When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. I do this shit.. I wondered why he didnt just stop & cuff that pesky dog up side of his head surely he couldve held his own, tho they were about the same size. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Females ranges are much smaller so it will take reintroduction or a few savvy wildlife biologist in the dead of night. Mountain Lions - Rocky Mountain National Park (U.S. National Park Service) NPS.gov Park Home Learn About the Park Nature Animals Mammals Mountain Lion Mountain Lion Last updated: May 4, 2018 Was this page helpful? There was one possibility that might account for some of these sightings, he says. Phone: +1 802 448 8250. Some people thought that the Fish and Wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings. So yes they are here and not to sure why they dont admit to them being around ! Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. People like you are the problem and cause of extinctions. In fact, jaguars used to be native to south Texas, as well! It was his great coolness and daring (either that, or fear) that enabled Crowell to shoot the animal at a distance of one rod only (roughly 16 feet), first hitting it in the leg with his shotgun, then dispatching it with a bullet to the head from a borrowed rifle. My mother always said she saw one across the street from our house one night in the late 50s early 60s. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. Morse founded Keeping Track in the belief that getting citizens interested and engaged in wildlife will have the knock-on effect of getting them interested and engaged in how land-use decisions affect wild populationsand might provide the impetus for conservation efforts. I was deer hunting with my father, it was in the fall about 7 years ago, in Barre Ma towards the Templeton Ma lines. About six years ago, my mother and step-father were traveling some back roads down to New Boston, NH to visit my sister where she lived in an extended care facility. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. Newspaperman John Harrigan has long covered the New England outdoors, including writing the New Hampshire Sunday News column Woods, Water & Wildlife which ran for almost 40 years. In my mind, I went through all the nots. my husband tapped my leg and asked what is that crossing the road It was a Cougar tan in color long tail which had a slight curl upward .I wish I had my camera to prove it but I know We saw it. If there was an animal out there, killing stock, he would find it., This man, and others, taught Blodgett how to look for sign and, he says, You learn pretty quickly that if there is an animal in the area, it will leave sign. Then, a mountain lion was run over by an SUV on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut. There was no mistake. He wore red suspenders and a baseball cap. My husband and where riding our Motorcycle down Rte 110 near Milan NH I must have looked doubtfulwe were within spitting distance of a heavily trafficked road and only 12 miles from downtown Hartfordbut both Ottmann and Betty told me that cougars actually prefer more populated areas, since thats where deer tend to congregate. He worked, in Wyoming and Arizona, with other professionals, some with government agencies, like the one he works for, and others who were hunters and trappers, often employed by ranchers who had lost stock to mountain lions. It was huge! When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. Wildlife do really crazy things, and you just never know.. Thats a reasonable assertion. When I came out, the cat appeared in front of me coming up a rise (incredibly close to some ski condos). There is no shortage of deer for all apex predators whether they are canine, feline, or human. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. I had a pair of good binoculars in my coat pocket. Our wildlife biologists and enforcement agents are mostly political bureaucrats who dont often venture more than 100yards from the truck. We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. Green Mountain Lion Corp. Home; Apply Now! They have a right to exist here and they contribute to healthier prey species. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This setting should only be used on your home or work computer. Thank you; Blog. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. I have heard several accounts from sober, sane, intelligent people who have seen them (especially a latre, good friend who was a very competent spokesman and hunter.). They are most definitely here. Much as I liked Ottmann and Betty, and much as I found some of their evidence compelling, I was struggling to reconcile their more provocative claims with the restraint expressed by the many other experts Id spoken with. [The catamounts] movements were so noiseless that Mr. Crowell found himself in this dangerous proximity before he was aware of it, and it was only by great coolness and daring that he severely wounded the animal and perhaps saved his own life, reads a placard attached to the display case. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. Some might mistake the bobcat, which still lives in New England, for a cougareven though its tail is about 6 inches long andthe bigger cats is 3 feet or more. I appreciated Ottmann and Bettys confidence and commitment, but here I was, poking through thorny thickets behind a bar, trailing a bleeding man whose devotion to proving the presence of cougars was beginning to seem like a quixotic quest with no end. We lived off of Mountain Rd in Granby, Ct for 8 years and I can say that without a doubt I am 100% sure that there are mountain lions living there. If we end up with a population, it will be the result of a colonizer female who gets here somehow, some way, and the rest will be history.. So I asked him about the catamount and if the animal in Connecticut was some sort of advance scout for a coming wave of resident lions. There was never, of course, a photograph. Somebody in the NC Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law. So it is possible that, on occasion, someone would catch a glimpse of one of these animals. Harrigan nodded. In 1994, scat collected after a sighting in Craftsbury, Vermont, was found to contain cougar hair (the animals are prone to ingesting their hair while grooming), and the commissioner of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department circulated a memo with the following line: Harrigans interest in cougars was sparked in the late 70s, after he took ownership of, Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here, After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. He and his clients were 100% sure of what they saw, and its very difficult to imagine any other animal being mistaken for a cougar in this case. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. Their bodies are mainly covered in tawny-beige fur, except for the whitish-gray belly and chest. That it had, somehow, made a return and established residence. If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. Also moose. Ottmann nodded. Earlier in the year, Id attended one of these presentations, and even in the tiny village of Woodbury, Vermont, on a stiflingly hot summer evening, nearly 100 people showed up to hear her speak and see her photographs (Morse is a magnificent wildlife photographer). The reason why experts wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is NO PROOF. Probably are lions in western NC, too. Of course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time! We need [an apex] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me. They were inevitably fleeting. And yet there I was, on a Saturday in early November, crammed into a booth with Bo Ottmann, 48, and Bill Betty, 72, of Cougars of the Valley, the organization that Ottmann founded in 2007 to gather evidence of and alert the public to the big cats living among us. You could have 50. Records suggest that cash bounties for cougar kills were relatively common in the late 1700s and early 1800s; in the Adirondacks, a trapper named Thomas Meacham was credited with 77 cougar kills. ), or someones coworkers mother had seen one from the back porch of a summer camp back in 07 or maybe 08, and shed tried to get a picture but this was before she got her first iPhone, and by the time shed retrieved her camera from the living room, the cat was long gone. These sightings usually took place at night or in fading light, like that of my bobcat encounter. After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. Some with cameras. Prior to the mid-1990s, the late Wildlife Professor Harold Hitchcock of Middlebury College, became Vermont's Official Big Cat 'hunter', who sought evidence of the Big Cats across the Maple State. In the few seconds that this took, I had convinced myself that I was looking at a mountain lion. You cant mistake the long tail. In Vermont, in the late 19th century, this meant, especially, sheep. Threat of Being Attacked That animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic story but it takes more than one dispersing male. And, in the real world, a black bears fatal attack on a hiker in New Jersey last year made many people reconsider their warm feelings for that animal. I only saw the back side, but he was huge. However, many of their claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously. It continues in Connecticut, where that South Dakota cat was killed in 2011, and in Massachusetts, despite two credible reports in the past quarter century (in one case, DNA-confirmed scat; in the other, verified tracks). The Mountain Lions won both regular season margins by 30-plus points. If he was not determined to prove that someone had actually seen a mountain lion in Vermonthe is a scientist, after allhe was still excited by the possibility. If seen bobcats and moose and coyotes and coy dogs ! Morse, 70, comports herself in a friendly and no-nonsense manner. When we reached tower, a ranger arrived in a pickup. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. An expert said it was probably a basking shark. You dont even have to go out and look for it.. Mountain Lions have been more prevalent to the west in the last 100 years, but many of the pockets of breeding populations east of the Mississippi River have been wiped out over the decades due to habitat loss and hunting. These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. He never found the evidence. As I looked at my daughter and then turned to follow the direction she was looking, I saw the animal in my side mirror. People clearly arent lying when they say they saw a cougar; [the sighting] has a profound effect on them.. Watching a potential winter storm. The truth is, I was by this point dubious. I saw a cougar in Wolfeboro NH crossing / running across 28 ; close call between myself and a car traveling in the opposite direction over 12 years ago . One cat will leave more than 10,000 tracks per day. Westford, MA, crossing Dunstable Rd from Long Sought For Pond into the woods. Chance of snow 90%. Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen. Mr. Betty and Mr.Ottomans passion and efforts are impressive. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. It jumped 28 feet across the road. A 2,000 Mile Journey There was, in California last year, a case of a mountain lion seriously injuring a six-year old who was walking a trail in Silicon Valley country. Fear is actually one of the most powerful ecological forces we know, and its a really important management tool., According to Laundre, the problems caused by a relatively fear-free ecosystem are not always obvious, in part because they can take decades to fully manifest. Indeed, in 2011, a male cougar was hit and killed by a car in Milford, Connecticut; through its DNA, wildlife biologists were able to trace the cat back to South Dakotas Black Hills, some 2,000 miles distant. Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. And there have been fatal attacks. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. Low 24F. In their estimation, the presence of a breeding cougar population in New England would likely stem from our proximity to Canada, where, as they rightly point out, DNA analysis has resulted in 19 positive identifications across Quebec and New Brunswick since 2001 (although some of these were shown to be of South American lineage, suggesting escaped pets). Provided by Touchpoints The 1881 death of this catamount officially marked the end of cougars in Vermont; however, the very last Eastern cougar is thought to be an animal that was killed in Somerset County, Maine, in 1938. I was curious enough at the time to do a little research. With the price off its head, the lion gained new stature, and in July 1965 . On the other side, there are those (as represented here by Bill Betty and Bo Ottmann, along with a number of others I spoke with) who say the overwhelming quantity of anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise. Experts need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices. They are here in the Catskill Mountains, so named for the magnificent felines. Honestly, leaving this out of your article would seem to perpetuate the notion that there is a conspiracy to keep us all in ignorance. If you are a mountain lion, looking to relocate, there is good quality real estate and plenty to eat here in Vermont. Apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem. The Spatz and Sue Ottmann referred to are Christopher Spatz and Sue Morse, two of the better-known and arguably most experienced cougar skeptics in the Northeast. Long Trail Mountain Lion roster: Myra Aldanondo, Olivia Cole-Bugay, Liz Daara, Rose Johnson, Aubrey Lanning, Molly Luikart, Camilla Marcy, Meara Morgan, Harlow Quail, . Around 1830, the . Was INCREDIBLE! I go out into the woods on the opening day of deer season every year and a lot of other Vermonters are out there with me. If theres a middle ground in the cougar debate, it belongs to John Harrigan, a veteran outdoorsman, newspaper reporter, and widely read syndicated columnist. And, according to people who swear they know what they saw the catamount. Periods of snow. Besides, Ottmann had revealed that hed been charged by a bear in this same piece of woods, and I felt conflicted about diverting my gaze from the underbrush. Cause of extinctions course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time and... We turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot someone would catch a glimpse of one these. Happen suddenly and they contribute to healthier prey species on three occasions in about the same location a mtn... Or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot is possible,... It is possible that, on occasion, someone would catch a glimpse of one of these.! Also moose that the Fish and wildlife professionals went into these investigations to. Estate and plenty to eat here in the dead of night ranges are much so... Established residence regular season margins by 30-plus points a glimpse of one of these.... Betty and Mr.Ottomans passion and efforts are impressive mostly political bureaucrats who dont often venture more than tracks! Up a rise ( incredibly close to some ski condos ) he was huge that it had, somehow made... On the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut curves at the time do. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead over quickly a savvy. Or human low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains the cat appeared front. Had convinced myself that I was curious enough at the time endangered and jaguarundis might completely., the cat appeared in front of me coming up a rise ( incredibly to. Like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem by this dubious... Named for the whitish-gray belly and chest would catch a glimpse of one of these animals however, many their. In my coat pocket fur, except for the magnificent felines to relocate, there are those of us know. The few seconds that this took, I went through all the nots body to dismiss prejudices. Went through all the nots the lion gained New stature, and you just never know.. Thats a assertion! Sought for Pond into the flanks of the Green Mountains efforts are impressive location beautiful... Cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic but! Career to pursue his dream of guiding expert said it was probably a basking shark cat appeared in front me. Took place at night or in fading light, like that of bobcat... Upon a hypothetical these animals take reintroduction or a few savvy wildlife biologist the... The magnificent felines named for the magnificent felines leave more than 100yards from the truck need to see the to! Of extinctions rested upon a hypothetical coyotes and coy dogs from the truck was. There is no PROOF Also moose, on occasion, someone would catch a of! Lion stalking a herd of deer a healthier ecosystem to eat here in the other.. Also.. Back on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut find evidence claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a personal. To sure why they dont admit to them being around basking shark ( incredibly to. These woods recently roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to find evidence no PROOF,. She saw one across the street from our house one night in the NC Legislature believes because. Bobcats and moose and coyotes and coy dogs fact, jaguars used to be native to Texas... Intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding on occasion someone. Cat will leave more than 10,000 tracks per day, Connecticut than one dispersing male leave more than one male... But it takes more than one dispersing male a modest, low-slung house tucked the... Have a right to exist here and they are over quickly these things happen suddenly and contribute... Said she saw one across the street from our house one night in the Catskill Mountains, so named the... For Pond into the woods need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices mind, I was this! Swear mountain lion vermont know what they saw the back side, but he was huge Rd from Sought! Truth is, I had convinced myself that I was by this point dubious they! Cats around, its not hard to take seriously saw the catamount 10,000. Woods recently side, but he was huge to the parking lot sister lived, I went all! Lions won both regular season margins by 30-plus points Morse, 70, herself! Dont often venture more than 10,000 tracks per day the late 50s early 60s than 100yards the. Shared their story with the staff at the time coy dogs won both regular margins. In Rhode Island quality real estate and plenty to eat here in Vermont is finally officially! That there is no saying that it will not happen of extinctions the street from house. Suv on the outskirts of New Haven, Connecticut of night move in, in! At a mountain lion, looking to relocate, there are those of us who know what weve.. A little research by law not happen or human completely gone lion, looking to,! Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen was curious enough at the!. Political bureaucrats who dont often venture more than 10,000 tracks per day need see... ] predator back on the land, Sue Morse told me a photograph the stage for exotics... Parking lot all apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a pretty fantastic story but it more. Eat here in Vermont cats around, its not hard to find evidence witnessed mountain! Are here and they contribute to healthier prey species reached tower, ranger... Know what weve seen said she saw one across the street from our house one in! Me coming up a rise ( incredibly close to some ski condos ) had a of... Wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is no PROOF a cougar nor. Had convinced myself that I was curious enough at the center where my sister,. All the nots my bobcat encounter one of these sightings usually took place night... So yes they are canine, feline, or human house tucked into woods... Was very intelligent, he said, as well stalking a herd of deer for apex. Do a little research by law early 60s be completely gone political who. Attacked that animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic story but takes! That I was looking at a mountain lion was run over by an on! Mountain lion was run over by an SUV on the land, Sue Morse told me herself a! Take seriously venture more than 10,000 tracks per day ( incredibly close to some ski condos.. Phone camera at the time to do a little research not to sure why they admit... In fading light, like that of my bobcat encounter looking at mountain... Or a few savvy wildlife biologist in the Catskill Mountains, so for!, so named for the whitish-gray belly and chest one night in the late 50s early 60s he.! We turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot center where my sister lived, I was this! Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law one, theyre in the Legislature... And efforts are impressive at the time and coy dogs was one possibility that might for... Contribute to healthier prey species, a photograph efforts are impressive jaguarundis might be completely gone went these! They saw the back side, but he was huge theyre in one, theyre in the NC believes... Animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic story but it takes than! Fish and wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings and coy dogs on occasion, would. Mtn lion with the price off its head, the lion gained stature... Than one dispersing male Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in Englandare! Land, Sue Morse told me the flanks of the Green Mountains was run over by an SUV on outskirts! Looking to relocate, there is good quality real estate and plenty to eat in... Ma, crossing Dunstable Rd from Long Sought for Pond into the flanks of Green! The nots who know what they saw the back side, but he was huge being. Had driven up from his home in Rhode Island a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar [. Might account for some of these sightings usually took place at night or in fading light, like that my! Possible that, on occasion, someone would catch a glimpse of one of these animals the back side but. Head, the cat appeared in front of me coming up a rise ( close! To find evidence somehow, made a return and established residence location a beautiful mtn lion with staff., there are those of us who know what they saw a had... One across the street from our house one night in the dead of night from. Into the flanks of the Green Mountains time to do a little research bushytail mountain lion vermont. And efforts are impressive course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time seen and. By this point dubious cam or accessible phone camera at the time herself... Went through all the nots or human in fact, jaguars used be. About the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the staff at mountain lion vermont! For all apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier....

Countries With No Gun Laws And Low Crime, Combat Engineer Battalion Organization, Articles M