Photo courtesy of Dave O'Donnell. Evidently it was authentic because a mountain lion pounced on him. And then he drove up into my yard to read the meter. Normally we have good cameras but we were just up there for a quick delivery. I was traveling west on Route 131 in Wethersfield just west of Downers 4 Corners on January 22 about 12:15 AM during a light sleet and snow storm when a big cat ran across the road in front of me. Hawley: Wildlife biologists across the United States know where the current mountain lion range is. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. 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. I was awakened by a wailing sound that I thought was a woman in great pain and fear in my front yard. Megafauna mania: our obsession with mountain lions and other large predators., Megafauna mania: our obsession with mountain lions and other large predators, Subscribe To 'The Frequency,' Our Daily Morning Newsletter. On Friday July 8, 2022 there was a few reported Mountain Lion sightings the last few days one actually involving an encounter with one's family in their lawn. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. As a carnivore biologist, Hawley says he would love it if mountain lions were here. The cat was a goldish / tan color not real big but at least twice the size of a full grown fox,very long thick bushy tail.The tail was almost as long as its body. If its not, you just thank the person and say good-bye.. 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 watched it for nearly 10mins trying to figure out what it was (not thinking for a second that it could possibly be a mountain lion). Kimberly King. In Massachusetts, three sightings between 1997 and 2016 have been confirmed by scat, DNA, or tracks, according to the Cougar Network, a nonprofit that studies the habitat and movements of the big cats. They were at least 4-5 inches at the widest part of the pad. 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. Tom Stearns, a Vermont Game Warden says they get reports all the time. Please contact me at epuma@frontier.com or 304-749-7778. If you do see a big cat in your neighborhood, best practice is to leave it alone, according to Waterbury Game Warden Chad Barrett. Its a cool story with how far that animal walked. On a mountain lion that died on a Connecticut highway. Big and Fast. Ive seen bobcats before, this wasnt a bobcat. And its a lose-lose situation, because theres really not a whole lot you can tell them in most cases thats going to change their mind.. Curious if anyone has spotted any cougars in the area? Felis concolor couguar. It lowers the population in a way thats not going to affect the long-term population. Thank you for reading. I want emails from Fodor's Travel with travel information and promotions. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. I was walking 3 dogs at night all with leashes only 75 to 100 yards from the house I was staying at when it happened. Its documented through track surveys, aerial surveys, trapping and collaring surveys. Still, sightings are common. Just found this site, two weeks ago a good friend took a number of pictures of a large cat 100 feet from her deck. You might enjoy reading the comments, > There are plenty of places for a family of animals. Prior to the mid-1990s, the late Wildlife Professor Harold Hitchcock of Middlebury College, became Vermonts Official Big Cat hunter, who sought evidence of the Big Cats across the Maple State. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Bobcat tails, though prominent when they walk, are only about six or seven inches long. Those calls continue today; a local Milton business owner said she's heard of three puma sightings in Milton just this summer. We even had a sighting someone here at DEEP, in my office, was convinced they saw a mountain lion. So theres fresh mud. They were very large, light tan, with long legs, and long white tipped tail, Kilgore wrote, relaying the account. And its not just Vermont. The females are where its at, she said. The eastern cougar or eastern puma ( Puma concolor couguar) is a subspecies designation proposed in 1946 for cougar populations in eastern North America. VT Fish & Wildlife photo by Deb James. I hunt all over the country for big bucks. Julia is a senior majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in climate and environmental justice with minors in Computer Science and Geography. You could have 50. Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. What time of day was it? 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? 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. He was big. 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. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. It used to be that a bear would go into a house when someone wasnt home. In Vermont, it was 1881. Amazing sight. Or click the map itself. Recent reports of big cat sightings have captured the imagination of local residents eager to know what species of wild felines might be living in Waterbury. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. CHESTER Susan Morse, nationally known wildlife ecologist and tracker, will present Coming Soon: The Cougar Returns to the East, on Wednesday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. at the News Bank Conference Center in Chester. 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. Happy hunting Mike Copeland. 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. I could shoot my self in the rear for not taking a cast or picture. I saidholy cow, what is that? He said look at the tail, it is a mountain lion. I questioned if we even had them and quickly googled. It may not surprise you to learn that I was quite intrigued by this third group. It is what wildlife biologists call an apex carnivore, which means it can overpower pretty much any other creature in its environmentwith the exception of an armed human. Morse has been tracking cougars for 45 years, mostly in the mountains of the West, where their existence is not in doubt. Since my 1st contact with Prof. Harold Hitchcock in 1981, I have collected big cat sightings from across Vermont from the internet. My elderly mother lives with us so I got up to investigate and saw a large animal with a tail at least a foot long walking between the cars in our driveway. Mountain Lions Not Just a Tall Tale in Adirondacks. We are pretty sure there's a large actin our vicinity. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. We know it was not a bobcat. How big was the animal? Paul Barrile Senior Capstone and GIS Project Number of Sightings Per Year 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 0 000 0 0 09 0 0 0 00 0 0 000 o Legend "Cougars in the East are the equivalent of Bigfoot or UFO's," according to Mark Dowling of the Eastern Cougar On Jan 22, 2015 while walking in North Fayston, VT I came across what I believe to be a Catamount paw prints. Sure would appreciate OLD sighting reports from across Vermont from the late 1800s thru 1990. I studied the track it was the front paw left in the silt while the cat was drinking from the brook. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. This Snowy Cougar photograph captures the majestic nature of these feline predators. Apparently, Barnaby is blind because he couldnt see it. T here've been several reported mountain lion sightings around Marine on St. Croix, Minn. in the last month. By C.L. Indeed, one of her steadiest sources of funding for Keeping Track is a presentation on cougars that has been known to draw more than 500 audience members. Until recently, it was thought that the last mountain lion (a very big cat -- aka a catamount) disappeared from our state decades ago. 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. does the highway department have a record of those? And theres another school of thought, Well, no, there just are too many of them probably we have to reduce that population somehow. Where do you fall in that whole continuum? In 2011, genetic testing confirmed that a mountain lion originated in South Dakota and traveled more than 1,500 miles before being struck by a car on the Merritt Parkway, according to Reuters. Hi Cris, . It was a beautiful golden red color (like a red squirrel), about the size of a medium dog (maybe 40lbs?) 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. Laura: Did you report the dead mountain lion to the state Highway Dept. I can unsubscribe any time using the unsubscribe link at the end of all emails. According to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, only four confirmed sightings occurred in the state from the late 1700s to the early 2000s. Subsequent DNA testing found that the animal was from South Dakota. I am an analytical person and I would say regardless of what they think it is-it was clearly a large cat of some sort. 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. Required fields are marked *. Or that a stray has gotten EXTREMELY lost. Its tail was gigantic and it was swishing it back and forth. At around 9:30, Snow said, I was outside working and I heard the horn blow. "Of those . The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. What color was it? At first my husband thoughtwow huge dog and it turned its head and it was a cat. Brown. 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. 1 Last 365 Days. I also had the vague notion that when it comes to cougars, people tend to sort themselves into one of three camps. It was a few miles south of the Hanover exit. We watched it kill an animal (a woodchuck or something). I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. Massachusetts and several other New England states have bear hunting, or harvest, seasons, which proponents say help control populations. : I am basically a pro whitetail hunter living in Roxbury vt. He says that if mountain lions do . ), 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. His studies NEVER ended, even after going nearly blind by the mid-1990s. I was with Barnaby and my 4 year old daughter in a place we jokingly call Cougar Canyon. For mountain lions in Connecticut, a lack of evidence is very good evidence. Its on the property that we own over there. Here's a link to one of his columns. For example, a mountain lion native to North Dakota made it as far as Connecticut in 2011, according to Bernier. And were one of the most densely populated states as far as humans. Interesting history. The worker was in his truck when the cats crossed the road in front of the dog-walker, Snow said. John A. Lutz 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. Wed be seeing more carcasses of prey we would be seeing at least some carcasses of mountain lion prey. And, a couple of biologists I talked to when I was putting this exhibit together, said that it's. Help us document the biodiversity of the Green Mountain State. Harrigan's column mentioned above continues to talk about this. If you have a cell phone telephone number I can send photos to, I will send you photos of the prints in the snow around my porchside door. 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. The cougar appeared injured and stunned, but eventually ran away . So this is the best we could do for a photo. Adult females can be 7 feet long and weigh between . I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. 2 Last 5 Years. I gave grown up in the woods and this was no bobcat. Mountain Lions Living Mountain Lion Sightings in Vermont in Vermont? We need them for the health of our forests.. The lion three feet away crouched down and screamed in my face, at that point i have never been so scared in my life i thought this is it i am a dead man. 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