MT’s Top Predator Revealed: The Livestock Killer You Never Expected

BUTTE, MT - If you had to guess what the number one livestock predatory killer is in Montana, what would you guess?

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Given that there are plenty of options to choose from, it might be a harder question to answer than one may think. The wolf is a fun, scary, and cute option to choose. The mountain lion also appears to be a good choice on paper, but they also have been known to have negligible effects on sheep and cattle populations. What about grizzly bears? Do they even kill livestock? No, no, I got it: coyotes. It's gotta be the coyote, right?

Well, having the time and interest to research these types of things (and having nerdy friends who craft and post interesting statistics in an easily digestible format on their Instagram stories), we found the surprising answer to our question above: What is the most deadly livestock predator in Montana?

Yes, that's right: the grizzly bears are, surprisingly, the deadliest livestock predator in Montana. Take a look at the handy graph below:

You read that right: grizzlies make up for almost half of the livestock losses across the past 5 years. Mountain lions take second and wolves take third. In fact, most grizzly conflicts occur in Glacier County and Madison County, mountain lion conflicts mostly occur all across the western region of Montana, and wolf conflicts occur most in Madison and Beaverhead counties.

Take a look at the final slide, which contains some interesting bits of data:

Man, grizzlies are really on a mission, aren't they?