If you are suggesting we raise the cougar population to the point that they keep deer levels down then we would be in for a LOT more cat attacks. Better to just raise the bag limit on deer.
Yeah, thats it, isn’t it?
Nature can be a see-saw or pendulum. Raise the number of cougars in an area where they really reduce the deer population (lowering deer-caused human injury and death) and at some point you will have more cougars than the deer population will support.
And once those cougars start going hungry, they’ll become a lot less picky about where their food comes from.
Wild predators may be good at population control, but they aren’t really good at game management.