Ok fellas I just have to respond to some of these comments. First of all I don't mean to offend anyone but common sense tells us that claims of the DNR releasing cougars or anything else to help control deer herds is pretty far fetched. We have had people saying this same thing here in Iowa for quite a few years and it is absolutely untrue. Just put a little thought into it, how many cougars would it take to make a dent in the deer population if you claim that killing deer for crop deprivation has no impact. Just a couple of facts, a cougar will usually feed on a kill until it is consumed before killing again. Most experts agree that a cougar will usually kill less than 1 deer per week and probably more closer to 1 every 2 weeks with other smaller game filling in the gaps. Cougars are also very territorial with a breeding pair claiming a home territory of between 25 and 50 square miles. Which means that the males will drive off any other males that come with in their area and the females do the same. So if you have 2 cats that will kill maybe 100 deer per year in 50 square miles how much population control can that represent?

billknepp you should also know that deer can not reduce a corn field to stubble over night. Deer do not eat corn stalks but only the ears and in many cases they don't even pull the ears from the stocks. They will just eat the kernels right off the cob and even leave the husk mostly in place. Deer also don't eat the small early corn shoots either because they don't digest them and in the spring of the year when these shoots are sprouting the deer are feeding on new alfalfa or clover and new succulent grass shoots. I can't speak to any over population of deer in Pa but I can speak on the subject here in Iowa. Because some people felt that we had a population problem we have for several years been over harvesting our doe population and as a result our deer harvest and the quality of our deer herd has declined drastically over the last 5 years. In 2005 we had about 350,000 hunters harvest 211,000 deer for a success ratio of about 60 per cent. In 2009 we had about 400,000 hunters harvest only about 136,000 deer for a success ratio of only a little over 30 per cent. Also of that 136,000 deer almost 70 percent were antler less deer, both does and button or shed bucks, so our trophy buck harvest has fallen even worse than the decline in the over all harvest. As the harvest continues to decline I believe that license sales will fall off as well causing a net lose of DNR revenue, which is already in very short supply.

As far as I am concerned and knowing many DNR people in Iowa and a few in Mo and Ill I don't believe that any Department of Natural Resources would ever introduce large predators like cougars, or coyotes, or bears, or wolves in order to control any game animal populations and purposely up set the ecosystem. I just got back from Yellowstone National Park and know that wolves were established there but only because they were almost completely gone, but not to control any game populations, and it was felt that that was an area sufficiently remote enough to have little or no impact on the general population in the United States. As a matter of fact I even got to see a large black wolf up in the Lamar Valley as a result of this effort to repatriate these wolves in the lower 48 states, so thank you to those people who helped make this possible.