mountain lion vermont 21 Nov mountain lion vermont

near Greenfield with an experienced guide that hed worked with several times. Several years ago, I saw what was definitely a cougar walking along a street. Mountain lions are around 4 feet long with a two-and-a-half foot tail and can stand 24-30 inches tall at the shoulder. 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. I live in New Milford and I saw one crossing the road in front of me when I stopped to get my mail from my mailbox. Anticipating, perhaps, a moment like this. There were pine cones on window sills, a well-used hatchet and a variety of animal figurines on display, and, near the television, a stack of videos including Life of a Predator and The African Lion. Even though the experts say there arent any mountain lions in CT, there are. Blodgett liked talking about this subject. 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. We have a lot of them here in N CA. I was deer hunting with my father, it was in the fall about 7 years ago, in Barre Ma towards the Templeton Ma lines. I appreciated Ottmann and Bettys confidence and commitment, but here I was, poking through thorny thickets behind a bar, trailing a bleeding man whose devotion to proving the presence of cougars was beginning to seem like a quixotic quest with no end. THAT is a mountain lion! It had moved a little and was standing unconcealed, now, in the middle of the logging road. Or, if it does, when that will be. Vermont Mountain Lion Sightings Records suggest that cash bounties for cougar kills were relatively common in the late 1700s and early 1800s; in the Adirondacks, a trapper named Thomas Meacham was credited with 77 cougar kills. Just like we dont need any slimy humans on earth period. In fact, jaguars used to be native to south Texas, as well! 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. 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. The combined scoring differential in those matchups was 158-77. I live in Hopkinton, NH and saw one coming up from the Contoocook River one misty morning. The solitary animal seeks out new territory and eventually a new population will be established. If the mountain lion is a certified killer of sheep and, sometimes, cattle, it has also occasionally attacked humans. In Vermont, for instance, a few dozen wild turkeys from Pennsylvania were released in 1969 and multiplied into the thousands we have here now. Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. The mountain lion is also known as cougar, panther, or puma. In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. This Everglades panther population has recently recovered after wildlife biologists brought in some animals from Texas to breed with the last few native cats and this story is typical of the conservation ethic that has taken hold in the United States. 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. My daughter and I were driving north in West Granby, near the Simsbury, Ct. line just after lunch one summer day a few years ago. The animal that was killed in Connecticut proved that. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native 'eastern' cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. Actually, Blodgett says, something of the opposite was true. Thats a reasonable assertion. Where I live bears, wolves cougars etc roamed freely and now sadly if one of those apex predators is spotted our DNR will usually destroy it. This is a site for people to discuss mountain lion sightings in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. The tails gotta be there. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. I had seen bear, deer, coyotes, foxes, that one bobcat all the usual suspects. 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. Because they are.. The first European settlers arrived in the Texas Hill country in the early 1800s and viewed mountain lions as a dangerous threat to their own survival as well as a predator threat to their livestock. It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. He coined the term landscape of fear to describe the relationship between predator and prey in the wild. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. I got the glasses to my eyes and focused on the animal. When I shared their story with the staff at the center where my sister lived, I expected surprise and interested. Those who believe the growth and expansion of mountain lion populations to be a good thing routinely make the old, you face a greater danger of being struck by lighting or drowned in the bathtub argument and it is no doubt accurate. They denied it until a cougar was hit as it tried to cross the very busy Merritt Parkway. Coyotes, for instance, found their way into Vermont with no help. His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. Now that USFW has declared them extinct, why not formally reintroduce them. In the states where there are robust mountain lion populations, they are a threat to livestock, pets and, occasionally, humans. Then, follow-up DNA researchmatching samples from the carcass with those from scat and hair collected in other locationsestablished that the animal had come to Connecticut from the Black Hills of North Dakota. 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 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. Although the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the . 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? Something I had not expected ever to experience. If someone described seeing a black panther, for example, then you knew right away and you didnt need to do any more investigating.. As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. Its OK, he told me. I saw an adult cougar/catamount twice within a two week period. 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. Im not surprised that various state officers deny the presence of cougars in new England. Mid Vermont Christian School Eagles forfeited their girls basketball playoff game on Tuesday against Long Trail School Mountain Lions. 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. Low 24F. It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. Regarding a breeding population that is the unknown. This is part of the cougar business. I have learned one thing in my career, and thats to never say never, she said. 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. 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 asked him about the catamount and if the animal in Connecticut was some sort of advance scout for a coming wave of resident lions. Vermont offers plenty of habitat in which mountain lions could thrive. 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). You need breeding pairs and theyd probably settle down long before they got here.. All of us with rifles, most of them scoped. Some of them, he says, we could close the books on pretty quickly. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. Videos. 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. But never a catamount. A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. 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. 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. The Strafford & Area Lions conducted its Food From The Heart food drive February 11th through the 18th, collecting 981.6 pounds of food and receiving monetary donations of $1,262 which were used to purchase food and other items to be donated to the Sharon, Vershire and Thetford food shelves. When we reached tower, a ranger arrived in a pickup. Success stories being more fun to talk about than the other kind. It may not surprise you to learn that I was quite intrigued by this third group. Earlier in the year, Id attended one of these presentations, and even in the tiny village of Woodbury, Vermont, on a stiflingly hot summer evening, nearly 100 people showed up to hear her speak and see her photographs (Morse is a magnificent wildlife photographer). Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. This is always been a debate however as someone who is an avid Outdoorsman I can say with certainty I know of at least 12 people that have personal accounts of seeing mountain lion in Central and Western Massachusetts. Wildlife biologists, as professional scientists, require a higher level of documentation and proof. Geoffrey Norman is a Dorset author and a frequent contributor to Stratton Magazine. I think they never left, Ottmann piped in. 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. 104 Williston, VT 05495. Neither resemble a cougar! 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. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. Probably because of all the hunters that would be out trying to get their trophy and endangering others. Could be a deer, but it didnt seem to be tall enough. The restrictions/regulations surrounding management of an endangered species is incredibly cumbersome, and would be difficult to manage. 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. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? It kills to eat but does not necessarily practice any sort of conservation ethic. Cougars, Lynx, Bobcats, Wolves, Bears etc were and are a Their bodies are mainly covered in tawny-beige fur, except for the whitish-gray belly and chest. [Betty] and the other guys dont do this shit. You could have 50. We need cougars and we need wolves back in the Northeast, because a landscape of fear is a well-balanced landscape.. This assessment is echoed by the aforementioned Christopher Spatz, who has been studying cougars for better than 20 years. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. The mountain lionalso known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamountis a large cat species native to the Americas. Yes, of course they are here, transients. . The second occasion was on the way to work when I saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44. As pets or for exhibit. It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. It can run 50 miles an hour and clear a twelve-foot fence. The deer dont eat the exotics, but they eat the competitors. They were also seen at other times by members of my family and other people in the neighborhood. There was one photographed on a porch in Greenwich, CT, looking in the patio window that made national news a decade ago. I was curious enough at the time to do a little research. We also had bobcats that we saw quite often but I am positive that these were mountain lions! Public opinion surveys show many more would support reintroduction, than oppose. 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. 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. But this requires a breeding pair. Ordinary, the lone males do not range much more than 100 miles. Early spring 2019 I caught a glimpse of one entering over grown brush on the side of the road very very early in the morning. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. 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. I thought about why this might be and the best I could come up with for an answer is that we feel a kind of nostalgia for the wild. In the few seconds that this took, I had convinced myself that I was looking at a mountain lion. At Green Mountain Lion Corp, we specialize in placing professionals in a variety of industries. It seems humans just cant resist destroying these animals and either dont realize or dont care what damage we have done to our natural environment over the centuries. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. His Tail was very long almost touching the ground and as thick as velvet rope. 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