E-mail it to epuma@frontier.com In early 1980s I saw a large tawny colored cougar in Leyden, Massachusetts, crossing a dirt road with uninhabited woods with many deer and critters to eat and hills with cliffs and likely caves for dens. Now, lets start talking about our favorite big cat! Now I know what it was - a mountain lion. 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 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 wanted to see how close I could get walking closer and closer the eyes did not run in fact they started to come to us. Hawley:Were sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Lucky the house cat got away. 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). Morse introduced me to her cat, Allister, whom she referred to as her portable puma. Then she fetched me a beer. "Of those . Like Tate, he gets a lot of photos and . What a site. This indoor environmental education talk is geared to adults and children over 10. I was with Barnaby and my 4 year old daughter in a place we jokingly call Cougar Canyon. Now only feet from what I realized was a mountain lion I was in horror. If there are mountain lions skulking around Vermont, they wont stay hidden for long, Bernier said. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is alerting residents of Cache County, UT that there have been several mountain lion sightings recently in the area, including along the river trail in Logan Canyon. The topic was discussed at the town's June 10 city council meeting after a potential sighting on June 1 in the Savanna area of William O'Brian State . Also the hotel keeper at top of Mt. I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. 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. So I walked out of the driveway turned right when I saw a pair of yellow greenish eyes under an apple tree I asumed it was a deer because I had seen many deer their earlier in the day. Though the infamous catamount has been declared extinct in Vermont since 2018, several people spotted big cats that they thought to be mountain lions on Ripley Road two weeks ago, according to posts on Front Porch Forum. Mountain lion tails, however, are about three feet long, usually the length of the cats body. Its OK, he told me. 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. Originally I began in the Mid-Atlantic States, but widely expanded my collection to include all the New England States, at the suggestion of the late Prof. Harold Hitchcock of Vermonts Middlebury College. We watched it kill an animal (a woodchuck or something). Thank you for reading. 99 Beagle Boot Lane Before I departed the Old Well Tavern, Bo Ottmann offered to lead me on a walk into an adjacent stretch of woods, where, he assured me, cougars might be found. He says that if mountain lions do . 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. If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. Hear the full interview: Megafauna mania: our obsession with mountain lions and other large predators, Connecticut Dept. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. And it was this curiosity that led me to the Old Well Tavern in Simsbury, Connecticut, at a time of day (11:30 a.m.) that does not normally find me ensconced in the dim confines of a drinking establishment. If theres a middle ground in the cougar debate, it belongs to John Harrigan, a veteran outdoorsman, newspaper reporter, and widely read syndicated columnist. with muscles like a pit bull (very muscular!). As a scientist, lack of evidence is very good evidence. We live pretty much in the midst of the Green Mountains in the town of Andover. I can send the pics I have. How big was the animal? Wildlife do really crazy things, and you just never know.. Though not native to Vermont, Canada lynx occasionally make their way down into Vermont. He was very, very shook up. 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. You wouldnt shake hands with a man like that, she said, and though she was smiling I could tell she was serious. I have seen herons and other things there. Many, many times, in many different ways along its travel up through Minnesota, Michigan and to Canada, down through New York, through hair samples, blood samples, trail camera photos. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); aint seen none yet, them wind turbines scarin em off, I have been following the eastern mountain lion mystery since the mid-1960s, in every state, east of the Mississippi River. 35 wild cougars, known as the Florida Panther, of which a few are totally BLACK, and known as panther, but are actually of the jaguar family In the last few days, 3 sightings have been reported to us, large brown cats in Tennessee and Indiana, a total black cat, in Virginia. Maysville, WV 26833 Mountain Lion. 2 Last 5 Years. She will also discuss the latest confirmations of cougars in the East, including the recently documented suitability of a substantial amount of wild habitats from Manitoba to Louisiana and Maine to Georgia. We went back later and the road was hard but we did get some pictures of prints exactly where the cat went back into the woods and the toes were hard to see, but the pad was classic cougar and the print was the size of my hand. 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. These are huge animals that make a lot of distance to the day. Hey, I know what I saw. But its also a great story that lays out how an animal this large, at 150 pounds, traveling through even rural areas, leaves signs and is detected. I want emails from Fodor's Travel with travel information and promotions. Collection. Its definitely a problem thats only going to get worse. Mountain lions are not likely to pass through Vermont, according to Fish & Wildlife biologist Chris Bernier. While on vacation last summer in the Sequoias we had a lion cross the road in front of us at about 11 at night one night. Vermont's last known cougar, also known as a mountain lion or catamount, was killed in 1881 in Barnard. We even enjoyed the pleasure of taking them out to dinner, then returning wiith them for a delightful 3 days with them, dicussing the big cats, while they vacationed at their Atlantic Oceanfront Cottage.. HHH was firmly convinced, wild cougars inhabited Vermont, as well as each of New Englands nothernmost states. I am here to tell you I was stalked by a mt lion in vt and was lucky to get away with my life. Bernier gets more than 50 reports of mountain lions a year. Its quite an uphill challenge for us to manage that situation right now. 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. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. I can unsubscribe any time using the unsubscribe link at the end of all emails. Its important not to rule any possibilities out, including the chance of a mountain lion, according to Bernier. I took pictures but now wished I had placed an object to get the scale of the prints. Help us document the biodiversity of the Green Mountain State. Welcome to the blog dedicated to discussing mountain lion sightings in Vermont! I do this shit.. Vermont Fish and Wildlife say they get between 50 and 75 sightings here in Vermont, annually. The truth is, I was by this point dubious. Your email address will not be published. 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? Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. We have people eating dinner in their kitchen, they hear a noise, all of a sudden a bear walks in, so they run into their bedroom to get away from the bear, while the bears out ransacking their refrigerator. But perhaps an even larger portion is the product of his enduring faith in the men and womanloggers, hunters, trapperswhose vocations and avocations have instilled in them a deep familiarity with wild places and the creatures who inhabit them. Morse will present evidence on cougars returning to the East. Because he lives among them, Harrigan understands that no one knows the woods better. 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. 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. But every once in a while, you'll be on your property, on your deck or in your house, and you'll see one walk across your yard or something. Patrick's reporting has appeared on NPR's Morning Edition, Here & Now, and All Things Considered. Hawley: That animal was documented. Required fields are marked *. Until recently, it was thought that the last mountain lion (a very big cat -- aka a catamount) disappeared from our state decades ago. The presentation promises to be a magnificently illustrated introduction to cougar biology and ecology in the broad diversity of habitats where Morse has studied them, from Alberta to the Mexican border. Driving up 91north in Vermont between exit 3 and 4, at 7pm, last night, I believe that a cougar bolted across the road about 50 feet in front of me headed East. If you do see a big cat in your neighborhood, best practice is to leave it alone, according to Waterbury Game Warden Chad Barrett. Betty folded his arms across his chest, where they rose and fell and rose again with his breathing. Harrigan is 72 and lives just outside the northern New Hampshire town of Colebrook; he has a long, craggy face that seems almost to have molded itself after the mountainous landscape of his home state. Saturday Sunday: Closed. . This is Christina, I used to work with you at the YMCA in Burlington. Hawley: Yeah. 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. And even the home entries are kind of changing. Clearly, Puma concoloronce inhabited the forests of the Northeast, although its difficult to say in what numbers. Vt and was lucky to get worse the East is geared to adults and children over 10 of Green. 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