Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. I just heard from a fellow college student of a siting in Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring. 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 did call in a report to CT DEP and they basically dismissed my narrative questioning whether I made a mistake confusing the animal I saw with a bobcat or fisher cat. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. and with my friend Chris Christinat who lives in hartsville we saw one stalking a rabbit on her lawn about autumn of 2009. They are most definitely here. Success stories being more fun to talk about than the other kind. 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. Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen. 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. I had a pair of good binoculars in my coat pocket. The second occasion was on the way to work when I saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44. Friends that go backcountry skiing in Vermont have reported seeing tracks to me many times and I have seen pictures of the pawprints myself that look overwheming like a mountain lion. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. Snowy winter AM just before us neighbor kids were heading to catch the bus, we (myself, my dad and neighbor) all watched a large cat cross the yard and leave huge prints and a distinct tail drag mark in the snow! If these people say they saw something, Im going to listen., If theres one thing people on all sides of the debate can agree on, its that a breeding population of cougars is essential to the overall health of New Englands ecosystems, which currently lack an apex predator. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. Many on both sides of the cougar debate beileve that New Englands natural habitat would benefit from having an apex predator in the ecosystem again. But right now youre dealing with top-notch guys. Part of this belief is rooted in his journalistic experience, which across the decades has cultivated his nose for sincerity. 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. 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. I had a clear look, through the glasses at a bobcat. Its OK, he told me. 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. Also known as cougars, panthers or pumas, mountain lions range in color from tan to grey, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. At Green Mountain Lion Corp, we specialize in placing professionals in a variety of industries. 8 Arlington (9-10) and No. The reasons for this conspiracy vary depending upon whom you talk to, but they coalesce around the idea that wildlife agencies would be inconvenienced by the cougars presence, as theyd be forced to respond in ways that would tax their resources. 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. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? 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. Honestly, leaving this out of your article would seem to perpetuate the notion that there is a conspiracy to keep us all in ignorance. And why not? We have a lot of them here in N CA. Periods of snow. Im gonna get hammered for it, he sighed. Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) was set to play the Long Tail Mountain Lions last Tuesday before the former decided not to compete based on concerns for player safety and fairness. To Betty and Ottmann, the dominant narrative of the occasional itinerant cougar from the West is not particularly relevant to the facts on the ground. I have pictures of tracks around my car and up to the back steps of my deck in Arkville, NY . Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. Raised them carefully to my eyes. The Christian school also dropped out of the state . It can run at speeds of up to 50 mph. Theres probably 100 in Connecticut, Ottmann interrupted, rolling a cigarette as he spoke. You could have 50. This assessment is echoed by the aforementioned Christopher Spatz, who has been studying cougars for better than 20 years. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. Everglades Panther Stratton Magazine Celebrating Manchester and the Mountains. The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. Because they are.. I was deer hunting with my father, it was in the fall about 7 years ago, in Barre Ma towards the Templeton Ma lines. 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. Females ranges are much smaller so it will take reintroduction or a few savvy wildlife biologist in the dead of night. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. The animal was too small and it lacked the long, sinuous tail of the catamount. 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. We told him what we saw, and he confirmed other sightings on the property. Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. And, now, here I was. Betty folded his arms across his chest, where they rose and fell and rose again with his breathing. Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. But it was also a male. Still more confusion ensued when a lab technician said she might have gotten some samples confused, and thus the canid result was thrown into doubt. 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. I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. There is a lot of good habitat between here and the places where there are established populations of mountain lions, he said. We met for lunch on a Sunday morning in early March, and it didnt take long for me to understand why Harrigan is such a popular columnist. Yes I have seen several pictures on game cameras from people in Massachusetts in Central and western Mass that do have mountain lions on their game camera so please dont be ignorant. I saw one yesterday in Windsor Cty Vermont. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. They knew what they were doing, Blodgett says. Can they really all be cases of false identification? After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. 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. 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. Among the mountain lions typical behaviors is the way it will revisit, for several days, the carcass of an animal it has killed, moving it and cacheing it until there is nothing left to eat or the flesh has turned. My assumption is it was the same animal. So yes they are here and not to sure why they dont admit to them being around ! I was curious enough at the time to do a little research. First about the animal, itself, and then about the lore and the possibility that the catamount was not, in fact, extinct in Vermont. 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. In my case, I had seen just about everything else in the Vermont woods in the several years that I had been going out, and not just during deer season. 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). People could have been looking at a catamount that was not, in fact, a wild animal. 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. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. People clearly arent lying when they say they saw a cougar; [the sighting] has a profound effect on them.. Mountain lions are large, tan cats. If seen bobcats and moose and coyotes and coy dogs ! Two mountain lion encounters in his driveway. I started to get nervous so I was scanning the area low and high in the trees. Bill and I are full-throttle. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . This animal was too long in the body and blunt in the head. Whenever I drive up and through my home state of Vermont, I look into the hills that surround me that have no sign of development for miles and miles. For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. And, if those people who said they were seeing catamounts were wrong, and not just making it up, then what were they seeing? Was INCREDIBLE! 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. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. Camel's Hump (alternatively Camels Hump) is a mountain in the Green Mountains in the U.S. state of Vermont.The north slope of the mountain borders the Winooski River, which has carved through the Green Mountains over eons.At 4,083 ft (1,244 m), it is tied (with Mount Ellen) for the third-highest mountain in Vermont.Surrounded by 10 acres (4 ha) of alpine tundra, the mountain is the most . Ive seen more field evidence in a couple of hours tracking out west than Ive seen in 100 years on the East Coast, he said. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. 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. 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. 104 Williston, VT 05495. It was definitely a cougar. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native 'eastern' cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. Especially by one that he remembers involving a kill site.. 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? This was after the department sent him out west to study the behavior of mountain lions. It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. 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. Some people thought that the Fish and Wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings. Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. We need cougars and we need wolves back in the Northeast, because a landscape of fear is a well-balanced landscape.. Ive attended talks with Sue Morse. I also had a coworker report a similar experience around the same time. Respect predators, protect them but dont worship or try to hug them! His Tail was very long almost touching the ground and as thick as velvet rope. This is part of the cougar business. 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. One one occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been sort of closeby. For who but we humans can look across the landscape and not acknowledge our role in the diminishment of cougars and the myriad ways in which we have knocked the landscape out of balance? Catamounts are large wild cats that are also called panthers, cougars or mountain lions. By now, I knew the answer to that one. Because while male cougars eventually strike out on their own and occasionally wander far from home, females are, as Morse puts it, hardwired to remain close to their mothers home range. The last catamount killed in Vermont stands under glass just inside the doors to the Vermont Historical Museum in Montpelier, a hop, skip, and a jump down the block from the statehouse. I moved very carefully to get my hand in my pocket and my fingers around the glasses. It was a striking animal, certainly, but it was no mountain lion. The last catamount killed in Vermont was shot in 1881. Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? Mid Vermont Christian School Eagles forfeited their girls basketball playoff game on Tuesday against Long Trail School Mountain Lions. But, yes, thats exactly what it was. 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: It is possible that cougars of unknown origin may be breeding to a limited extent in Vermont. My neighbors have seen several over the last 15-20 years. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. She said it jumped up on the neighbors stone wall which was pretty high and walked across it. Recall a few years back, a guy in a kayak off Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA, was tracked by a large fin. If the mountain lion is a certified killer of sheep and, sometimes, cattle, it has also occasionally attacked humans. Please. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. 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. It is hard for me to believe that the big cats havent found plenty of space to roam without regular detection. But never a catamount. In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. Id been excited to read the news that wildlife officials would be releasing wolves in Yellowstone and thrilled, a few years later, when I heard, from a campsite on Slough Creek, the music of their howling. my father was recently trout fishing in central Mass. Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. They denied it until a cougar was hit as it tried to cross the very busy Merritt Parkway. But there was certainty, or near-certainty, on the part of the witnesses who, it seemed, would swear to having seen a catamount. Height. A mountain lion was responsible for that too. 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. However, many of their claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously. He never found the evidence. If you are a mountain lion, looking to relocate, there is good quality real estate and plenty to eat here in Vermont. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. Chance of snow 90%. The females are where its at, she said. 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. Mr. Betty and Mr.Ottomans passion and efforts are impressive. It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. As land was cleared for farming and the cats prey species declined in number, it went after livestock. Given the long, shared border between these provinces and New England, along with plentiful evidence that other species cross this border regularly, it seems entirely possible that cougars would also engage in international travel. 104 Williston, VT 05495. Morse has been tracking cougars for 45 years, mostly in the mountains of the West, where their existence is not in doubt. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. 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. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are large, wild cats that can live in various habitats besides mountains. If its not, you just thank the person and say good-bye.. We witnessed a mountain lion stalking a herd of deer. Its not a bear, not a dog, not a deer, not a bobcat. He wore red suspenders and a baseball cap. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. 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. Its range was once similarly vast; from the high north regions of the Yukon to the Straits of Magellan. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. He set down his cigarette and looked me in the eye. 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. No way to proveor disproveit. 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. I live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, 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. The restrictions/regulations surrounding management of an endangered species is incredibly cumbersome, and would be difficult to manage. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. Several years of doing the follow-ups, then, convinced Blodgett that there were no catamounts in Vermont. 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