"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. 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. My encounter was in Middlesex, VT along the river road (Route 2) just below I89. and with my friend Chris Christinat who lives in hartsville we saw one stalking a rabbit on her lawn about autumn of 2009. Forty years of reporting on New Hampshire cougar sightings has convinced Harrigan that the state is home to at least a handful of breeding animals. He was a dark butterscotch color, very tall and lanky (taller and thinner than a really big German Shepard) and that tail. They are here in the Catskill Mountains, so named for the magnificent felines. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. And, if those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? Everglades Panther So if coyotes could return and establish robust populations, why not a few catamounts? 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. The Great Divide | Are There Mountain Lions in New England. They are much larger than bobcat and lynx, young adults can still have spots too. 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. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. 5-7 yards from me. THAT is a mountain lion! According to official estimates, as many as 1,000 people own, in spite of legal prohibitions, captive animals. 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. The females are where its at, she said. You could have 50. 2,110 likes. Vermont-based naturalist SueMorse has spent decades studying, tracking, andphotographing cougars outwest. Periods of snow. The evidence, he says, just wasnt there., Mountain Lions Revisit Kill Sites And some people might decide to release them into the wild rather than keeping them in their possession. My daughter said to me thats the biggest cat Ive ever seen. I have pictures of tracks around my car and up to the back steps of my deck in Arkville, NY . All those deer hunters represent a kind of ad hoc search party. In the second camp, there are those issuing the denials, pointing to the lack of photographic evidence, or the absence of tracks, or the simple truth that many people dont seem to know the difference between a cougar and a bobcat and a lynx and even, in some cases, a golden retriever. This is a site for people to discuss mountain lion sightings in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. 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. Geoffrey Norman is a Dorset author and a frequent contributor to Stratton Magazine. The Mountain Lions won both regular season margins by 30-plus points. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. Its mounted carcass is on display in Montpelier where Id seen it when I was the adult supervision for my daughters sixth-grade class trip to the capital. 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. I saw on three occasions in about the same location a beautiful mtn lion with the long bushytail that curves at the end. Photo courtesy of Dave O'Donnell. Stupid me grabbed my camera and a stick as to protect myself ( yes stupid idea as I could stop this thing from attacking me lol. Bennington, VT (05201) Today. Or, if it does, when that will be. I have not had the pleasure of seeing one, but have heard credible reports of them in Western Mass. Could be a deer, but it didnt seem to be tall enough. The reason why experts wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is NO PROOF. . Wildlife do really crazy things, and you just never know.. Around 7:10 pm this evening August 02, 2022 my wife entered our Oakwood Farm business off 6 Weed Road in Essex Center with headlights on. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. The catamount is a creature of stealth and concealment; it stalks its prey, which on the EasternSeaboard would likely be deer, moose, porcupines, beavers, and domestic livestock. The one thing that jumped out at her the tail. 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. Looking at the mounted animal, behind the glass, had made me feel kind of well, sad. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. And, according to people who swear they know what they saw the catamount. I lived in great Barrington mass and I took photos of tracks in a field in April of 2009 (and of course lost them). In 2011, the U.S. I think of Aldo Leopolds Thinking Like a Mountain essay about how deer decimated the forests and died of starvation because of humans incessant desire to kill. When 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. These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. 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. His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. He is a consummate storyteller, and he wears on his sleeve his affection for the region and the hard-working, commonsense people who inhabit it. I do this shit.. The key to Morses assertion can be found in the term breeding population. Although the fact that cougars have traveled through New England is irrefutable (a DNA-confirmed roadkill is hard to deny), Morse believes its unlikely that they have settled here and created a self-sustaining population. In the few seconds that this took, I had convinced myself that I was looking at a mountain lion. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. I also had a coworker report a similar experience around the same time. 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. A mountain lion was responsible for that too. 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). Length of body. Some of them, he says, we could close the books on pretty quickly. 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. Jason. If you dont think cougars are coming to the East, think again, she said, leaning forward for emphasis. 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. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. 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. Growing up in northern Vermont, Id heard stories of sightings, though always a few steps removed from the tellersomebodys cousin had seen a cougar cross the road on their way home from deer camp up in Canaan (or was it Coventry? A 2,000 Mile Journey Bernier gets more than 50 reports of mountain lions a year. Watching a potential winter storm. In recent years, it has been expanding its range elsewhere; moving into mid-western states like Illinois and Missouri from its established range in the Rocky Mountain states and the Dakotas. And so when they come to him with a sighting, hes prepared to believe. 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. New in PJ Media: The world having gone absolutely insane, the Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) girls' basketball team is likely to get a lot of heat for this, but in a sane world, they would be the heroes of the story. 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. Hes also unafraid to take unpopular positions when he deems it necessary: Shortly before our meeting, hed signed a petition in favor of keeping ATVs off public roads. Catamounts are large wild cats that are also called panthers, cougars or mountain lions. Betty folded his arms across his chest, where they rose and fell and rose again with his breathing. I had a clear look, through the glasses at a bobcat. 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. In the states where there are robust mountain lion populations, they are a threat to livestock, pets and, occasionally, humans. Westford, MA, crossing Dunstable Rd from Long Sought For Pond into the woods. Still, there is no saying that it will not happen. Probably because of all the hunters that would be out trying to get their trophy and endangering others. What are the chances of wolves coming back to Vermont? I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. How big was the animal? Thank you; Blog. Also moose. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. 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. We were about 50 feet from it and it stood taller than any labrador and we watched it tail and all slink down the side of the lawn and the rabbits being surprised out of the bushes. When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. But there was certainty, or near-certainty, on the part of the witnesses who, it seemed, would swear to having seen a catamount. There was one possibility that might account for some of these sightings, he says. But that was OK. Bo Ottmann, A Lobster Trap Menorah Shines in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Chips Off the Old Block | Knowledge & Wisdom, Yankee Candle | New England by the Numbers, First Christmas | Krissy OSheas Scandinavian-Inspired Holiday Cottage, The Sweet Life | Holiday Baking with Dorie Greenspan, 2019 Yankee Magazine Editors Choice Food Awards, In the Kitchen at Mayfair Farm | Weekends with Yankee. 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. Can they really all be cases of false identification? 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