All of which is to say that if Alexander Crowell wasnt afraid on that long-ago Thanksgiving Day, he probably should have been. Bigger than my rottwieller/Lab cross. This is a site for people to discuss mountain lion sightings in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. Even in the controlled environment of a lab, the truth about Eastern cougars seems to be almost willfully eluding its seekers. And that is often what people see when they get a fleeting glimpse of a bobcat is that white tail because bobcats walk with their tails up, Bernier said. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. 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. This assessment is echoed by the aforementioned Christopher Spatz, who has been studying cougars for better than 20 years. 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. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. It continues in Connecticut, where that South Dakota cat was killed in 2011, and in Massachusetts, despite two credible reports in the past quarter century (in one case, DNA-confirmed scat; in the other, verified tracks). Of course. 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. It may not surprise you to learn that I was quite intrigued by this third group. They usually don't wanna be around you anyways. What color was it? Its closest living relative is the cheetah. 1 Last 365 Days. She favors plaid shirts, green Dickies work pants, and hiking boots, and she chided me for shaking her hand too gently. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. 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). Its a cool story with how far that animal walked. I am willing to put my hand on the bible or take a polygraph. Hawley, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, says data dont support a breeding population of mountain lions in Connecticut. You were the first person I thought of after I calmed down enough to think straight! Fish and Wildlife Service unofficially declared the Eastern cougar extinct. First about the animal, itself, and then about the lore and the possibility that the catamount was not, in fact, extinct in Vermont. And Im assuming whatever were doing right now, its not working. No one is on the road at 430-5am. 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 scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. Fear is actually one of the most powerful ecological forces we know, and its a really important management tool., According to Laundre, the problems caused by a relatively fear-free ecosystem are not always obvious, in part because they can take decades to fully manifest. Occasionally 3 times a year, I send out news-letters telling of latest reportsby concerned persons collecting such data.. I was driving yesterday (July 31st '13) around midnight on northbound I-89 about half way between Wight River Junction and Montpelier when a beautiful cat creature a size of a greyhound jumped from the midroad bushes and sped in front of my car across the road. Harrigan nodded. I will not go into the woods unarmed anymore ever. Its definitely a problem thats only going to get worse. 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. Bernier gets more than 50 reports of mountain lions a year. His studies NEVER ended, even after going nearly blind by the mid-1990s. 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. Ottmann and I walked farther. He honked his horn to scare them off, and the cats made their way into Snows yard. If theres a middle ground in the cougar debate, it belongs to John Harrigan, a veteran outdoorsman, newspaper reporter, and widely read syndicated columnist. Kim Royar, a biologist at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told me she receives 40 to 50 reports annually, and although she believes that few, if any, are actual cougar sightings, she doesnt dismiss the possibility that someday someone will happen upon the real deal. We need them for the health of our forests.. 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. Just adding my two cents to the discussion. Reported catamount sightings all over Vermont MyNBC5-WPTZ 16.6K subscribers Subscribe 15 Share 4.5K views 10 years ago Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont. . In 2011, a cougar was hit by a car and killed on a Connecticut highway. I hunt all over the country for big bucks. It stared at him for a few seconds and then took some steps towards him, eventually turning the other way and sliding into the undergrowth. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. Massachusetts and several other New England states have bear hunting, or harvest, seasons, which proponents say help control populations. October 30, 2015 by Dana Kobilinsky. Mountain Lions Not Just a Tall Tale in Adirondacks. 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. 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. Now only feet from what I realized was a mountain lion I was in horror. She served as the Senior Producer for 'The Colin McEnroe Show' for several years before stepping down in 2021 and returning to her previous career as a registered nurse. According to the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, only four confirmed sightings occurred in the state from the late 1700s to the early 2000s. Now the bears, they dont even care if people are home, theyll go right in the house. Here's a link to one of his columns. Its not my call. Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. 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. For example, a mountain lion native to North Dakota made it as far as Connecticut in 2011, according to Bernier. If you dont think cougars are coming to the East, think again, she said, leaning forward for emphasis. The tail was very long and we estimate it to have been at least a hundred pounds. 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. Whats happening in Waterbury? Hey, I know what I saw. McEnroe: It is an uphill challenge. 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. 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. Welcome to the blog dedicated to discussing mountain lion sightings in Vermont! Sign up below to receive the weekly newsletter, which also includes top trending stories and what all the locals are talking about! Though not native to Vermont, Canada lynx occasionally make their way down into Vermont. 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. At around 9:30, Snow said, I was outside working and I heard the horn blow. Of course no real good tracks on the hard packed driveway but I know what I saw and heard. ), 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. Im gonna get hammered for it, he sighed. Guess you know, that Prof. Harold Hitchcock had a tremendous interest in cougar-mountain lion sightings and reports from the 1940s thru his death in the mid-1990s.he was on staff of Middlebury College. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. In many cases, what people may think is a mountain lion is actually an Eastern bobcat, a species with a breeding population in Vermont. We think theyre coming in from Canada, Betty told me. We have a lot of them here in N CA. NH Fish & Game deny all reports but recently someone got a photo of one killed on the hwy before State Police told them to move on and "there's nothing here to see" as the carcass was being loaded into a Fish and Game truck. T here've been several reported mountain lion sightings around Marine on St. Croix, Minn. in the last month. Hi Mike. By C.L. Curious if anyone has spotted any cougars in the area? Hawley:Were sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here. I must have looked doubtfulwe were within spitting distance of a heavily traffickedroad 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. My partner and I walked much closer to it (about 50-60 ft away). I have seen plenty of bobcat in my life and my son and I were even lucky enough to see a lynx about 8 years ago. I saw an animal hunting in the back of a graveyard but couldnt tell what it was. As a scientist, lack of evidence is very good evidence. I was the only car on the road. VT Fish & Wildlife photo by Deb James. John Lutz, Eastern Puma Research Network. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. dr bondra fremont, ohio obituary; is francis leo marcos related to ferdinand marcos Hawley: That animal was documented. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. Those calls continue today; a local Milton business owner said she's heard of three puma sightings in Milton just this summer. It wailed just one time but it woke me from a sound sleep. Hi Annie, I dont know if you still keep up with this blog but I thought Id give it a try. I was within inches of hitting him, actually. 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'll tell you that.. Just like cats do - it waited to the last moment and then ran across in front of 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. Eastern bobcat. The cat was huge and tail was at least 3 feet long and thick. 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. Apparently, Barnaby is blind because he couldnt see it. If you search vally news archives I believe its there-its clearly not a dog. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native eastern cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. 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. 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. 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.