what is this on my game-cam?

[Frannabelle]

Just last week in Michigan's UP, wildlife officials, after years of denying people's reports of sightings, confirmed a cougar through a trail cam. Interestingly enough, it had a radio collar and tag visible in the picture. The article states that trekked it's way from one of the Western states because only Western states have a tagging program for cougars. So, it sounds like these animals are making their way back east after all

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Many cougars have a home range but lone cougars have been known to travel many hundreds of miles. Therefor any state could have some. Missouri claimed for years there were none here (I had seen them in my youth). Now they admit and someone in St. Louis suburbs got one on a gamecam this spring.

 

[sommrluv]

I'm in PA, only 90 minutes from Philadelphia,and a neighbor a little west of me hit a cougar with their car around 5 in the morning last spring. I have a picture I've been digging through my email but I can't seem to find it.

There have been local sightings, as well. I laughed when an article came out that the mountain lion was extinct. Of course, the article also stated that the Northern Mountain Lion and the Western mountain lion were genetically identical, and that any sightings of mountain lion in the east were western mountain lions traveling alone.


Um, makes you go, hmmmm.

 

[WitksChicks]

I've seen a bobcat less than 2 miles from my home in just west of Hartford, CT, along the Rt. 6 corridor in Farmington/Bristol area. My cousin who lives 2.5 miles away has photos of one of they three that they have seen hunting in a field behind their home. They are out there in Central CT, I'm sure of it.

 

[epeloquin]

Quote:
It is definitely not a bobcat, they have stubby little tails which is why they have the name they do. Bobcats are quite common here in Western Mass too but they are very easy to identify because of their stubby (bob) tail and their distinctive turted ears and 'mutton chop' fur on their cheeks. Google 'bobcat' and you'll see.

I would not go so far as to say that the cat in the pic is definitely not a juvenile mt. lion but I still maintain that it is a good sized feral or domestic cat. Again, if you study the photos you'll note that the cat is closer in the pics to the camera than the crow on the ground in the first pic was.

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
epelpquin--I read that report when it first surfaced 17 years ago. There never was a question but that 1993 sighting was a cougar but it was also found to have been of S. American in origin and, in all probability, a released exotic. Thus far, as far as I know, all confirmed and tested sightings have been of exotic animals with the exception of the one killed in CT this last year which wandered in from Dakota and was also sighted in NY around Glens Falls. BTW, my next door neighbor who is also an Investigator for the NYS Police claimed she saw one not over a mile from here crossing the road. It turned she misidentified a light coated coyote. This was confirmed by a farmer working the field as the animal crossed the road who also saw it at the same time.

 

[epeloquin]

Woodmort, your extrapolations are incredible. If you took time to read the report you would have noted that the NTDEC memo specifically stated that it was likely NOT an escaped, clawless exotic because that was over 100 miles away "through the heart of the Adirondacks" and that it "does not explain the earlier sightings" which the NTDEC obviously gave some weight to.

Furthermore, there was a confirmed instance of a cougar kill at Quabbin Resevoir. This was confirmed through scat found near a partially eaten beaver partly covered in leaf litter. The road on which I saw the cougar runs right along Quabbin watershed property. I never even knew about the beaver kill until reading about it here and subsequently.

You say that mt lioms are not breeding in the northeast yet in 2000 a mother and kitten were spotted by...a hunter...and the tracks were confirmed by the Maine Div. of Fisheries and Wildlife to be mt lion.

I have been in and around the woods all my life. I am also a hunter which demands the skill of knowing your target. I have seen my share of wild canines and I know them when I see them. I know what I saw. I coulds still take you to the exact spot where it crossed into the woods. Please don't insult my intelligence nor my experience by comparing me to people who claim to have seen Sasquatch or UFOs or to conspiracy theorists. Frankly it is disrespectful.

If you want to believe that all the sightings, confirmed and otherwise, are spurious for one reason or another then go for it. We're not talking about bigfoot here. We're talking about a species that once roamed the hills of the northeast in large numbers and were hunted virtually to extinction.

 

[kcfuerst]

Quote:
I live in a city of 100,000 people and we have Red Shouldered Hawks all over the place here and raising families as well. We are 100 miles inland from San Francisco and 100 miles from Lake Tahoe in the Central Sacramento Valley, probably 50 miles from what would be considered "real" forest.

It has been my experience that what the government says regarding 90% of most topics can be trusted just about as far as one could toss a pickup truck across the river.

 

[dretd]

Quote:
I live in a city of 100,000 people and we have Red Shouldered Hawks all over the place here and raising families as well. We are 100 miles inland from San Francisco and 100 miles from Lake Tahoe in the Central Sacramento Valley, probably 50 miles from what would be considered "real" forest.

It has been my experience that what the government says regarding 90% of most topics can be trusted just about as far as one could toss a pickup truck across the river.

I am really confused. Are you saying that because the Red-shouldered Hawk is found in your city that it shows that animals will live outside of known habitats and therefore it makes it likely that Golden and Bald Eagles will be in a forest outside of their known range and habitat?

My original post was a prompt for the OP to confirm whether or not Golden and Bald Eagles are known in her neck of the woods, so to speak.

Ninety percent wrong/mistrusted is a pretty high value, I am sorry you feel that way.

 

[dretd]

double post