"mmmmm, an illiongal felinial"
Posted on 06/12/2011 1:12:01 PM PDT by Islander7
BOSTON (Reuters) – A mountain lion was killed just 70 miles from New York City early on Saturday morning, and officials were trying to determine if it was the same big cat spotted a week ago roaming the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut.
The 140-pound mountain lion was hit by a small SUV on a highway in Milford, Connecticut, early Saturday morning, and died from its injuries. The driver was unhurt, officials said.
With no native mountain lion population in the state, "it's possible and even likely" it is the same enormous cat with a long tail spotted last weekend in the New York City suburb some 30 miles away, said Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Dennis Schain.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
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The comments are priceless. People are reporting seeing cougars, bears, and coyotes all along eastern seaboard states despite 'officials' flatly denying they exist.
"mmmmm, an illiongal felinial"
Here in Pennsylvania, there have been numerous sightings of what is believed to be mountain lions.
“Officials” have proclaimed all those sightings to be mistakes.
Maybe he didn't get the memo or as the last survivor, committed suicide by SUV.
“Officials” have proclaimed all those sightings to be mistakes.
Same thing in coastal Mississippi and Alabama. Big cats have been seen and heard there for decades, but 'officials' simply dismiss the sightings.
Sad kitty ping
We have a goodly number of FL panthers (or cougars, or puma or mountain lions, whatver you wish to call them) here in the Sunshine State. They are on the endangered list but their numbers are steadily on the rise.
When I worked for American Cyanamid years ago there were lots of Maine guys working there, many of them hunters. A couple of them swore they had seen big cats in New England and that only Fish and Game officials believed they were extinct.
The comments are priceless. People are reporting seeing cougars, bears, and coyotes all along eastern seaboard states despite ‘officials’ flatly denying they exist.
If you have predators in your neighborhood, you have to solve it the old school way: put baby chicks in a trap and rotate with the neighbors to stay up late until the score evens.
OR, you could get your sheriff to deputize wildlife hippies who would gladly suck the overtime to get high and do nothing about it, either.
Why does this remind me of The Smothers Brothers?
And look at this whopper!
Wilson said mountain lions like to hunt in the shadows and it would be a very remote chance to encounter the cat.
Friend of mine in Alabama bow-hunted every year in the Alabama River bottoms in Monroe County.
One day, around dusk, he put an arrow into a deer. He tried to track it in the dark, then called a couple of friends in to help him find it.
An hour-or-so later, they found it. It appeared to be buried in leaves, with just the legs sticking out.
As they approached the carcass, they heard a low growl -- and somebody's flashlight caught the eyes.
They made an instant and unanimous decision to retreat to camp...and leave the prey to the superior predator.
Nobody slept well that night, I'm told.
..over the last few years I’ve seen more and more red fox in northern NJ. There was a den with two pups within a half mile of me.
Those are just big (140lbs.) feral cats. I know because my cat is out running around half the time and she’s about 70 lbs. Do the math.
undocumenteed working cougar?
Or he escaped from a exotic wildlife farm.
My father used to tell the story about hunting in the Adirondacks in the early 1950s. He was bringing out a deer when this unknown animal started tracking him in a manner that spooked him, so he shot it. He said that he brought the animal back to Saranac Lake and nobody knew what it was.
Years later, when he was visiting me in Alaska, we were at the Mat-Su Vistor’s Center and he suddenly pointed to a pelt on the wall and said, “That’s the animal I shot.” It was a wolverine.
Wildlife experts say that the animals haven’t been seen there since the 1850s. Except my father claimed that he shot a wolverine 100 years later.
My guess is that there are a fair number of mountain lions back East, simply due to the huge numbers of white-tailed deer and the lions themselves are quiet and discreet. I’ve spent weeks on end in wilderness in the Pacific Northwest, and saw one mountain lion the entire time, and that’s in an area where they’re common. As far as coyotes go, my wife and I saw one on Cape Cod in 2001.
My other guess is that no wildlife official wants to declare a population of lions in their state, since it possibly might create a nightmare of endangered species regulations. Best not to attrack the attention of those people.
There have been numerous Jaguar sightings in southern New Mexico.
Big suckers too.
Many years ago - about 25 years, in fact - I saw a mountain lion stalking through the grass along the California coast near Point Reyes. Naturally, I was called a lunatic, I was told nobody sane had seen one since 1920, etc., etc.
About 10 years ago, the authorities came out and said, yes, there were mountain lions there, and in fact, there were a lot of them.
“Wilson said mountain lions like to hunt in the shadows and it would be a very remote chance to encounter the cat.”
Yeah, unless it thinks you’re dinner.
The only Cougar proven to have traveled 200 miles in one day.
Shame on that nasty SUV. Prolly killed the last of the species. That SUV needs to be locked up.
PING this one over to Slings And Arrows!:)=^..^=
“The Smothers Brothers”
When they weren’t fronting for the CPUSA, they did some pretty funny stuff (their father Maj. Smothers US Army died in WWII a prisoner of the Japanese).
IIRC, Tommie and Dickie were arguing whether mountain lions should be called cougars or pumas. In the same sketch they disagreed over the pronunciation of “crevasse”. The backdrop was the folk tune “Boil that cabbage down” and mountain lions stalking miners in Colorado.
Mrs BN saw one in Western NC about 15 years ago.
Once when I was a pre-teen and out hiking, I had a close encounter with a black footed ferret...which was officially extinct at the time. A few decades later, they were re-discovered and upgraded from extinct to endangered.
A friend of mine spotted the endangered wolverine a few years ago in an area where it’s said that none officially exist.
Recently local ranchers have lost livestock to wolves where the Fish and Wildlife Dept says there are no wolves.
It happens.
“Tommie and Dickie were arguing whether mountain lions should be called cougars or pumas. “
Eggs Ackley! You win the prize. When I was young, they used to crack me up!
Do stories like these kinda make you cross your fingers and pray for the development cheaper, reduced recoil, big bore guns and ammo? Elephant guns were only for the incredibly wealthy a hundred years ago, now CZ makes decent ones under 2K. Not really needed for cougars, but whenever dangerous critters are brought up and you may only have the ability to get off one shot...
My son and his wife heard one in the Shenandoah Valley of VA last Fall. He said it was eerie sounding.
You have a 70 pound cat???
What did you feed it? Or inject it with?
Once the easily captured deer wise up and flee into the suburbs, panthers will follow. But they will be rightly distracted by slower-moving snacks, namely pets and children.
I think you're describing a 12 gauge slug gun. Fine at close range on soft skinned game. Stuff like elephants, rhinos, and cape buffalo, I'd still want a .416 Rigby with solids.
That is freaking hilarious.
"Buh-buh-b-b-b-b-b-buh big CAT!"
I know, I love my Mossberg 835! There is some really nifty large game killer ammo out there. Even for a smoothbore, there is Dixie triball. I just can’t help but think what gun innovations will be out in the next 50-100 years.
We have seen lots of bears and coyotes (actually a coyote wolf hybrid) and no one denies they exist. I have personally seen a bobcat and we are in its “officially” recognized range, although bobcat sightings hereabouts are rare. There was a report of a mountain lion sighting (by a couple of police responding to a complaint) about a mile from me in 2003, but I think it was actually a bobcat, which is scary enough. There is a lot of undeveloped conservation land around here and several square miles of what was once part of the Army Natick Lab that was contaminated during World War II and been closed to visitors ever since.
One thing I have never seen was cougar. There have been reports of mountain lion sightings in Western Massachusetts repeatedly over the years, but I tended to dismiss them. Now I am not so sure.
Yep. Good point. The wildlife officials sound down-to-earth sensible to me. Lions? We don't have no steenking lions! Thumbs up to them. :^)
My buckshot preference is #1 in a 16 gauge. 12 .30 caliber balls as compared to 9 #00 (.33 caliber) in a 12 gauge. The 16 gauge charge actually weighs more, due to how the slightly smaller balls stack in the hull.
Plus, I’m a shotgun geek/snob.
They're all cats. The same attributes and instincts and even skull structure of Sylvester black-and-white American shorthair or a nice little tabby, exist in every other cat from bob to couger. Cats are natural stealth critters as well as being pretty smart, so there are probably a lot more bobcats and even cougars than folks suspect.
Sad kitty ping
Talk to any cattle or sheep rancher in Wyoming about wolves, cougar or coyotes and they hiss. Like this: SSS
Which could also mean "Shoot, Shovel and Shut up"
Seriously, somebody should get those two together.
That is sad...was hoping they could find it and relocate...poor things...
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