Golfer hit it on the head.

The fallicy that this country is run on the "majority" has been promoted in K-12 and post grad studies for far too long. They really need to teach classes not on theory but on the way it really works.

If you look at the case of I-713 you find that 54% of the populace voted to eliminate trapping in this state. Due mainly on the antics, support, and media hype from Lisa Wathne of the HSUS. 54% of the voters in WA said that trapping should be banned.... why?

Do any of you honestly believe that 54% of the citizens believe trapping is cruel? Do you think they believed this prior to the television campaign waged by the HSUS? Did you believe it was cruel prior to seeing that kitty in the trap? Did you honestly think your children were in danger of errant traps prior to the HSUS telling you they were (I am talking legally set traplines that are marked as required by law)? Do any of you know someone that was caught in a legally set trap that was marked with the trapline owners name, address, and telephone number? Do you know someone that knows someone that knows someone that was caught? I would venture that the answer would be "No."

So now we have people putting out illegal traps (yes there were some before but they were few and far between) that have no identification, no means of contacting the owner, no recourse to take in case the unspeakable happens.

This all happened because of the "majority" of this state? Ummm, NOPE! It happened because an animal rights group had practice doing this in other states and decided the west coast was the front line in this battle. This animal rights group is dedicated to the elimination of consumptive use sports in all fashion. This animal rights group was organized and made a spearhead movement based on rhetoric and sentiment to get the people to vote the issues based on what the last thing they heard was, not on scientific fact or statistical analysis. However, this animal rights group does not consist of 1/6 of WA population.

If you still believe that the misinformed and lied to 54% of the populace voted as the "majority" then I ask you this..... Would they have even voted on the ballot issue if the HSUS hadn't put on a media blitz? Better yet, would it have even made it to ballot if the HSUS hadn't pushed it?

I don't know about you, but when a national organization tells me what to do in my own state and lies to the citizens to ensure it is being done... I don't call it "majority" I call it time to stand and fight, to expose these people for the world to see.

I am not going to infer that the elimination of trapping had anything to do with the cougar sighting this thread was originally about. I will let you draw your own conclusion there. But in case you were wondering, there is no way that more tags can be filled and still be able to see more of these cats in the wild. Unless, just maybe, it seems to make a bit of sense, there is an increase in population. For whatever reason, the population of these cats has increased over the last few years and we have lost two viable means of hunting them (hounds and traps). But then again, let the numbers speak for themselves.... more cats now means more tags filled... logically this would mean the population is stabilizing or decreasing slightly with firearms hunting, but somehow we seem to be seeing more and more of them each year. Funny how all this started hitting the media after eliminating trapping and hounding... but they probably had little impact on cats to begin with (?). I'll let you reason it out for yourself.

Robert J.