Mountain lion hunts would be ‘tourism opportunity,’ Oklahoma senator says of new bill

Mountain lion hunting has been banned in Oklahoma for nearly 70 years, but select hunters may have the big cats in their crosshairs again if a proposed bill passes — and it seems likely to.

Sen. Casey Murdock (R-Felt) is the driving force behind Senate Bill 1073, which would create a lottery system allowing up to five mountain lions to be hunted if a hunting season for the animals is created, the bill reads. Anyone wanting to bag a cougar in the state of Oklahoma would pay to be entered into a raffle or lottery controlled by the state Department of Wildlife Conservation for the chance to win one of the permits.

However, the bill doesn’t create a hunting season for mountain lions “but rather sets the framework for how participation would be determined if such a season were to be established,” Murdock’s office said in a statement to McClatchy News. It would be up to the state wildlife department to decide if it wants to allow cougars to be hunted.

The bill passed in the Senate by a wide margin on March 24, with 39 voting in favor and 7 against. It still needs to be voted on in the state House and then signed by the governor before it would become law.

“This is very sad news for those of us committed to the preservation and conservation of wildlife,” WildCareOklahoma, a wildlife rehab and refuge based in Noble, said in a Facebook post.

Murdock’s bill alludes to the possibility of funding charities with money gained from the permit raffle, but opponents say the legislation is intended to help tourism.

“You get up to my district, we have a lot of mountain lions,” Murdock said during a February committee hearing on the bill. Murdock’s district encompasses 10 counties in northwestern Oklahoma and the panhandle.

During the hearing, he agreed with a fellow senator that “the ability to come into Oklahoma and hunt something like a mountain lion would be a very large tourist opportunity for our state.”

Status of mountain lions in Oklahoma

While mountain lions were once native to Oklahoma, sightings grew rarer as the population was “eradicated” by years of hunting both the cats and their preferred food sources, namely deer, according to the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.

They’ve been illegal to hunt since 1957, though people are allowed to kill the cats in defense of themselves, pets and livestock if they are in danger of being attacked. However, such cases are few and far between, WildCareOklahoma says.

“Since 2002, only 13 mountain lions have been killed in alleged depredation incidents. There is no need to control the mountain lion population, and they aren’t a regular threat to people or livestock,” the group said.

WildCare says hunting cougars is generally “not sporting.”

“The common method used to hunt mountain lions is to use dogs to chase them up a tree, and then the hunter shoots it. That goes against the hunting principle of fair chase,” the organization said.

There have been 81 confirmed sightings of mountain lions in the state since 2002, ODWC data shows, though frequency has increased in recent years mostly on trail cameras.

Because there is no established breeding population in Oklahoma, mountain lions seen in the state are transient, meaning they’re just passing through, experts say.

This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Mountain lion hunts would be ‘tourism opportunity,’ Oklahoma senator says of new bill."