Pictures are pretty clear. On our road in the last few years almost everyone has seen a Cougar, one neighbor has a fawn colored one on his game cam. ), 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. 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. Still, this isnt a foolproof rule for big cat identification. Li mistaking that long swaying tail. We watched it kill an animal (a woodchuck or something). Visit VAL and learn more . My e-mail: epuma@frontier.com /// my mailing address 99 Beagle Boot Lane, Maysville, WV 26833 It walked with a calm, cat stride, stopped and turned towards my husband. Julia is a senior majoring in Environmental Studies with a concentration in climate and environmental justice with minors in Computer Science and Geography. 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. Sure would appreciate OLD sighting reports from across Vermont from the late 1800s thru 1990. Vermonts last known cougar, also known as a mountain lion or catamount, was killed in 1881 in Barnard. [5] It crossed the road and went into the woods. 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. It used to be that a bear would go into a house when someone wasnt home. I think the only reason the lion did not attack was because of the dogs. 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. I contacted VT FISH and Game who say its a bobcat. But it also sort of instills that fear, a healthy fear of humans and bears. Vermont's last known cougar, also known as a mountain lion or catamount, was killed in 1881 in Barnard. On another large animal that is most definitely here: bears. I encourage everyone who has seen a mountain lion or heard of a report to please leave a post here. : I am basically a pro whitetail hunter living in Roxbury vt. What time of day was it? Around 7:10 pm this evening August 02, 2022 my wife entered our Oakwood Farm business off 6 Weed Road in Essex Center with headlights on. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. Massachusetts and several other New England states have bear hunting, or harvest, seasons, which proponents say help control populations. He waves me over and shows me an animal lying in our driveway. The other, a utility worker checking the meter on Ripley Road, claimed he saw two mountain lions when describing the encounter to Ripley Road resident Russell Snow. Im gonna get hammered for it, he sighed. 99 Beagle Boot Lane But one day. Until recently, it was thought that the last mountain lion (a very big cat -- aka a catamount) disappeared from our state decades ago. Hawley: Yeah. 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. Also the hotel keeper at top of Mt. I was the only car on the road. Adult females can be 7 feet long and weigh between . It wailed just one time but it woke me from a sound sleep. If we end up with a population, it will be the result of a colonizer female who gets here somehow, some way, and the rest will be history.. 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? There are also many unconfirmed sightings. Its a cool story with how far that animal walked. Box 313, Maysville, WV 26833. Photo courtesy of Dave O'Donnell. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. I did a triple take as I gazed up to a rocky cliff and saw without a doubt a mountain lion. Skip to content. Anyway, I hope you see this message. In many cases, what people may think is a mountain lion is actually an Eastern bobcat, a species with a breeding population in Vermont. Please email us at editor@staging.mountaintimes.info thank you!! 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. Back in 2002 I saw a full grown mountain lion in Dummerston Vermont on east/west road. 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 When a cats around, its not hard to find evidence. This Snowy Cougar photograph captures the majestic nature of these feline predators. When seen in Florida, they are of approx. The Twitter user tweeted in surprise that they learned a bobcat and mountain lion are the same creature, which prompted several follow-up clarifications that the animals are, in fact, different . 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. Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here. We were both very startled and when it ran away it had a long tail with white and black at the tip.I lived in Colorado for several years, in the vicinity of mountain lions, never saw one and never thought for a moment that they could possibly be in Vermont. Still, sightings are common. 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. Here's a link to one of his columns. Ottmann nodded. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. Two of my family members sighted cougars in Florida during daylight hours: one was leaping through a field on myakka side of route 75, between north port and Sarasota. And thats a surprisingly complex question, because it hinges on numerous factors: policy and politics, culture and conditioning, habitat and, frankly, hubris. 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. How to Report a Possible Mountain Lion Sighting. 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. Thank you for reading. These are huge animals that make a lot of distance to the day. So special. We live pretty much in the midst of the Green Mountains in the town of Andover. While the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks department hesitates to give solid numbers because they feel methods for tracking the population need to be improved, their estimate in 2019 was about 4,000 - 4,500 mountain lions. But that was OK. Bo Ottmannknew they were out there. Please contact me at epuma@frontier.com or 304-749-7778. And somebody hollering. It was dark so I couldnt get a good look but I waited till it came out past a vehicle and saw the outline of the entire body. Now, lets start talking about our favorite big cat! In the first, there are those such as myself, whove maybe heard a few second- or third- or fourth-hand stories as well as official denials from state agencies or professional biologists, and therefore find themselves betwixt and between, neither believing nor disbelieving. For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. Lynx sightings and Catamount sightings have been on the increase every year since 2003. It was a few miles south of the Hanover exit. 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). Its documented through track surveys, aerial surveys, trapping and collaring surveys. Monday Friday: 10 a.m. 3 p.m. My favorite mountain lion story while living in California years ago was the turkey hunter who crouched down in front of a rock then used his call several times. Lets learn to live alongside this very large animal is one of the schools of thought. He also collects sighting reports on his blog, simply dubbed, "New Hampshire Mountain Lion." The blog still gets sightings, most recently on Aug. 3. Its distinctive featurethe one that sets it apart from other North American wild catsis its tail, which is thick and often as long as its body. of Energy & Environmental Protection. Maysville, WV 26833 He drove me out to the spot. The cat is dead. 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. They were huge. The date was June 17 at about 1 pm. My husband was on a conference call and was staring out of our front window while on the call. A harvest is kind of twofold. Where once it was flatly dismissed as impossible in the so-called developed East, scientists have now documented cougar dispersals and reoccupation of a growing list of eastern states and provinces. Tickets at the door will be $10 until sold out. The cat was out day light standing in hill that was near road only about 3 FT off ground, looking at me driving by. While . 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