mountain lion in lake george ny

[twsted21]

first confirmed case by the nys dec

http://poststar.com/news/blotter/dec-confirms-wild-mountain-lion-in-lake-george/article_f70da502-ca83-11e0-b0bf-001cc4c03286.html

[132 eight pointer]

Pretty interesting, that cat did a lot of traveling if it did indeed start in S Dakota.

[twsted21]

i would say so, i figured i'd post it since theres so many people on here that doubt their existance in nys.

[Larry]

;D    The cat was probably a male looking for a cougar.  Should have went down to the local bar instead  of a road trip he wouldn’t have ended up dead on the side of the road in Connecticut  . 

[WNYBuckHunter]

i would say so, i figured i'd post it since theres so many people on here that doubt their existance in nys.

Just because one ML walked through NY last year, does not mean they exist in NY on a regular or even semi-regular basis. There is no breeding population here.

[Pygmy]

Geeze, that poor cat must have been pretty horny if he walked THAT far looking for a date.

Seems like he would have stopped somewhere in Ohio and picked up a big stuffed animal and a tube of  ASTROGLIDE and called it good enough.

Just goes to show ya what happens when you go to EXCESS...

Got runned over by a car just due to his libido...Poor feller.. Must have been the Warren Beatty

of pumacougars.

[burmjohn]

At first I thought that site was pornstar.com

[Doc]

That is quite interesting because most of the controversy over mountain lions is not whether there is a self-sustaining population here. More discussions are generated over the fact that anyone stating that they have seen one here is almost instantly called a liar, or at least that is implied. Well, apparently it is possible for someone to actually see a mountain lion in NYS, in the wild. Is there a reproducing population of them in NY? ....... I don't know of anyone who is claiming there is. But I have heard claims of sightings. maybe some of those get a little higher credibility rating now.  :-\

[Pygmy]

I think one of the biggest reasons that people tend to question the credibility of cougar reports is that so many  obviously bogus reports have been made. Many people that I know who claim to have seen cougars wouldn't know a cougar from an aardvark if they saw one in the woods.

Then again,I have seen photos of bobcats, housecats and dogs that some very honest and level headed folks were absolutely CONVINCED were those of cougars or "black panthers". 

As far as I know the only population of black panthers that ever existed in the northeast were Huey Newton and his cohorts.

It's hard NOT to be skeptical.

[WNYBuckHunter]

That is quite interesting because most of the controversy over mountain lions is not whether there is a self-sustaining population here. More discussions are generated over the fact that anyone stating that they have seen one here is almost instantly called a liar, or at least that is implied. Well, apparently it is possible for someone to actually see a mountain lion in NYS, in the wild. Is there a reproducing population of them in NY? ....... I don't know of anyone who is claiming there is. But I have heard claims of sightings. maybe some of those get a little higher credibility rating now.  :-\

Actually, if you go through and look at the various ML sightings threads, youll see that many people claim there to be a wild population of MLs in NY. Youll also notice that those of us that are skeptical do not call people liars, we ask for proof of the ML existence here.

In this case, there was a ML that wandered through, and the proof that it did so is there, and apparently not too tough to come by if they tracked the journey of this particular cat through many states and even down to townships that it ventured through. Now tell me how hard it would be to get verifiable evidence of a resident population of MLs in NY if they truly existed. 

[Doc]

Now tell me how hard it would be to get verifiable evidence of a resident population of MLs in NY if they truly existed. 

I don't know about any resident populations, but I would guess that if I was just walking through the woods without my camera and I saw one, I might have a bit of a problem documenting that. And since almost all of what I have heard or read along those lines, involves almost no people that are really claiming anything about a resident population, I guess failure to document single sightings probably is a bit excuseable when you actually think about it. My guess is that if somebody hadn't flattened this one, we would still all be laughing about those that actually saw it as it made it's way across the country.

I remember a time when claims of bear sightings in our County were met with a bunch of skepticism. That was the case right up until recent years. Now you've got them wandering around up in the city and we have a hunting season for them.....lol. And you know even with bears now accepted here, you still can't find tracks or scat or any sign of their existance. So if there is an occasional mountain lion that passes through the area, I guess I wouldn't really be all that amazed. And if someone claimed to have seen one, I guess I would give them the benefit of a doubt.

[WNYBuckHunter]

If you saw a ML in an area, getting evidence of it is pretty easy, just go back to that spot with a camera and take pics of prints, scat, hair, whatever the animal leaves behind.

As far as bears go, I had heard rumblings of bear living on the farm that we live on, but I have yet to see one. Just yesterday I found tracks in a field within eyeshot of my house. Then we found more evidence of the bears feeding on the corn in the field. Trails and circles of broken corn stalks and ears of corn stripped of the husks and bare to the cob laying around (I have pics of that). I have also found lots of scat in the same general area. All clear evidence of bears that I have never laid eyes on. Ill be putting a trail camera back there later on today and Ill get the visual evidence. Not hard to document at all.

[Water Rat]

          " DEC Confirms Wild Mountain Lion In Lake George"

What Took So Long ?

The DEC had paw track photo's and hair samples taken by retired DEC Colonel Eggleston 7 months before it was struck and killed by a car in Connecticut. It's obvious that Colonel Eggleston knew exactly what he was photographing at that time and yet not a word was said about it. If the mountain lion hadn't been killed , do you honestly believe the NYSDEC would have released this statement ?

[Pygmy]

Geeze, Doc, bears must still be pretty scarce up where you live. Around here I could take you out and find bear sign pretty easily, even on bare ground... Between obvious signs of thier feeding  like overturned rocks, dug up stumps, etc.and piles of bear scat ( they seem to like to crap on dug roads, trails, etc.) there is lots of sign around. And once snow arrives, they leave plenty of tracks.. Unlike those elusive pumacougars, that seem to be sighted aplenty in the summer, but somehow DISAPPEAR when snow cover arrives and tracking is possible.

Just as an aside....Feral hogs are documented as having breeding populations in the state and several of them have been shot.

Funny thing.. I have heard MANY more reports of cougar ( or panther) sightings than I ever have of feral hog sightings. I wonder why nobody has ever come up with a carcass ?

[Buckfever85]

This Mountain lion is mounted in the wildlife museum in Vail Mills NY

[WNYBuckHunter]

This Mountain lion is mounted in the wildlife museum in Vail Mills NY

It was killed a couple of weeks ago. Its not mounted yet.

[jusputtn]

Mountain lions don't hibernate.  They have to move around in the winter.  Thus they would leave plenty of tracks if any of them had an established territory in the state.

[Buckfever85]

This Mountain lion is mounted in the wildlife museum in Vail Mills NY

It was killed a couple of weeks ago. Its not mounted yet.

Well the old fella in the museum is full of it then cause they have a male mtn lion mount in there that he was telling us was killed in ct and came from out west some place he may very well of heard about this story earlier and is using it to his adantage then.

[Pygmy]

Yeah. there's a LOT of that kinda stuff going around.. It's called BS...

[Doc]

If you saw a ML in an area, getting evidence of it is pretty easy, just go back to that spot with a camera and take pics of prints, scat, hair, whatever the animal leaves behind.

As far as bears go, I had heard rumblings of bear living on the farm that we live on, but I have yet to see one. Just yesterday I found tracks in a field within eyeshot of my house. Then we found more evidence of the bears feeding on the corn in the field. Trails and circles of broken corn stalks and ears of corn stripped of the husks and bare to the cob laying around (I have pics of that). I have also found lots of scat in the same general area. All clear evidence of bears that I have never laid eyes on. Ill be putting a trail camera back there later on today and Ill get the visual evidence. Not hard to document at all.

Ha! ... our ground is so hard right now, it wouldn't hold the track of a water buffalo. And as far as hairs, I don't suppose that these critters leave gobs of hair laying all over the ground, and unless I could scare the crap out of it some way, scat may not be around the sighting area either. Heck, if I saw a mountain lion for a second while I was walking around, I probably wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to run right over there anyway ..... lol. So I still say that 99% of the time, there would never be any kind of evidence available or visible.

Relative to the bears, yes in areas where they are plentiful, it's no real trick to find bear sign. But in areas where they are scarce, the odds of stumbling onto any sign is pretty darn remote. About the only sign they will leave is when you have a bird feeder or a garbage can outdoors. Of course the obvious point I was making was that if you have one individual or even a few that pass through the area, what are the odds that you would stumble onto that sign? And that applies whether you are talking bears or mountain lions or fishers or martens or otters or whatever. So this requirement that "if you can't produce some evidence, it never happened", is quite bogus. Evidence is nice, but I am not about to call someone a liar , or halucinating, or whatever because they don't whip out a picture or pull some scat out of their pocket. I always assume that they probably saw what they saw until proven otherwise.

[Doc]

That one that walked across the country..... I wonder how many states he went through where nobody even saw hide nor hair of him. How many back yards did he cross without leaving any sign that anybody found? And finally, do we really believe that this was the first mountain lion that ever took a hike across NYS? I don't.

[WNYBuckHunter]

Doc, read the articles concerning this cat, they have hair, scat and prints in multiple states that they have tracked down to this one cat.

As far as the ground being hard, I beg to differ, there are fresh bear, deer, coyote, coon and fox prints all over the place in the fields and woods right around my place. Its been raining pretty good for a month.

[Water Rat]

          " DEC Confirms Wild Mountain Lion In Lake George"

What Took So Long ?

The DEC had paw track photo's and hair samples taken by retired DEC Colonel Eggleston 7 months before it was struck and killed by a car in Connecticut. It's obvious that Colonel Eggleston knew exactly what he was photographing at that time and yet not a word was said about it. If the mountain lion hadn't been killed , do you honestly believe the NYSDEC would have released this statement ?

[Doc]

As far as the ground being hard, I beg to differ, there are fresh bear, deer, coyote, coon and fox prints all over the place in the fields and woods right around my place. Its been raining pretty good for a month.

What fields???? We have no fields. And don't tell me about the ground. I just came off the hill and the ground is like a brick. There are no tracks (as in zero tracks). Even the ATV made no tracks going up the hill. There is no mud and unbroken ground is as hard as pavement even now. And yes we have had a lot of rain and it has all pretty much just run off. In fact we had rain just last night and there's not a bit of moisture left this afternoon.  Lol... you flatlanders check out your farm fields and think you have looked at the whole world  ;D .

[Doc]

          " DEC Confirms Wild Mountain Lion In Lake George"

What Took So Long ?

The DEC had paw track photo's and hair samples taken by retired DEC Colonel Eggleston 7 months before it was struck and killed by a car in Connecticut. It's obvious that Colonel Eggleston knew exactly what he was photographing at that time and yet not a word was said about it. If the mountain lion hadn't been killed , do you honestly believe the NYSDEC would have released this statement ?

Really! with this cat stomping in every piece of mud to leave tracks, and leaving a layer of hair all across the country, and crapping up a trail across America, how come he made it all the way across NYS and almost out the other side without someone in the state noticing all this sign that he was leaving everywhere?