Hunter Kills Cougar After Sheep Is Mauled

An 80-pound mountain lion was shot and killed in Trabuco Canyon with permission of the state Department of Fish and Game, officials said Tuesday.

The 2-year-old cougar was suspected of fatally mauling a sheep Saturday morning and was shot by a professional hunter that evening after the property owner was given a permit to shoot and kill the cat, said Steve Edinger, a regional chief for Fish and Game.

The permit was the second issued to an Orange County landowner in the last month and the third in two years, Edinger said.

A Modjeska Canyon woman was issued a permit in December after a Fish and Game warden determined that a mountain lion had killed one of her unrestrained goats. In that incident, the cat could not be found.

Edinger said a necropsy was being performed on the mountain lion killed Saturday to determine if it was the same animal that attacked the Trabuco Canyon sheep and the Modjeska Canyon goat.

The Trabuco Canyon incident occurred only a few miles from Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, which reopened Tuesday, some three weeks after a cougar killed one cyclist and mauled another.

Edinger said Saturday’s incident in Trabuco Canyon should not deter anyone from going to Whiting Ranch.

“We tell anybody who goes out into a wilderness area to have a healthy respect for nature,” he said. “I expect there will probably be more mountain lions around. If you remove one lion from an area, others will come in and inhabit that area.”

Last year, wardens issued 212 permits to hunt down problematic lions, and 122 were killed, most of them in rural Northern California.

State game wardens are required to issue permits to kill mountain lions if there is evidence that a cat is responsible for the loss of livestock.