Posted on 12/21/2009 7:56:50 AM PST by earlJam
Hundreds of people in Southwest Michigan claim to have seen cougars.
Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition, a group started six years ago by local attorney and Van Buren County Commissioner Denise Noble, has catalogued nearly 200 cougar sightings in Allegan, Van Buren, Kalamazoo and St. Joseph counties. Add in Barry, Cass and Berrien counties, and total cougar sightings reported in Southwest Michigan jump to 412.
Allegan County had the third highest number of reported cougar sightings in the state, with 62. Van Buren County came in fifth, with 58. Kalamazoo County was seventh in the state, with 54.
Noble said Southwest Michigan’s large deer population and open tracts of land lured cougars from out west into the area.
“I think we definitely have a population here,” Noble said. “I don’t think it is that we have more cougars. I think it is that more people are willing to report and be part of the process.”
Reported sightings in the area date back to the 1800s, but the bulk of them have been since 2000. In Kalamazoo County, according to Noble’s data, cougars have been spotted crossing U.S. 131, in rural areas near Gull Lake and Climax, and in the city, at the intersection of Douglas and Mosel avenues and near Wheaton Avenue and Oakland Drive.
(Excerpt) Read more at mlive.com ...
Now why would cougars come east to Michigan from their usual habitat in the Rocky Mountain West? Might it have been Jenny Granholm’s liberal policies that attracted them? (LOL!)
In NW lower Michigan, we not only have cougars, we have a bear...right across the road from me! If only some people would stop feeding the birds and deer.....
Di Nozzo! Ziva is headed your way, and she’s got her boots on!! Dude, Jane is old enough to be your mother! (And McGeek is wiping your hard drive as we speak!)
Shoot at em! If that doesn't scare them away, shoot at the bear too....
We have a friend that has a photo from his trail cam, but wildlife officers have cast doubt that the photo was taken here in Louisiana. During a muzzleloader hunt last year I personally saw a cat that I could not identify and it was much larger than a bobcat (of which we have many). Due to some brush, I didn't see the tail which would have helped in identification.
Since there was once a population of large cats, one of them being black panthers (as in animal, not thug), I do not doubt that the cats are here. There are numerous sightings of large black cats every year, but wildlife officials scoff and say that they were bears, not cats.
We do not understand why the department of wildlife and fisheries is so set on denying that there may be large cats in the state.
There was a confirmed cougar sighting up near Glen Arbor when I was there around 5 years ago. From what hunter friends of mine have said, they are rare, but not unheard of.
There is only one reason I opened this thread for reading...
Best. Cougar. Evah.
The Panthers are in the Everglades.
The Cougars are in Boca.
LOL.
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks grellis and justiceseeker93. This has gone on for a long, long while. Sightings of this kind have happened in pretty much every state in the lower 48. I used to have a VHS tape from a Chicago station (I had cable) which included a news teaser broadcast during whatever movie I'd taped; the story was about a "black panther" which was observed for a few minutes stalking around a schoolhouse. The observers were maintenance employees I think, who were inside a classroom when they spotted the critter. |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
I saw a couple inside the YMCA yesterday!
What, no Erin Grey pics? What the hell man?
There was one spotted behind the Catholic Church here in downtown Mequon (SE WI) in early November, and one was killed in Milwaukee a couple of years ago. Of course, the DNR denies it.
What I want to know is are these “wild” cougars, or pets that someone released when they got too big? When I was a reporter in TX, I did a feature story on a man who was trying to keep a cougar in his house. The neighbors complained and tried to have man, wife, and cat thrown out of the neighborhood. He did have to leave eventually when he went bankrupt and the cat got too big to keep. I don’t know what he did with it, but I could see that guy letting it loose. He was bad news. (The man, not the cougar.)
Might be one of ours. We have an over-large population, that they are finally admitting is growing faster than previously stated. Going to increase the number tags fro the next season; and also maybe rethink the ban on using dogs.
In the last few years, lions with Black Hills radio collars &/or chips have been found as far afield as far eastern SD; as well as in Minnesota, Iowa, and even (!?!) Oklahoma. State Game Fish & Parks admits to those. Who knows where else they haven’t mentioned; or anything at all about untagged ones.
Mainly it’s young males driven out, seeking new territories to colonize, which is why they are moving east & SE. Areas to the north and west or SW all have their own populations.
Sage advice:
The Panther
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn’t been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don’t anther.
Ogden Nash.
There could be.
I am positive I saw one in the south western high hilly area of very rural NY State, north and east of that area in Michigan.
Few believe me—they say I saw a feral cat...but no way was that a feral cat I saw.
Too big and too long and too furry.
But it’s so easy to mistake the two. A feral cat weighs what? Ten pounds? And a cougar weights up to 250, averaging about 160.
I often mistake things that differ in size by a few thousand percent. Just the other day I mistook a roller skate for an 18-wheeler.
By the way, does everybody else know who all those women are without a caption? Cause I only recognized a couple of them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.