There have been 14 serious mountain lion attacks in California, three of which ended in death, in the past 23 years.

The three people killed were Barbara Schoener, 40, a wife and mother of two children; Iris Kenna, 56, a high school counselor; and Mark Reynolds, 35, a bicycling enthusiast.

Among the injured were a 5-year-old girl who lost an eye and was partially paralyzed; Anne Hjelle, 30, a former U.S. Marine and physical fitness instructor; and Jim Hamm, 70, a retiree living in Humboldt County.

It’s amazing how folks can distort figures. In researching this column, I went to one animal rights Web site and read that in the past 114 years in California, there have been only 14 documented lion attacks in California.

When I dug a little deeper, I noted the names and ages of 14 people, and the dates when they were attacked, just since 1986.

It seems the animal rights Web site didn’t count Reynolds’ death because of some cockamamie theory that the healthy cyclist suddenly had a heart attack while biking — and coincidentally was eaten by a mountain lion. The same lion, as verified by DNA tests, attacked Hjelle a few hours later and left her in critical condition at a nearby hospital.

The Web site’s theory is that Reynolds might have had a heart attack, and we’ll never know, because the lion ate all the evidence. What a bunch of bull!

I’m particularly touched by the plight of the 5-year-old girl as well. Maybe that’s because I have a 5-year-old granddaughter, and I relate closely to her.

Ironically, when Schoener was killed and eaten by a female lion, authorities killed the animal as it attacked them and then found a lion cub nearby. A fund was set up at a local bank to care for the cub. At about the same time, a fund was opened to help Schoener’s two children. Guess what? The cub’s fund raised $20,000, while the motherless children’s fund only received about $6,000.

I love the outdoors, and I love wildlife and donate far more than I can afford to conservation, but is it possible that our priorities are mixed up? It seems as though we never do anything on a normal scale here in California. Maybe it’s the water.

For 121 years, we treated mountain lions as though they were vermin and tried to exterminate them, just like rats. We protected deer, bears and elk as valuable game animals with regulated hunting that maximized their numbers. Lions could be shot on sight 365 days a year, and the state even paid folks a bounty to kill them. That was stupid, and we drove them to the brink of extinction.

In 1972, we overreacted and voted in an initiative that was a 180-degree course change. Mountain lions are now completely protected, their numbers have exploded, and now they’re attacking people on a regular basis. I wouldn’t want one of my family members maimed or killed by a marauding lion.

It seems to me that now it’s time for California to take a reasonable middle ground and treat mountain lions as a valuable big-game animal that can be managed by professional game biologists using regulated hunting, which will help re-instill a natural fear of man into one of the world’s most efficient predators.

I believe we can have healthy lion populations and still allow limited hunting opportunities. Our children would be safer for it.

Until next week, Tight Lines.

• To comment on Tight Lines, forward messages to Sports Editor Ike Dodson at 239-6351, ext. 306, or e-mail ike@sunpost.net.