mountain lion vermont

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. It had traveled, certainly, though Minnesota and Wisconsin and, who knows, perhaps even Vermont and might, then, have accounted for some of those sightings. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. Ottmann grew up and still lives just minutes from the tavern; his familiarity with the establishment was obvious (after we met in the parking lot, he led me into the building through the kitchen, greeting each of the staff by name). A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. As I looked at my daughter and then turned to follow the direction she was looking, I saw the animal in my side mirror. But never a catamount. 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. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. With the price off its head, the lion gained new stature, and in July 1965 . 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. In the few seconds that this took, I had convinced myself that I was looking at a mountain lion. I heard from Neighbors that they have been sighting from the mass pike which runs along this area but also very close to Quabbin! Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. I had been the first vehicle in a line held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction. This is a site for people to discuss mountain lion sightings in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. 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. I went back and told the tale to anyone who would listen. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. Females ranges are much smaller so it will take reintroduction or a few savvy wildlife biologist in the dead of night. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. 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. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. Probably because of all the hunters that would be out trying to get their trophy and endangering others. Or, if it does, when that will be. Our county. Feb 28, 2023 4:00 am By Robert Spencer 1 Comment. Probably are lions in western NC, too. 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. They were also seen at other times by members of my family and other people in the neighborhood. Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . 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? As pets or for exhibit. He worked, in Wyoming and Arizona, with other professionals, some with government agencies, like the one he works for, and others who were hunters and trappers, often employed by ranchers who had lost stock to mountain lions. 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. There was no mistake. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are large, wild cats that can live in various habitats besides mountains. 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 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. Bernier gets more than 50 reports of mountain lions a year. 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. An expert said it was probably a basking shark. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. You need breeding pairs and theyd probably settle down long before they got here.. Actually, Blodgett says, something of the opposite was true. These were old growth woods and the canopy had kept the ground cover down, so I could see three or four hundred yards ahead of me but not clearly, because of the gloom. I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. 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. I lived in great Barrington mass and I took photos of tracks in a field in April of 2009 (and of course lost them). But a deer is not a predator, like a bear can be, and certainly not a pure predator like a mountain lion, which is a majestic animal precisely because it is also a dangerous one. Of course no dash cam or accessible phone camera at the time! By now, I knew the answer to that one. Experts need to see the body to dismiss their prejudices. We clearly have migratory male cougars coming through. A mountain lion was responsible for that too. . Sue Morse, a professional animal tracker, believes that means cougars will, eventually, return to Vermont. I now live in Boulder, CO where we have regular sightings.same animal as 35 yrs agohands down, Warren ,Ma early morning having my coffee on my front steps and noticed about 50 feet across the Road something coming out of the trail as it did it looked out at the road and turned around as it did I could see that it was a mountain lion ! It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. The glasses I carried were of good quality with exceptional light-gathering property. Wildlife biologists, as professional scientists, require a higher level of documentation and proof. There was no denying that the carcass, which was examined by experts, was that of a mountain lion. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. 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. There was one young kid, in his 20s, who had been doing it since he was in high school and he walked and thought like a cat. My parents friend in Deposit, NY, posted a young catamount sitting on the front porch on Facebook. He wore red suspenders and a baseball cap. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. The first time was in the yard which was surrounded by woods. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. Around 1830, the . So, traffic had been slowed from both ends for a good 3-5 minutes. A 2,000 Mile Journey 104 Williston, VT 05495. They set the stage for the exotics to move in, and this has a huge impact on our ecology, he said. Still, Spatz acknowledged that the word hope is very different from the word believe. Spring Loaded to See Something And so we come to the great divide over cougars in New England. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. 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. As livestock farming came to dominate the landscape, pressure on the big cats slowly mounted on two fronts: The number of farmers wanting them dead was increasing, while the rapid transition from forest to farmland meant their habitat was shrinking. We need cougars and we need wolves back in the Northeast, because a landscape of fear is a well-balanced landscape.. 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. A far less likelyenvironment for finding a mountain lion than just about anywhere in Vermont. 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. It had moved a little and was standing unconcealed, now, in the middle of the logging road. 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. 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. Its not my call. Harrigan nodded. Bill and I are full-throttle. 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. Theres probably 100 in Connecticut, Ottmann interrupted, rolling a cigarette as he spoke. 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. Refuge volunteer Dale Erz originally. Scat, tracks, lays, scratch mounds youll see these things.. But they would certainly pay attention if they did see one. 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. Morse has been tracking cougars for 45 years, mostly in the mountains of the West, where their existence is not in doubt. They are there and thriving!!!! 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. All of us with rifles, most of them scoped. Everglades Panther I also know of someone who said they showed F&G a photo of one from a game camera in NH. I only saw the back side, but he was huge. To date, Keeping Track has helped conserve 40,000 acres in 12 states and inQuebec. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. That animal in Connecticut makes for a pretty fantastic story but it takes more than one dispersing male. He was a dark butterscotch color, very tall and lanky (taller and thinner than a really big German Shepard) and that tail. The real reason that they wont admit that a breeding population exists, is that listing a population of endangered species would wreak ECONOMIC havoc in a number of arenas, mostly logging/forestry. The cougar and the states refusal to admit it was here made the local paper. You cant mistake the long tail. 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. I have learned one thing in my career, and thats to never say never, she said. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. Defenders of Wildlife developed funding to support wolf predation on cattle which I believe worked. I got the glasses to my eyes and focused on the animal. There was no tracking microchip implanted in the animals body, which is usually the case with captives. I live in Hopkinton, NH and saw one coming up from the Contoocook River one misty morning. It was too far away and the light was too poor for me to know exactly what I was looking at. The name " Camel's Rump " was assigned on a historical map made by Ira Allen in 1798. Mr. Betty and Mr.Ottomans passion and efforts are impressive. The Mountain Lions won both regular season margins by 30-plus points. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. 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. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. 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. Green Mountain Lion Corp. Home; Apply Now! 5-7 yards from me. 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. Still, there are those of us who know what weve seen. The old logging road was easy enough to navigate and I let my feet follow it while I kept my eyes up and scanning. 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. The captive narrative also helped explain why there had been so many sightings reported, including some in Greenwich, among the richest and most domesticated suburbs in America. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. Some people say they have seen a catamount in the woods. The 1881 death of this catamount officially marked the end of cougars in Vermont; however, the very last Eastern cougar is thought to be an animal that was killed in Somerset County, Maine, in 1938. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings. 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 is no shortage of deer for all apex predators whether they are canine, feline, or human. You need to understand that every biologist that works for the state has a duty to deny mountain lions. People like you are the problem and cause of extinctions. ), 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. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. How did I know? 9 Grace Christian (9-11). Betty was quiet, and I wondered if even he, a man who does not doubt the presence of these cats in our midst and who himself claims multiple sightings, thought Ottmann was exaggerating. They are most definitely here. And consider, for a moment, the concern and outright fear an official acknowledgment of such a carnivorous and predatory creature might evoke. What time of day was it? The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. The second occasion was on the way to work when I saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44. I have pictures of tracks around my car and up to the back steps of my deck in Arkville, NY . As cleared lands became reforested, many species that had been squeezed into small regions where there was still habitat,or hunted to near extinction, could be replanted in their former range. 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. I will never forget what I saw! It was a bright sunny summer day. Held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction I let my feet follow it I... Site for people to discuss mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it move... 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