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Mountain Lion in Westchester


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Another bogus lion sighting report. These people are morons. Every bobcat, coyote, big dog, etc that is spotted; People cry "Mountain Lion"

PURCHASE — Deep in the heart of estate country, among the mansions, country clubs and schools of Purchase, lurks, maybe, a lone predator with an insatiable appetite for squirrels, raccoons and other small mammals.

Twice last week, as the long shadows of dusk stretched across the Sarosca Farms subdivision, workers spotted what they thought was a mountain lion. Word of the beast’s appearance in the otherwise tame fields of Harrison reached town Supervisor Ron Belmont, who included a note about the sightings in his Jan. 14 letter to residents.

After assuring his constituents that the Police Department was “tracking the time and location of each sighting,” Belmont wrote: “Please proceed with caution, supervising young children and small animals and avoid unlit areas in your neighborhood.”

Belmont has since visited the site, a development with several large homes and many more cleared lots evenly spaced along Stone Bridge Road near the Old Oaks Country Club, but hasn’t seen any hint of a massive cat. Whatever the workers saw, he said, was “very big” with no spots. He said someone snapped a photograph of a paw print; it turned out to have been made by a dog.

“I’m starting to think it’s not there,” Belmont said today.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation says mountain lions — aka cougars, catamounts, panthers — were extirpated from the Northeast in the late 1800s. That hasn’t stopped reported sightings. Occasionally a rogue cat materializes. In 2011, a mountain lion was run over in Connecticut; officials determined it had roamed east from South Dakota. And in 2009, Orangetown hired trackers to make sense of a string of big-cat sightings and claw marks found in Palisades. No lion ever surfaced.

The DEC received a third-party report of a mountain lion sighting in Harrison earlier this week, said spokeswoman Wendy Rosenbach, but no agents had been dispatched to investigate.

Asked about the likelihood that what the workers had seen was, in fact, a mountain lion, Rosenbach said,

“We don’t have any evidence of any reproducing populations of mountain lions or cougars in New York state.”

Pressed further and asked if it were possible that a mountain lion could be prowling through Purchase, she replied, “Probably not.”

Rosenbach advised those who think they might have spotted an unusual animal to call the DEC’s wildlife hotline at 845-256-3098, and reminded New Yorkers to “enjoy wildlife from a distance.”

For the time being, the Purchase panther remains little more than a specter, perhaps slinking among a handful of newly built 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom homes and empty lots; perhaps simply mistaken for a dog. A visitor to the subdivision this morning found neither the cat nor the workers who reported seeing it.

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Hey ya' never know!! :biggrin:

I'm not a sceptic or a believer, but have learned not to discount what I cannot prove.

I was told by a family member that they found a deer carcass up in a tree down in the catskills while they were building the Millenium pipeline. :hunter:

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i know a few people who have seen them in Greenwich CT. That is pretty close to the spotting in Purchase. The experts say they have a range of 200 square miles...one was found dead in milford CT only 40 miles away from greenwich so i guess its not a crock. Why do you think they are morons?!?!? Because you traveled thousands of miles and spent big $$ to have a dog chase one up a tree and shoot it?

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that cougar that was killed near greenwich, had traveled in from north or south dakota, it wasnt from a resident population..........................the story of the deer in the tree I've heard since the early/late 90's. ward stone, wildlife pathologist from DEC said it wasnt a cougar kil.................and anything I've ever seen about cougars is that they bury thier kills, not drag them into trees, like a leopard does in africa

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If I remember right, the NY DEC was telling everyone that there were no coyotes in NY state a while back. I don't believe any thing they say. If the truth came out about mountain lions, ,them everyone would be out there hunting them. They are here ,I know because I saw one and know of others who have seem them.

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Not if they are Identifying dogs, bobcats, house cats etc as mountain lions.

+1. The people doing the identifying are anything but outdoorsmen.

i know a few people who have seen them in Greenwich CT. That is pretty close to the spotting in Purchase. The experts say they have a range of 200 square miles...one was found dead in milford CT only 40 miles away from greenwich so i guess its not a crock. Why do you think they are morons?!?!? Because you traveled thousands of miles and spent big $$ to have a dog chase one up a tree and shoot it?

Yes, the greenwich lion was documented and nobody has proof of one since. I know a few people who saw flamingo's in greenwich, so does that mean they are there?

What would me getting a lion in Arizona have to do with my original comment? I said they are morons because they have no idea what they are identifying, not because I shot a lion. Your comment doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You just sound like an 11-post jealous guy.

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that cougar that was killed near greenwich, had traveled in from north or south dakota, it wasnt from a resident population..........................the story of the deer in the tree I've heard since the early/late 90's. ward stone, wildlife pathologist from DEC said it wasnt a cougar kil.................and anything I've ever seen about cougars is that they bury thier kills, not drag them into trees, like a leopard does in africa

Correct. I have talked to many mountain lion outfitters and none of them say that lions put deer kills in trees. Every deer kill they ever come across is on the ground, sometimes partially buried.

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I have been hinting one spot for abt 6 years and have game cams in 6 months out of the year i see bobcats abt 4 or 5 times a year while hunting and have never gotten a gamecam pic does that mean they arent there too?

No because numerous others take bobcats every year in NY and there is a lot of real proof of them other than alleged sightings.

See the difference?

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Jealous of what believe me i have plenty of money to pay a dog to chase an animal up a tree i could do it everyday if i wanted

Another stupid comment. $1.5MM (not including flights, licenses, taxidermy, gratuities) it would cost you at $4k per hunt per day. So definitely well over $2MM. But you wouldn't be able to keep up and never get a shot anyway.

I do find it flattering though how you barely have any posts but have gone back and read my hunting stories from months ago.

Edited by Biz-R-OWorld
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I have been hinting one spot for abt 6 years and have game cams in 6 months out of the year i see bobcats abt 4 or 5 times a year while hunting and have never gotten a gamecam pic does that mean they arent there too?

No, but your cam is not the only one out there in NYS, and there are plenty of bobcat pics from others in NYS. Not so with MLs.

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  • 10 months later...

It is now 1999. There are  no mountain lions in Missouri. Well there was a lion treed in January but that was probably a mountain lion raised in captivity and there were a few earlier but same thing. There are no resident mountain lions in Missouri. It there were, we'd see them. They are all bogus reports. people see a squirrel and think it is a mountain lion. Again, there are no mountain lions in Missouri. 

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It is now 2010. There are no mountain lions in Missouri. People reporting them are really mistaking small children for mountain lions. Yeah their are photos (2 in 2010; 2 in 2006) but if there were really mountain lions around we would see them. Yeah there was one killed in 2002 but that was probably just a captive one let loose. 

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