Cougars (catamount, panthers, whatever) are in lots of places where the Wildlife Weenies don't seem to want to admit that they have cougars. Like in Michigan for example. Good for Michigan for admitting what landowners and hunters have known for years.
When I lived in Natchitoches Parish in the early 80s, I had panthers on my property. i would hear then occasionally and saw them twice. Ours were dark brown, almost chocolate and would appear black in certain light conditions. The neighbors would talk about sightings, but the wildlife weenies would not admit that we had then in the area. okay, fine. In 2002 I wrote about it on Castbullet.
If you want to stir up some crap around a campfire, tell then that there is no such thing as a black panther. In certain low-light conditions a brown panther will look black. That is what people see and that is what they report. If you go back to the little video linked above, one of the photos looks black.
I'm just glad that they are out there.
Kansas does the same thing with reports of cougars. 'Your eyes are playing tricks on you.' Ask any rancher or farmer and you get a different answer.
ReplyDeleteWe've had one transit our neighborhoods in the North DFW area in the last few months. Folks have captured videos of one on security cameras wondering if it was an exceptionally large house cat or bobcat. I have seen tracks whilst deer hunting a couple hundred miles west of here that couldn't be anything but a large cat. Glad I didn't meet them in person.
ReplyDeleteI live in East TN outside Knoxvegas. Same story. SEVERAL locals have trailcam evidence, TWRA insists they DO NOT exist here.
ReplyDeleteI'm certain there's a lot of things state agencies would rather not admit to.
My son saw a cougar about 12 years ago, in the country near my hometown of Hesperia, MI. The town is about 25-30 miles from Lake Michigan's eastern shore, and up from the bottom of the "mitten" to around the middle, so that it is certainly not in the Upper Peninsula where the DNR tried to claim that the only cougar sightings had been, and those of a lone male travelling through. The reason that they could not ignore the sighting this time was that it was a female cougar with a couple of cubs.
ReplyDeleteThe DNR also claims that there have not been any wolverines in Michigan for years, and yet I saw one in the back roads of my town in about 1985.
I am now 66, and no longer hunt, but I spent untold hours hunting and fishing in the Manistee National Forest that makes up a huge portion of the western part of the lower peninsula. So I was very much able to identify any animal that I ran across. And no, I never did see a Bigfoot. I am afraid that I would have a heart attack had I seen one back then.
The DNR had a vested interest in keeping the public unaware of any cougars, black bears, etc. due to the states huge dependence on tourism. It is worth noting that they denied that we had any black bears in the Lower Peninsula, until someone hit and killed one with a car near Fremont, MI.
Hesperia is around 12 miles from Fremont, by the way.
Arkansas Game,Fish&Wildlife do the same thing- for a good reason. Panthers are a protected species & if they admit we have 'em no more timber sales which account for at least 1/4 of states economy!
ReplyDeleteBack in the late 1970’s we lived in Jefferson N.Y. a little town on the edge of the Catskills. One morning my wife was taking one of the boys to work on a neighboring farm. Going down the gravel road short cut they had a mountain lion cross the road in front of them. With the tail and body it almost was as long as the road was wide. Of court there are no lions in N.Y.!
ReplyDelete