Betty had driven up from his home in Rhode Island. He soon developed a five-question litmus test: How far away were you? 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 he suggested we retrace our route, past lion, to see a sow bear with cubs, we headed in the opposite direction. The tail, I said. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. New in PJ Media: The world having gone absolutely insane, the Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) girls' basketball team is likely to get a lot of heat for this, but in a sane world, they would be the heroes of the story. Put bluntly, Morse does not believe that New England is home to cougars. 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. And its not just Vermont. The reason why experts wont admit to a breeding population existing is that there is NO PROOF. [The catamounts] movements were so noiseless that Mr. Crowell found himself in this dangerous proximity before he was aware of it, and it was only by great coolness and daring that he severely wounded the animal and perhaps saved his own life, reads a placard attached to the display case. If this habitat can support them, it should. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. 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. 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). 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. I saw a Mountain Lion in 2007 in Northfield, MA at the junctions of Rtes 10 and 63. Within six weeks, he continued, I was getting off the plane in Jackson Hole for a national mountain lion conference. (The cat I saw when I was a young boy was on the Gulf Coast.). He and his clients were 100% sure of what they saw, and its very difficult to imagine any other animal being mistaken for a cougar in this case. If someone described seeing a black panther, for example, then you knew right away and you didnt need to do any more investigating.. I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. 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. 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. He set down his cigarette and looked me in the eye. Everglades Panther 3 talking about this. There are no breeding cougars in New England and we do not need any. The discussion of whether federal lands should be a place to subsidize cattle ranching is another question. In fact, jaguars used to be native to south Texas, as well! 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. Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. 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. He/she was UNMISTAKEABLY a mountain lion: stretched out straight, long tail straight out behind him, golden/beigey color, and smallish head, little ears. This was as clear as day had a long tail and long body I was thinking someones pet was on the loose or escaped form a zoo !! 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. A journey of nearly 2,000 miles. As pets or for exhibit. Two mountain lion encounters in his driveway. Long Trail beat Arlington 62-40 on Feb. 7. At least once a year thered be a story from somewhere, but I only ran the absolute best, he told me. 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. Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. Stratton Magazine Celebrating Manchester and the Mountains. Its range was once similarly vast; from the high north regions of the Yukon to the Straits of Magellan. [Betty] and the other guys dont do this shit. If the mountain lion is a certified killer of sheep and, sometimes, cattle, it has also occasionally attacked humans. 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: Harrigans interest in cougars was sparked in the late 70s, after he took ownership of, Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here, After 20 minutes or so, we turned and stumbled our way back to the parking lot. The last catamount killed in Vermont stands under glass just inside the doors to the Vermont Historical Museum in Montpelier, a hop, skip, and a jump down the block from the statehouse. 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. It was fast as hell but there was no mistaking its not only long,but THICK tail as it disappeared into the woods. I saw one yesterday in Windsor Cty Vermont. 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. Chance of snow 90%. Its mounted carcass is on display in Montpelier where Id seen it when I was the adult supervision for my daughters sixth-grade class trip to the capital. o" which translates to " the mountain like a seat." Samuel de Champlain's exploration party in the 1630's called the mountain " lion couchant " or resting lion. In the United States the animal could, at one time, be found in all the states but with civilization, came a decline, the Vermont experience being more or less typical. The cougar and the states refusal to admit it was here made the local paper. Its OK, he told me. Thank you; Blog. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? my father was recently trout fishing in central Mass. Of course. Our hunter friend was hunting in central NH when they came upon an adult deer carcass way up in a tree. As they watched in amazement, the cat casually moved off and disappeared into the surrounding woods. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. Tried to see "mountain lion" and agree that what appears to be a long tail is most likely the . Matthew Johnson/Vermont Historical Society. Interesting article, but it is really incomplete without a discussion of the legal implications of having a confirmed endangered species such as the Eastern Cougar in New England. Looking at the mounted animal, behind the glass, had made me feel kind of well, sad. Morse, 70, comports herself in a friendly and no-nonsense manner. I saw one about 10 years ago, on our road. 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. The mountain lion is also known as cougar, panther, or puma. Cougars, Lynx, Bobcats, Wolves, Bears etc were and are a Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. I could hear the steady rush of traffic on Route 315. 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). These things happen suddenly and they are over quickly. 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. Phone: +1 802 448 8250. 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. Mountain Lions have been more prevalent to the west in the last 100 years, but many of the pockets of breeding populations east of the Mississippi River have been wiped out over the decades due to habitat loss and hunting. 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. Ottmann nodded. Around 1830, the . 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. People said that the catamountas the animal is called in Vermontwas still around and you heard stories about someone who would swear to having seen one. Obviously, this is the reason why the experts are loathe to admit that the species is here. Just like we dont need any slimy humans on earth period. First about the animal, itself, and then about the lore and the possibility that the catamount was not, in fact, extinct in Vermont. The regions top predator, the coyote, is classified by biologists as a mesopredator (a type that in New England includes skunks and raccoons), which feeds primarily on smaller animals. Perhaps, then, the ultimate question isnt whether cougars are among us, but rather how we can encourage them to settle here. Anticipating, perhaps, a moment like this. The guide told him earlier in the summer he and a couple clients had watched a moutain lion come down to the bank of the Deerfield River just upstream and take a small deer, fawn, drag it into the woods and it kill it, they could hear the screams of the deer as the cougar finished the job. A far less likelyenvironment for finding a mountain lion than just about anywhere in Vermont. ), 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. Well, theres no difference between Maine and New Brunswick, anyway, said Betty. Even though the experts say there arent any mountain lions in CT, there are. Big kitty. Theres probably 100 in Connecticut, Ottmann interrupted, rolling a cigarette as he spoke. Yes, of course they are here, transients. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. We got a picture of our culprit, he says, that very first night.. Were arrogant if we think were the only species that makes decisions based on fear, he told me when I called him at his home in Oregon. Im not surprised that various state officers deny the presence of cougars in new England. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. Camel's Hump (alternatively Camels Hump) is a mountain in the Green Mountains in the U.S. state of Vermont.The north slope of the mountain borders the Winooski River, which has carved through the Green Mountains over eons.At 4,083 ft (1,244 m), it is tied (with Mount Ellen) for the third-highest mountain in Vermont.Surrounded by 10 acres (4 ha) of alpine tundra, the mountain is the most . If these animals are not in the habitat, what we see is an overabundance of herbivores., The ecologist John Laundre, who has spent 35 years studying cougars, concurs. Ive heard some biologists say it is not a distinct subspecies. This isnt to say she believes none of these animals has stepped foot on New England soil over the past century. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This setting should only be used on your home or work computer. 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. Several years of doing the follow-ups, then, convinced Blodgett that there were no catamounts in Vermont. There are also many unconfirmed sightings. The truth is, I was by this point dubious. Lacked, almost any tail at all, for that matter. By now, I knew the answer to that one. Id need proof if I wanted people to believe me. Ive attended talks with Sue Morse. Some people thought that the Fish and Wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings. He knew it was only a matter of time. 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. I had been the first vehicle in a line held up by one lane traffic on a bridge reconstruction. 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 ! No doubt of what it was; size, color and recognizable tail. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. I have no choice but to take this seriously, he told me. One cat will leave more than 10,000 tracks per day. 8 Arlington (9-10) and No. The restrictions/regulations surrounding management of an endangered species is incredibly cumbersome, and would be difficult to manage. I came across a dead adult deer carcass high up in an oak tree. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. She favors plaid shirts, green Dickies work pants, and hiking boots, and she chided me for shaking her hand too gently. Our wildlife biologists and enforcement agents are mostly political bureaucrats who dont often venture more than 100yards from the truck. 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