Low 24F. Responding to complaints about a predator eating a local farmers sheep, Crowell and a small group of fellow hunters had tracked the big cat through the snow. In Vermont, the last known mountain lion was shot near Barnard in 1881, ending an era when the predators were such a nuisance that the state offered a $20 bounty per pelt. We have a lot of them here in N CA. In the 37 years Ive been working, things have changed in ways Id never have predicted. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. I was tracking some deer tracks and I came to a promising deer run with a lot of deer scat on the ground when I noticed a cat track amongst the sign. The mountain lion is also known as cougar, panther, or puma. 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. Several years ago, I was bicycling with a buddy up Quabbin Reservoirs Administration Rd. I knew it was a cat track because the tracks were in a straight line and no signs of claws like you would see with a coyote track. He never found the evidence. He was a dark butterscotch color, very tall and lanky (taller and thinner than a really big German Shepard) and that tail. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. Anyway I got to see that set of eyes way closer than I ever wanted, by the time my hand got on my pistol she was gone. Can they really all be cases of false identification? Its distinctive featurethe one that sets it apart from other North American wild catsis its tail, which is thick and often as long as its body. You dont even have to go out and look for it.. However, many of their claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously. Ive never forgotten that and told it to many folks over the years, most of whom, I must say, thought I was hallucinating I guess but, it/he/she was a fact in Longmeadow, MA that summer long ago. 104 Williston, VT 05495. Bearded, bowler hat, expression impenetrable behind facial hair and the stoicism of an earlier era. In the first, there are those such as myself, whove maybe heard a few second- or third- or fourth-hand stories as well as official denials from state agencies or professional biologists, and therefore find themselves betwixt and between, neither believing nor disbelieving. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. Local game officials are saying that this is another one of those sightings where people claim to have seen a mountain lion. If these animals are not in the habitat, what we see is an overabundance of herbivores., The ecologist John Laundre, who has spent 35 years studying cougars, concurs. My daughter and I were driving north in West Granby, near the Simsbury, Ct. line just after lunch one summer day a few years ago. This much was certain: it was a wild mountain lion and it was in an area where one had not been seen for more than 100 years. Recall a few years back, a guy in a kayak off Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA, was tracked by a large fin. If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. But examination of the carcass raised suspicions. If theres a middle ground in the cougar debate, it belongs to John Harrigan, a veteran outdoorsman, newspaper reporter, and widely read syndicated columnist. 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. I had been the first vehicle in a line held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction. Feb 28, 2023 4:00 am By Robert Spencer 1 Comment. Two mountain lion encounters in his driveway. The debate rages in Maine, where the last confirmed cougar kill occurred in 1938, and in New Hampshire, where the last confirmed kill was in 1885. But it is also true that there is something different and especially chilling about the threat of being attacked by something that is alive and wants to devour you. After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. My stepfather had been a hunter and was no stranger to seeing animals in the woods and countryside, so when they came up over a knoll in the road and saw a large cat looking at them, he saw the face and thought, bobcatuntil they then saw the rest of the animals body: huge, beautifully tawny colored, and in possession of what my mother described as a very long tail, that was as thick as my wrist. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native 'eastern' cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. It had moved a little and was standing unconcealed, now, in the middle of the logging road. No need since so we guess it has moved on from the northeast corner of Connecticut. Interesting how tree stumps or boulders assume the shape of an animal in this kind of light. Westford, MA, crossing Dunstable Rd from Long Sought For Pond into the woods. But I learned something else in my ad hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in people. No An official form of the United States government. There is a lot of good habitat between here and the places where there are established populations of mountain lions, he said. I had seen bear, deer, coyotes, foxes, that one bobcat all the usual suspects. That was plain, right away. Ive attended talks with Sue Morse. My husband and where riding our Motorcycle down Rte 110 near Milan NH One summer I saw what I assumed was the same cougar several different times in my neighborhood which was near a long strip of woods along I 91 and used to be a large open field across the road from our home. Length of body. Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . 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. I knew it had to have been from a mountain lion Ive seen bobcats and their tracks and from the size of the deer carcass Im convinced there are mountain lions amongst us in Massachusetts! It can run at speeds of up to 50 mph. Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. Please. We think theyre coming in from Canada, Betty told me. But it seems virtually inevitable that a time is coming when that thing you see on the trail up ahead of you might be something to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. 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. 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. One day I most certainly watched him/her being chased up and down our chain link fence by a neighbors large dog who was barking insanely and couldnt quite catch the cougar, who finally made it away from the fence to escape the determined dog whod had him trapped up against it. Photo courtesy of Dave O'Donnell. This is always been a debate however as someone who is an avid Outdoorsman I can say with certainty I know of at least 12 people that have personal accounts of seeing mountain lion in Central and Western Massachusetts. I was aware, too, of how a certain mythology surrounding the animal had taken root in Vermonts culture and even its identity: The University of Vermonts athletic teams, for instance, are known as the Vermont Catamounts, and their logo features a snarling cat lunging through the cleft of a V.. There, too, is Crowells photograph, grainy and old: the hunter leaning against a tree stump, his head propped casually on his left hand, elbow to stump, shotgun cradled in the crook of his right arm. I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. I started to get nervous so I was scanning the area low and high in the trees. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. There is no shortage of deer for all apex predators whether they are canine, feline, or human. This was as clear as day had a long tail and long body I was thinking someones pet was on the loose or escaped form a zoo !! When he suggested we retrace our route, past lion, to see a sow bear with cubs, we headed in the opposite direction. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Had trouble sleeping last night cause that was to close and I think she may have stalked me from where I was in the woods. The Vermont woods would be a lot more interesting with mountain lions in them. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. The last catamount killed in Vermont was shot in 1881. It is healthy to have respect and caution, but fear shouldnt drive ecological decision making. They denied it until a cougar was hit as it tried to cross the very busy Merritt Parkway. Lizzie Post Would Like Your Attention. Our county. My encounter was in Middlesex, VT along the river road (Route 2) just below I89. I thought about why this might be and the best I could come up with for an answer is that we feel a kind of nostalgia for the wild. With all the thousands of trail cameras in the woods of New England, one would think that there would be at least one picture taken of a catamount. In fact, jaguars used to be native to south Texas, as well! on route to stone tower on Quabbin Hill. A deer is a wild animal and it is always a pleasure to see oneunless it is in the high beams, at night. Bennington, VT (05201) Today. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. There were caribou antlers mounted above the front doors, and the interior walls were covered in row upon row of books; a long table was piled high with still more books in seemingly random arrangements. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. The Strafford & Area Lions conducted its Food From The Heart food drive February 11th through the 18th, collecting 981.6 pounds of food and receiving monetary donations of $1,262 which were used to purchase food and other items to be donated to the Sharon, Vershire and Thetford food shelves. The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. The tails gotta be there. hen I accepted the assignment to write about my quest to uncover the truth regarding the existence of cougars in New England, I had little idea what I was agreeing to. It had traveled, certainly, though Minnesota and Wisconsin and, who knows, perhaps even Vermont and might, then, have accounted for some of those sightings. I dont ever say to people, Thats not what you saw. I say, I hope you saw one, Spatz told me when I called him at his home in upstate New York. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. 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. Morse is a Vermont-based naturalist and the founder of Keeping Track, a nonprofit that trains people in the scientific protocols needed to detect, interpret, record, and monitor wildlife tracks and signs. And, he says, if they were here, wouldnt one have been killed on one of the states highways where cars and trucks travel some 9 million miles every year? o" which translates to " the mountain like a seat." Samuel de Champlain's exploration party in the 1630's called the mountain " lion couchant " or resting lion. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. Large swaths of Vermont and nearby states along the Appalachian spine have gone from cleared land back to the kind of second-growth forest that is excellent habitat for deer and, thus, their predators, the most efficiently lethal of which is the mountain lion. Within six weeks, he continued, I was getting off the plane in Jackson Hole for a national mountain lion conference. Vermont offers plenty of habitat in which mountain lions could thrive. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. 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. Theymay not be looking, specifically, for a catamount. Those who believe the growth and expansion of mountain lion populations to be a good thing routinely make the old, you face a greater danger of being struck by lighting or drowned in the bathtub argument and it is no doubt accurate. But some sightings were more promising and some seemed exceedingly so. I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. Especially by one that he remembers involving a kill site.. This was after the department sent him out west to study the behavior of mountain lions. These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. My assumption is it was the same animal. Our wildlife biologists and enforcement agents are mostly political bureaucrats who dont often venture more than 100yards from the truck. A wildlife camera snapped the image in late 2019 and the refuge shared it on Facebook this month, challenging followers to find the hidden mountain lion. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. Of course. Dismissing most of the sightings as probable bobcats, Morse asserted that the scientific evidence has not been proven. They are much larger than bobcat and lynx, young adults can still have spots too. near Greenfield with an experienced guide that hed worked with several times. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . Some people say they have seen a catamount in the woods. This, said Vermont Fish and Wildlife fur-bearer project leader Chris Bernier, is why he takes reports of mountain lion sightings seriously. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. The reason why experts wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is NO PROOF. One one occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been sort of closeby. However, when I asked the room of 200 or so people how many believe they had seen a mountain lion/cougar/puma/catamount, hands shot up all around the room about 25% of those present. You cant mistake the long tail. The guide told him earlier in the summer he and a couple clients had watched a moutain lion come down to the bank of the Deerfield River just upstream and take a small deer, fawn, drag it into the woods and it kill it, they could hear the screams of the deer as the cougar finished the job. Well, theres no difference between Maine and New Brunswick, anyway, said Betty. There were pine cones on window sills, a well-used hatchet and a variety of animal figurines on display, and, near the television, a stack of videos including Life of a Predator and The African Lion. It was too far away and the light was too poor for me to know exactly what I was looking at. Last documented and killed in Vermont in 1881, the catamount, also known as a mountain lion or cougar, could be making its way back to the Green Mountain State. On one side, there are those (as represented here by Sue Morse, Kim Royar, and Christopher Spatz, along with a number of others I spoke with) who contend that the lack of verifiable evidence is proof that the animals are not here. I live in New Milford and I saw one crossing the road in front of me when I stopped to get my mail from my mailbox. But no. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. I also had the vague notion that when it comes to cougars, people tend to sort themselves into one of three camps. Having retired from a career at General Dynamics, he devotes many of his waking hours to cougar research, a passion hes cultivated for nearly twodecades. This is part of the cougar business. In Vermont, in the late 19th century, this meant, especially, sheep. I live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, puma). His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. One wonders just how tolerant Vermonters would be of a healthy population of mountain lions after one attacked a child waiting for the school bus. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. I was driving to work in Greenfield heading south on 10 and had just taken a right hand turn at the junction when the big cat crossed the road in front of me. The last time a mountain lion was captured in New York was in the . The truth is, I was by this point dubious. As I turned a corner going north toward Waterbury, I saw the cat come up from the cornfield, saunter across the highway, turn and look in my direction and then amble off into the brush. It may not surprise you to learn that I was quite intrigued by this third group. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. 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. And some people might decide to release them into the wild rather than keeping them in their possession. Concerned for people / pets and a school just down the street, stopped to report the sighting where dispatch told me that if I did not have proof they would not respond. Finally, in the third camp, there are the true believersthe cougar truthers, if you willthe men and women for whom the only logical conclusion (often reached after a significant investment of time, thought, and sometimes money) is that right here, right now, cougars live among us, feeding and breeding and rearing their young, and that suggesting otherwise is sheer ignorance, willful denial, or part of a mosaic of conspiracy. I noticed that there were many great websites, blogs, and discussion boards devoted to mountain lion sightings in other states of New England, but not one just for Vermont. But there was not enough evidence to either prove or disprove that a mountain lion had done the killing. You need breeding pairs and theyd probably settle down long before they got here.. People in Colorado communities might need to warn their children and to look over their own shoulders when they were out jogging, but not here. She said it jumped up on the neighbors stone wall which was pretty high and walked across it. This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. She favors plaid shirts, green Dickies work pants, and hiking boots, and she chided me for shaking her hand too gently. We told him what we saw, and he confirmed other sightings on the property. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. The big cat on the ground before him, motionless, yet somehow still embodying that particular feline litheness, as if, with the flick of its tail, it might bound to its feet and disappear into the woods. Watching a potential winter storm. We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. Honestly, leaving this out of your article would seem to perpetuate the notion that there is a conspiracy to keep us all in ignorance. It seems humans just cant resist destroying these animals and either dont realize or dont care what damage we have done to our natural environment over the centuries. Hed encouraged me to keep my eyes open for deer carcasses cached in the trees (according to Ottmann, cougars are fantastic climbers and are known to stash their kills high in trees), but I saw only leaf-bare branches. Experts need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices. Adult males can be around 8 feet in length and weigh between 130 and 150 pounds, while adult females can be 7 feet long and weigh between 65 and 90 pounds. Tried to see "mountain lion" and agree that what appears to be a long tail is most likely the . Raised them carefully to my eyes. We need cougars and we need wolves back in the Northeast, because a landscape of fear is a well-balanced landscape.. The tavern was quiet except for some hard-rock music playing on the radio, the murmur of a handful of men at the bar, and us. Matthew Johnson/Vermont Historical Society. It was definitely a cougar. The mountain lionalso known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamountis a large cat species native to the Americas. Wildlife biologists, as professional scientists, require a higher level of documentation and proof. To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. It was huge! Nostalgia for the Wild 8 Arlington (9-10) and No. Some people thought that the Fish and Wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings. Because they are.. I had been foraging up in an area that is rocky. "The catamount, which is also a mountain lion, a cougar, a panther and a ton of other words, is actually one of the most widely distributed mammals in the whole world. And why not? Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. How big was the animal? Defenders of Wildlife developed funding to support wolf predation on cattle which I believe worked. Kim Royar, a biologist at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told me she receives 40 to 50 reports annually, and although she believes that few, if any, are actual cougar sightings, she doesnt dismiss the possibility that someday someone will happen upon the real deal. 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. I started asking a lot of questions, and realized theres only one explanation for the answers I was getting: They are here., You could have 30 in Connecticut alone. Perfect conditions, then, for thinking you saw something. 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. You wouldnt shake hands with a man like that, she said, and though she was smiling I could tell she was serious. 9 Grace Christian (9-11). They may get here, Doug Blodgett said to me one afternoon. Things seem to move at twilight and you never know. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This setting should only be used on your home or work computer. In this case, there was the carcass of a deer, recently killed in the area where a couple had reported seeing what looked like a mountain lion on land they owned. If those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? The females are where its at, she said. The first time was in the yard which was surrounded by woods. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. 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. Id splurged on them. Even in areas of high cougar density, the there are far more attacks on humans by domesticated dogs or deer/car collision fatalities than those due to cougar attack. 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. One cat will leave more than 10,000 tracks per day. Saw one on old mountain rd Peterborough N.H. a few years ago on my property followed it and ran to get my camera have a photo but in distance by time got it was amazing animal t Metcalf. In 2011, the U.S. Harrigans interest in cougars was sparked in the late 70s, after he took ownership of The Coos County Democrat and began noticing the steady influx of reported sightings. Harrigan nodded. All of which is to say that if Alexander Crowell wasnt afraid on that long-ago Thanksgiving Day, he probably should have been. The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? Mountain lions are around 4 feet long with a two-and-a-half foot tail and can stand 24-30 inches tall at the shoulder. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. If LTS can take care of business in that one, it would host the winner of the Bennington County matchup between No. But they would certainly pay attention if they did see one. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. The restrictions/regulations surrounding management of an endangered species is incredibly cumbersome, and would be difficult to manage. Females ranges are much smaller so it will take reintroduction or a few savvy wildlife biologist in the dead of night. So the initial assumption was that the animal was one of those captives that had either escaped or been released by its owner. 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. There was a tin of American Spirit tobacco on the table (Ottmanns), a laptop (Bettys), a notebook (mine), and a tumbler of Bacardi and Coke (Ottmanns again). He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. They are most definitely here. Check out 4 Seconds Until Impact by Bruce Hemming, or Cat Urbigkits books about predator attacks in unlikely places . This assessment is echoed by the aforementioned Christopher Spatz, who has been studying cougars for better than 20 years. All those deer hunters represent a kind of ad hoc search party. Face to face, maybe, with a sure enough catamount. And so we come to the great divide over cougars in New England. Interesting article, but it is really incomplete without a discussion of the legal implications of having a confirmed endangered species such as the Eastern Cougar in New England. They have a right to exist here and they contribute to healthier prey species. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. Of course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time! But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. 104 Williston, VT 05495. Spring Loaded to See Something Ive heard some biologists say it is not a distinct subspecies. my father was recently trout fishing in central Mass. Email: info@grnvt.com. I reported it to Connecticut DEEP, only to be told there are no cougars in Connecticut. This animal was too long in the body and blunt in the head. Wildlife is unpredictable (and several people go missing in wild areas, parks especially, every year -Probably not because of alien abduction). Escapes by these animals were not impossible. We strolled across the tavern parking lot and ducked into the forest, where Ottmann maintains a portion of his $15,000 worth of wildlife recording equipment (hes had no luck capturing a cougar on camera, though, despite more than a decade of trying). 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. I was deer hunting with my father, it was in the fall about 7 years ago, in Barre Ma towards the Templeton Ma lines. 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