Jeff Bectell on Predator Management

Welcome to the Cattlemen's Corner. I'm Brian Hale sitting in for the late Howard
Hale as we continue his legacy of speaking with Cattlemen and women from
around the globe. Jeff Bekdle who wrenches near Cardston, Alberta says that bears
are a problem and people need to find better solutions. Let's listen into the
conversation with David Woodruff and Jeff Bectell. 

When you wean how many do wean?

We run around 200 mother cows. How is your calving percentage? Depends on the
year I guess. Yeah like everybody I wish we had less death loss than we do but we probably are somewhere between three and eight percent on average somewhere in there most of the time over the whole season. 

Up there in that higher country predators can that be a problem to you? I don't have consistent problems but occasional problems. Yep and usually somebody in the neighborhood loses something to a grizzly bear every year but we don't all lose something all the time. Yeah how about cougars and they have a problem to you? On my place I mean that we don't have a whole lot of brush we've seen them once in a while but I we've not had any cougar problems. None of the neighbors have real cougar problems either once in a while something crazy happens. I think it's more of the the sheep guys that have a few more cougar problems. Oh yeah the cows have a tendency to school them a little bit maybe. Yeah it doesn't seem like there is vulnerable to cougars as the small stuff is. The now grizzly bear that's hard to talk jerky to. Yeah that's funny I don't know sometimes sometimes the cows will chase a bear out of the field and sometimes the bears will kill something so you don't know exactly what the difference is. 

Jeff Bechtel and our host David Woodruff that's it for today's Cattleman's Corner thanks again for listening in May God Bless. I'm Brian Hale.