Protect mountain lions - vote NO on SB 1073

With no permanent breeding population here, mountain lions should not be hunted in Oklahoma

April 25, 2025

Kirkpatrick Policy Group urges the Oklahoma House of Representatives to vote NO on SB 1073.

SB 1073, now eligible for a floor vote in the Oklahoma House, would reintroduce mountain lion hunting to the state. If passed in its current form, the bill’s last legislative hurdle is approval by Governor Kevin Stitt, a lifelong hunter and angler.

We urge legislators to vote NO to protect mountain lions, which have no permanent breeding population in Oklahoma.

The bill co-authors, Senator Casey Murdock and Representative Carl Newton, said passage of the bill wouldn’t automatically allow for the open hunting of mountain lions. While that’s true, it’s not the whole truth.

What SB 1073 would do is authorize the Oklahoma Wildlife Commission to allow the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC), the state agency it oversees, to raffle up to five “special permits” each year for designated species, which includes species for which no open season currently exists, such as mountain lions. The permits may be co-branded in association with the governor, and ODWC may contract with nonprofit organizations or charitable causes to conduct the raffle.

Oklahoma law already allows the state wildlife commission to declare an open season on black bears, which it has, and mountain lions, which it has not. Since 1957, the ODWC has listed the mountain lion as a “game species with a closed season,” meaning it’s illegal to hunt them. According to ODWC’s website, mountain lions “were common in Oklahoma” before they were “eradicated during the nineteenth century.”

“The mountain lion is one of Oklahoma’s most elusive and discussed wildlife species,” the website says before posing an oft-asked question, “Do we have mountain lions here or not?”

“The answer is yes, sometimes. But we have far fewer than rumors would lead you to believe,” the website states. Since 2002, OWDC reports just eighty-one confirmed mountain lion sightings, including sightings last year in Creek and Osage counties. The occurrence is rare enough that OWDC has a link on its website to report a mountain lion sighting.

According to the Mountain Lion Foundation, there are likely less than 30,000 of the animals left living in the United States. “Many of those lions depend upon severely fragmented and degraded habitat, are in severe danger of over-hunting and road kill, are imperiled by intolerance of their presence on the landscape, and are so few and unconnected they are on the edge of genetic viability,” states the Mountain Lion Foundation’s website. “People are responsible for the death of more than 3,000 mountain lions in the U.S. each and every year.”

Despite this, mountain lions are extremely adaptable and would thrive if given protection and restored habitats which have been compromised due to human development, the Mountain Lion Foundation’s website says. “Mountain lions are a keystone species indispensable to ecological communities.”

The ODWC maintains there is no physical evidence that Oklahoma has a viable, breeding population of mountain lions. “In the areas of every documented population in the U.S., biologists are able to locate numerous tracks, prey kills, scrapes (made when lions scent-mark their territories), and photos, which are often available from the many motion-detecting game cameras that hunters use to monitor trails. Also, frequent mountain lion road-kills turn up, of all ages and of both sexes,” the ODWC website says, and scientists in Arkansas and Missouri say the same thing.

When mountain lions are spotted in Oklahoma, they’re typically transient young males who have not established their own hunting territory, OWDC says.

Oklahoma allows a mountain lion to be killed if it’s threatening people, livestock, or pets. During a committee meeting earlier this year, ODWC Assistant Director Nels Rodefeld testified that only thirteen mountain lions have been killed in depredation events since 2002.

More reasons to oppose SB 1073

According to scientific studies, mountain lions have been shown to selectively hunt deer infected with Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a neurological disease that affects the brains of deer, elk, moose, and other cervids. Mountain lions have also shown resistance to the disease after eating infected animals. ODWC monitors reports of CWD and works to slow its spread to “minimize the risk to Oklahoma’s wild deer, elk, and other susceptible cervids within our borders.”

Simply by not allowing any mountain lions to be hunted in Oklahoma, ODWC could help stop CWD from spreading in the state.

Mountain lions are elusive. They avoid humans if possible. In Colorado, where mountain lion hunting is legal, a cottage industry has sprung up around the concept of “trophy hunting.” During these unsporting hunts, mountain lions are chased up trees by dogs, allowing the hunters point-blank shots. This goes against the concept of “fair chase,” a term coined by the Boone and Crockett Club, a group formed in 1887 by influential sportsmen including Teddy Roosevelt to address “the rapid decline of big game populations on a national scale,” according to the Boone and Crockett Club’s website. “Fair chase defined the rules of engagement that elevated sportsmen to being highly respected members of the community, both for their skill as woodsman and providers, but also for their commitment to something greater than themselves.”

To summarize, we oppose SB 1073 because there simply aren’t enough mountain lions in Oklahoma to hunt even five per year. Mountain lions represent a keystone species signaling ecological health, and they hunt deer infected with Chronic Wasting Disease, which threatens Oklahoma’s deer population. The common method to hunt mountain lions is unethical and unsporting.

We urge the Oklahoma House of Representatives to vote NO on SB 1073.

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