more New England mountain lion rumors

[sardog1]

Man provides pictures of what he believes is a mountain lion track on Crawford Ridgepole trail between Morgan and Webster:

http://www.wmur.com/escape-outside/...nge/-/18282296/22913768/-/qvjovq/-/index.html

Great to see that XL glove and the description in the photo. Here's some quick info on Distinguishing Cougar, Coyote and Bobcat Tracks

 

[Greg YEAH!]

Man provides pictures of what he believes is a mountain lion track on Crawford Ridgepole trail between Morgan and Webster:

http://www.wmur.com/escape-outside/...nge/-/18282296/22913768/-/qvjovq/-/index.html

First it was killer packs of coyotes in the Belknaps and now mountain lions in the Squam region. What's next, gangs of psychotic chipmunks in the Kinsman Range? You and your scare tactics won't keep me out of the Whites.

 

[Red Oak]

track looks like a classic bobcat track inside another track.

 

[Tom Rankin]

track looks like a classic bobcat track inside another track.

Agreed, it's too small to be Cougar, which is sort of a frightening thought.

 

[sardog1]

Take a closer look at the image, which I'm republishing here under the assumption it meets the four requirements of the "fair use" copyright exception.

I agree there are several paw prints next to the glove. The uppermost is the right paw of a feline. That uppermost print is at least three inches across and probably closer to four, when compared with the glove. (I just measured a similar glove here at five inches across the knuckles when spread flat as in the picture.) That would be one hefty bobcat that I would not want to meet in the wild …

Note also the print at the bottom right corner of the image. Note the width and length of the toes displayed.

It will be interesting to hear about any follow-up with the photographer.

 

[nartreb]

The top print does give the impression of a small print in a big hole, until you measure the photo. I put the "small" inside print at 3.75 inches across, plus or minus half an inch.

That's a very good find. If he measured the other sets of tracks, he might be able to show the presence of multiple individuals; and if there were two small sets and one large set, that would be quite interesting indeed.

I'm not familiar enough with those trails to know how much to credit the idea that three sets of tracks since significant snow in "early morning hours" => three individual cats. Could it be one cat making three circles (with the return track past the end of his hike), or three zigzags (where he missed the return tracks due to bare ground or other factors)? Big cats move very fast - cruising speed for a puma is around 10mph. It's not hard to imagine a cat literally running circles around a hiker.

 

[Fitz]

A passing motorist has reported what she thought might be a dead mountain lion in the median of the MassPike near Becket, MA on Sunday. See my earlier post about my son's live sighting a week ago Friday. Maybe it is someone hoaxing my post on the New England ML Sighting forum, but it doesn't seem that way.

 

[Fitz]

A mountain lion sighting was also reported on Saturday in Wayland, MA.

 

[hikerfast]

im waiting for a new england mountain lion pic..right after the one of the loch ness monster..hehe

 

[nartreb]

Hikerfast: here you go:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/27/connecticut.mountain.lion/

 

[hikerfast]

that is ABSOLUTELY a picture of a mountain lion in new england. a lot of questions remain though. when this guy had his pet in the back of his pickup truck, did he let it out on purpose or did it escape? where was he bringing it? did he let it loose to cause a sensation?

 

[sardog1]

that is ABSOLUTELY a picture of a mountain lion in new england. a lot of questions remain though. when this guy had his pet in the back of his pickup truck, did he let it out on purpose or did it escape? where was he bringing it? did he let it loose to cause a sensation?

That was one well-trained cat. It said goodbye to its family in the Black Hills, hooked up with a guy in a pickup, did its business at various spots in Minnesota and Wisconsin and New York, then it was on to Connecticut where they parted company.

Or not: NY DEC Wildlife Pathology Unit Case Report # 100948

 

[Red Oak]

That was one well-trained cat. It said goodbye to its family in the Black Hills, hooked up with a guy in a pickup, did its business at various spots in Minnesota and Wisconsin and New York, then it was on to Connecticut where they parted company.

Or not: NY DEC Wildlife Pathology Unit Case Report # 100948

Great reading,thanks sardog.Those paw prints were huge on that poor cat.The last sentence seems to sum up the state of mountain lions in the northeast,indicating lions would likely be detected if here.
pic of bobcat track last winter

 

[hikingmaineac]

Werewolf spotted by trail camera in Maine

 

[erugs]

On a New Boston, NH Facebook page today I saw a photo of a mountain lion that was supposedly in Greenfield, NH, looking into a bus. A comment below stated that some years ago the a few mountain lions were released in NH to help control deer population. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...073046140.6956.100000186436176&type=1&theater

 

[Mike P.]

From Out west to Greenwich, CT via Lake George. The cat, seen in WI, gets by Great Lakes by heading south past CGO metropolis or up through Canada through the U.P. and over a bridge or across one of the narrow sections of the Lakes, across the Detroit River and into Canada and then cross the St. Lawrence? It knew to make a wide circle around congested CGO put ends up in Greenwich? Couldn't find any suitable territory between SD and Greenwich & yet was in the Lake George area? The ADK's were not as nice as Greenwich? Eastern, NY, PA? Maybe the cat was on it's way to the Cape or Maine for some Lobster, Newport for the summer?

Maybe the buyer took him out for a walk, or the evidence was planted, an empty stomach, plently of domestic animals in the Greenwich area. Maybe they wanted him with claws because they were planning on setting him free in some type of game park or hunting preserve for the rich? The idea an animal which normally travels 100 miles or less travels 1500 miles on his own, past lots of suitable, desirable habitat, seems very unlikey when we have eccentric billionaire types who live in the Greenwich area. Maybe someone wanted to "one up" their Chimpaneze owning neighbor.

Given a choice of a wild animal acting out of character or a human acting bizarre, I'll put my money on the human acting bizarre every time.

 

[sardog1]

Given a choice of a wild animal acting out of character or a human acting bizarre, I'll put my money on the human acting bizarre every time.

Your various theses require the active participation of an individual employed by the Forest Service in Colorado, some unnamed individuals in Minnesota and Wisconsin, a retired colonel from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation, his wife, an active duty DEC Environmental Conservation Officer, and at least one lab tech employed by DEC. That's a whole lotta bizarro to organize:

"Four hairs were sent to Kristine Pilgrim at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station on July 28, 2011 for DNA analysis to determine species and to determine if it was the same mountain lion that was killed in Milford Connecticut on June 11, 2011. Initial results of mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed the hairs were from a cougar (mountain lion); subsequent DNA profiling, amplified eight loci, and confirmed that the hairs were from the same mountain lion that was killed in Connecticut, and that was previously identified through scat, hair and blood from one site in Minnesota and three sites in Wisconsin in late 2009 and early 2010. At eight loci the probability of two individuals with the same genetic profile of NY100498 (Lake George WPU Case # 100948), CT-PC-1 (Milford Connecticut roadkill), and WI-StCroix (hair and scat samples from Minnesota and Wisconsin December 2009/2010) matching by random chance is greater than 1 in 345,000."

 

[Mike P.]

Your various theses require the active participation of an individual employed by the Forest Service in Colorado, some unnamed individuals in Minnesota and Wisconsin, a retired colonel from the NY Department of Environmental Conservation, his wife, an active duty DEC Environmental Conservation Officer, and at least one lab tech employed by DEC. That's a whole lotta bizarro to organize:

"Four hairs were sent to Kristine Pilgrim at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station on July 28, 2011 for DNA analysis to determine species and to determine if it was the same mountain lion that was killed in Milford Connecticut on June 11, 2011. Initial results of mitochondrial DNA analysis confirmed the hairs were from a cougar (mountain lion); subsequent DNA profiling, amplified eight loci, and confirmed that the hairs were from the same mountain lion that was killed in Connecticut, and that was previously identified through scat, hair and blood from one site in Minnesota and three sites in Wisconsin in late 2009 and early 2010. At eight loci the probability of two individuals with the same genetic profile of NY100498 (Lake George WPU Case # 100948), CT-PC-1 (Milford Connecticut roadkill), and WI-StCroix (hair and scat samples from Minnesota and Wisconsin December 2009/2010) matching by random chance is greater than 1 in 345,000."

I'm not saying the officials did not find the evidence after the fact, merely that no one, not one person saw the animal alive during it's cross country traverse. How far from the road were the hairs & scat found? Could some one have been out walking his pet cougar the same way you'd stop every couple of hours with rover? You wouldn't stop and let the cat your transporting illegally out at the I-95 rest stop at noon but could you let him out on a dirt road in the ADK's or WI, etc around 2:00 AM? (People transporting other illegal cargo take precautions not to get caught. Would it be safe - healthy to keep the cougar sedated for the entire trip? Maybe drugged? How far from a gas station was the evidence found, you wouldn't want to pull into the Gas N' Go with an alert cougar & then have someone pull in next to you. Not sure a step van or small U-Haul would be sound proof.)

There is ample habitat from SD to CT in places where the evidence was found without other cougars where the cat could have been the top four legged predator. What pushed the cat from those places to Greenwich, a place known for large estates, and uber wealthy folks one upping the Jones's on a grand scale. (Search for a mate & the cat only could only go East?)

I'm not doubting the evidence or those who analyzed it, just how the cat got from point a to point b. I find it hard to believe the cat made the trip unassisted & too coincidental that a place known for excesses was the first and last place it was seen alive. I am assuming the dates are those when the evidence was found.

Two years making it's way across the country,never seen crossing all types of highways and rivers & deciding a very busy congested area was a good place to sneak though to a better home, it avoided many busy cities and ended up in a suburb of the biggest city?

or

transported & keep in captivity, one day escaping it's estate home & not being able to cross the first busy highway safely.

FWIW, I'm not watching any of the Sasquatch shows waiting for them to find one in some of the places they've looked either. Cougars someday may make it back east, the cats will have to compete with the current coyote which in some cases is a wolf-coyote hybrid. Bears haven't been very good at living amongst people in suburbia, especially in CT when the rare one appears in neighborhoods. Cats are better at being unseen but that much distance and time unseen seems too unlikely for me.

 

[sardog1]

Actually, this cat was observed several times on its trek (but amazingly, not once leaping out of the back of a pickup):

"At the time, wildlife officials from Minnesota and Wisconsin worked together to collect biological samples to be tested by the U.S. Forest Service's Wildlife Genetics Laboratory at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont. That they were able to match so many local sightings to the same animal was considered a testament to the power of DNA forensics, said Mike Schwartz, the lab's conservation genetics team leader.

"'It was remarkable that we kept getting the same match because that hadn't really happened before," Schwartz said. 'We thought that was the end of the story.'

"But the cat kept roaming.

"Tracks were found near Cable, Wis., a few miles from the Birkebeiner cross country ski trail Feb. 27, 2010, the day of the race. Trail cameras from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan suggest it headed north of Lake Michigan, but no Midwest sightings are known after that.

"Wydeven speculated it might have crossed into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie, traveled east across Ontario and crossed the St. Lawrence River back into the United States by island hopping the river's Thousand Islands area."

Cougar's prowl from Midwest to Connecticut astonishes scientists

It's worth remembering that this is a species bearing among its many monikers "ghost cat". It makes its living by stealth. Many hunters out West have been shocked to discover one very nearby, and the hunters who pursue them regularly often are surprised by its ability to stay concealed.

 

[jniehof]

It's worth remembering that this is a species bearing among its many monikers "ghost cat". It makes its living by stealth. Many hunters out West have been shocked to discover one very nearby, and the hunters who pursue them regularly often are surprised by its ability to stay concealed.

Data point: the only reason we knew we had one in town was that somebody has a little watering pond set up in their backyard with a motion-triggered camera. Whereas the bear that wandered in made its presence very well known, and the deer and coyote are pretty darn visible, too. (Tuesday morning, on my way to work, I ran across a crosswalk, turned along the street, and kept going, wondering why all the traffic was suddenly stopping. Just after I turned, a buck had come down behind my back and was calmly using the crosswalk.)