46 Mountain Lions of the Black Hills
Game, Fish and Parks officials and Fred Lindzey, assistant leader of the Wyoming
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming, who had
much experience with the species, it was deci ded that we would attempt to capture
and radio- collar up to 10 individuals. Although still a small sample, at the time that
number represented 20–40% of the estimated population of lions in the region, a sig-
nificant proportion of the population.
We began our work in the southern Black Hills, because one of the trappers for the
South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks, Blair Waite, suggested that track
observations in the vicinity of Custer State Park were highest in that region. My first
gradu ate student on the proj ect, Dorothy (Fecske) Wells, went to Wyoming to train
with Chuck Anderson and his capture crew. Anderson was working on his PhD on
mountain lions in the Snowy Mountains and had much experience capturing the
species. Once the training was done, we hired a local houndsman who had experi-
ence with mountain lion chases in Montana. After our crew was assembled, we drove
roads after fresh snow, first focusing on the area around Custer State Park and Spring
Creek (north of the park), looking for tracks on which to release the hounds.
That first proj ect netted capture of 12 adult lions and 2 kittens (Fecske 2003), but
it also provided information that mountain lions might be greater in number than orig-
inally estimated and that they could be safely chased and treed using hounds within
the Black Hills region. The great abundance of large ponderosa pines likely improved
our success rate, because there were ample trees that lions could climb to evade the
hounds. Also, the fact that captured lions ranged in age from just over 1 year to about
8 years indicated that lions likely had been occupying the Black Hills longer than
expected and that there was a actively breeding population; nevertheless, the low
population size and the secretive nature of the species had allowed them to evade
notice by most locals and visitors to the Black Hills.
In addition to capturing mountain lions, we began necropsying mortalities docu-
mented in the Black Hills via our radio- collared sample and uncollared mortalities (car-
casses reported to South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks that had been hit by vehicles
or were found dead [Thompson 2009]). Deaths could and did result from natu ral
causes: for example, lions fell through the ice of lakes or impoundments in spring,
lions died from injuries sustained in fights between territorial males, one lion died
from electrocution (Thompson and Jenks 2007), and another one died from smoke in-
halation during the Jasper Fire (fig. 4.2; Fecske, Jenks, and Lindzey 2003). We were
surprised at the number of deaths documented that were due to illegal shooting, trap-
ping, and vehicles (human- caused mortality), which had not been documented in
unhunted populations (Thompson, Jenks, and Fecske 2014; table 4.1). Although our
sample size was low (12 lion carcasses), one other finding that was in ter est ing was that
most (more than 80%) of these lions showed evidence of interactions with porcupines
(Erethizon dorsatum). Some carcasses had quills embedded in the front shoulders or
around the facial area and neck of the carcass, while others had actually consumed