Illinois likes to pretend that there are no cougars around here. However, there have been several sightings and prints found 30 miles North of where I live, and coincidently on the same night, and a few nights after that.
The police from that town were riding through the town perched in the extendable bucket of the town’s fire truck “looking” for the cat. Yeah, I’m going to call the sheriff.
There is an abundance of deer in the forest preserves, so I don’t think they are prowling around for food.
this is my county and sightings are reported often...
In 2000, a cougar was killed by a train in Randolph County. Wildlife experts at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale who examined its carcass found that the animal showed no signs of captive rearing. It had the remnants of a deer fawn in its belly, not pet food, and its DNA confirmed it to have been of North American origin rather than of South American stock, as would be true of an escaped or released pet. Investigators reporting the finding in the Transactions of the Illinois State Academy of Science described it as “the first confirmed occurrence of a cougar in Illinois in over 100 years.”
It is hard to imagine that this unlucky cat is the only cougar to find life in Illinois to its liking.