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The 2025 mountain lion hunting season in Nebraska’s Niobrara Unit closed Jan. 2 after three mountain lions, one male and two females, were harvested on opening day.
Regulations require the Niobrara Unit to be closed once the annual harvest limit of four mountain lions — with a sublimit of 2 females — is reached.
Season 1 in the Pine Ridge and Wildcat Hills units continues through the end of February unless the harvest limit is met earlier, prompting the season to close. The harvest limit for the Pine Ridge is 12 mountain lions with a sublimit of six females and for the Wildcat Hills the limit is three mountain lions with a female sublimit of two.
One female mountain lion has been harvested in the Pine Ridge and none in the Wildcat Hills unit as of Jan. 2.
An auxiliary season would be March 15 -31 for any unit where the annual harvest limit or female sublimit is not reached during Season 1.
The limits for Nebraska’s three mountain lion hunting units were set to meet the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission’s objective to maintain resilient, healthy and socially acceptable mountain lion populations that are in balance with available habitat and other wildlife species over the long term.
The Niobrara Unit was added to the Pine Ridge Unit for mountain lion hunting for the first time for the 2024 season. The Niobrara Unit encompasses parts of Brown, Cherry, Keya Paha, Rock, Holt, Boyd and Sheridan counties.
This is the state’s eighth mountain lion harvest season; the first was in 2014.
Mountain lions are native to Nebraska but were extirpated from the state in the early 1900s. They moved back into the state from South Dakota, Wyoming and Colorado as populations of prey species increased. Mountain lion presence in Nebraska was confirmed in the early 1990s, and in 1995 the state legislature classified them as game animals.
Since then, the cats have established reproducing populations in Nebraska’s most rugged terrain: the Pine Ridge, Wildcat Hills and Niobrara Valley with occasional confirmed presence in other parts of the state.
For more information about mountain lions in Nebraska, visit OutdoorNebraska.gov and search for “Mountain Lions.”
