US Officials Declare Eastern Cougar Extinct

billydkid said:
Yes, you are correct. I misread.
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But I have to add, I don't think you were really arguing that it was Connecticut and not NY. I think you were arguing that it is urban legend that a cougar was hit by a car in the northeast. NY or CT is really pretty incidental to the story.
 
billydkid said:
But I have to add, I don't think you were really arguing that it was Connecticut and not NY. I think you were arguing that it is urban legend that a cougar was hit by a car in the northeast. NY or CT is really pretty incidental to the story.
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The cougar hit by the car in CT was already well discussed in the thread before you mentioned a cougar hit in upstate NY.

Few would have thought you meant the CT cougar, imo.
 
http://suffield.patch.com/articles/connecticut-mountain-lions-the-real-story

The guy writing it thinks he sees mountain lions all the time, but fortunately, he cites the expert, as seen here.

"If we had a small resident population of mountain lions it would be easy to document," says DEEP wildlife biologist Paul Rego, whom the agency calls upon to answer questions about the species. He notes that DEEP receives many reports but, the Milford lion excepted, no confirmations. On the other hand, he adds, "There are many negative confirmations."
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LTC8K6 said:
The cougar hit by the car in CT was already well discussed in the thread before you mentioned a cougar hit in upstate NY. Few would have thought you meant the CT cougar, imo.
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Also, billydkid said the NY roadkill happened last year or the year before. The CT incident was from this past summer.

Fail.
 
Parcher, that is what tipped me off as well. He was citing an incident from long before the Conn. Cougar incident.
 
Don't try and say Cougar sightings are not just like Bigfoot sightings.
http://savethecougar.org/

This appeared to be a huge husky. Too big to be a coyote. To thick. Hard for me to believe that at first I thought this was a puma. Just then Cindy goes what the hell is that animal? There was the cat. Huge in all its glory. As It made its way through the next field south on 652 on the west side of the road and went to the back of the field, maybe 300 feet from the road now I noticed the end of its large tail was dark in color,and it kept pacing back and forth waiting for, what I now believe looks more like a wolf then a husky. This animal had a hard time negotiating the fenced in field because of the 3 legs. He managed to make it into the field and rested by the b ig tree before the cat came back into view and the 3 legged animal left to meet back up him. My thought was to call 911 and report what we saw. However Cindy and I have encountered many things strange in our early morning drives to the lake and what not so we just went on to Huzzy Lake. Common sense tells me it could not be a puma. But My vision tells me otherwise. I sure would like to know if anybody North of Huzzy lake has seen these animals though. Of course queen of photographing and I didn't have any of my cameras. No binoculars nothing to reinforce what we thought we were seeing.
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I was driving with the brights on, only going 50 mph, because I had been seeing a lot of critters out and about. All of a sudden this black streak flew across the highway, right in front of the headlights. It leaped from one side of the highway to the other, only 4-6 feet in front of the van, without it's feet touching the road. It was fully extended, black as coal, and shot across the road so fast it must have been going almost as fast as I was. My scream woke up my guy, and I sure wish he hadn't been snoozing because he missed one heck of a sight!
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I was driving when I noticed a large animal cross the road about 10 meters ahead of me. I first thought it was a deer because I saw its eyes first, but then quickly realized it didn't have hooves or antlers. It was tawny colored and moved like a cat. The animal looked to be about the size of a St. Bernard. Once it got to the other side of the road, it stopped and looked towards my car. I slowed way down because it looked like it was going to cross the road again. I could see its face. There weren't any tuf ts of hair on its ears and it was all one color, there weren't any spots. After I slowly drove past, I looked in my rear view mirror and watched it stand there for a few seconds before moving into the field next to the road.
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I was driving back from my friends property in Mio where I was bowhunting when about 100 yds. in front of me I noticed something solid color dark brown at side of road. Now this definetly was not a deer because its head was shaped like a bowling ball with no long snout, about 24" to 30" to top of shoulder, and if I had to guess on weight I would have to say 70-80 lbs. Now to the skeptics, I have been hunting all over lower peninsula for 20 yrs. and I have never seen any other animal shaped like this. Also I sped up to get a better look at this animal but it seen me when it got to side of road spun around fast and leaped three times (about 40-50 yds.) to the jack pines out of sight.
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Note: I am not quote mining hundreds of sightings. These four quotes are from the first five sightings on the page.
 
http://www.ammoland.com/2012/01/02/the-quest-of-the-eastern-cougar/

Come on people.

From the article said:
Already, Greenwich, Connecticut residents and locals doubt the explanation as a transient male in search of a female for what they believe is a resident population of undetected cougars in the Northeast. Wildlife author and active member of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, Robert Tougias, does believe the healthy male cat, that showed no signs of having been in captivity, is one of many male cougars that have escaped the stressed Black Hills population in search of a female.
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A new article with some real gems.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...-in-east-no-way-say-those-who-claim-sightings

But one cougar advocate, Bill Betty of Matunuck, R.I., said people in the Northeast already coexist with cougars, because, he said, they are present and breeding.
"Every state in the East will eventually acknowledge they are here," Betty told msnbc.com. He said he has had 14 daytime encounters as close as 10 feet with cougars -- and nine family members have had 30 encounters.
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It does give both sides of the argument however:

"We just don't take those kinds of sightings seriously anymore," said Mark Dowling, a leader of the network. Pictures turn out to be house cats or even golden retrievers.
Cougars couldn't go undetected, he said. "They betray their presence readily," he said, by becoming road kill or chasing people's pets.
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But there is no scientific evidence, no scat (droppings), no confirmed sightings that cougars are establishing homes and breeding east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, McCollough said.
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clayflingythingy said:
or a wild male that has wandered into the state.
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The two nearest breeding populations are approximately equidistant to Bourbon County, Kentucky. These are the Black Hills in South Dakota and South Florida. Males who have dispersed from the Black Hills breeding population are sometimes found far away (all the way to Connecticut in 2011), but I don't think that any from Florida have wandered very far.

The DNA is currently being tested for this individual and it will reveal its origin.
 
I saw a black cat the size of a Labrador retriever about 40 miles north/east of Wilmington N.C.

I also had a hunter tell me he's seen them twice while retrieving hunting dogs out of The Great Dismal Swamp.

As well as a report from a land owner in the Edenton area of NC he claimed to have watched a pair walk directly under his deer stand.

All anecdotal (and curiously black) I know....I've spent a liitle time in GDS and seen most tracks of every known animal in there and some very big poops!
 
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