By Michael Bielawski
A large wild cat known as the catamount went extinct in Vermont nearly a century and a half ago, the last documented killing of the species in the state was by a hunter on Nov. 21, 1881, state Fish & Wildlife officials say.
David Sausville, the Wildlife Management Program Manager for their Essex Junction Office, spoke with VDC about the species.
“That is the information we have, back in 1881 in the Town of Barnard was the last confirmed animal, and it was shot at that time,” Sausville said.
According to the Vermont Historical Society, on Thanksgiving Day in 1881, a boy named James Cadwell was hunting in Barnard. He noticed tracks in the snow and started following them. After awhile, he saw what had made the tracks – a huge panther! Cadwell asked Alexander Crowell, a hunter, for help.
After they tracked the animal, Crowell shot the panther twice. First he shot the panther in the leg with a shot gun. Then he grabbed a rifle from another hunter and shot the panther in the head.
There have been reported sightings since – but nothing confirmed, Sausville said.
“We don’t have any confirmed citings, we get reports every year of people seeing mountain lions but nobody has ever been able to provide us with any type of evidence to date of their presence,” he said. “We don’t ever say never but nobody ever brought in any skins or hair to be tested and we’ve never had any of the animals hit on the highways.”
He said there are a lot of outdoor cameras nowadays that hunters use to monitor wildlife and those have also failed to capture any catamounts.
The large cat also widely known as a mountain lion is not extinct worldwide. Sausville explained.
“Just in different portions of the northeast, the population was eliminated here back in the 1800s but we have mountain lions out in the western part of the U.S. and they are doing very well,” he said. “We even have hunting seasons for them in some of the states so they are not worried about them.”
A long cat journey
There was one male catamount that was spotted about a decade ago in Connecticut, it was unfortunately hit by a car. Using tracking and DNA testing it was determined that the cat had traveled all the way from South Dakota.
“It’s very unusual for them to roam that far but they do come east sometimes from that way,” he said. “If you think about all the urban areas that it had to sneak through … It’s pretty incredible that it made it that far honestly.”
Vermont has lots of bobcats
He talked about some of the large cats that are in Vermont.
“Bobcats are very common in this state, especially in more your valley areas where they have more small mammals and things like that, cottontail rabbits and a higher percentage of mice, they are doing well,” he said.
He said the animals are largely nocturnal, but they may be most active when the sun is low in the sky.
“They do a lot of their work at night … they are very more active towards evening hours, low daylight, and during morning hours,” he said.
He said the best time to see them is after a fresh snow.
“And I’ve seen several of them … a lot of people don’t see them and think they are rare but if they go out after a fresh snow or light dustings you will see bobcat tracks in many areas.”
Canadian lynx have been seen on occasion in Vermont but there haven’t been any sightings for a while.
The decision to formally declare the species regionally extinct was nearly a decade ago.
“Catamounts are considered extinct,” stated an Associated Press report in June of 2015. “In 2015 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggested removing the eastern cougar [known to some as a catamount] from the list of endangered species, ‘declaring that the cougars have likely been extinct for at least 70 years.’”
According to VermontHistoryExplorer.org, part of what doomed the large cat in Vermont was its reputation for killing livestock.
“On this day, Alexander Crowell shot and killed the last catamount in Vermont. In the wild, catamounts ate deer and other animals,” the report states. “But in the 1800s, farmers had cut down many trees and turned forests into farms. Without the trees, there were not as many deer as before. The catamounts started eating sheep that lived on farms. The farmers and hunters killed the panthers to protect their sheep.”
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle and the Burlington Daily News
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Categories: History
I’m not so sure about this. A friend of mine showed me a photo from a game camera placed near the Fall Mountain High School in Langdon, NH a few of years ago. It was, undoubtedly, a mountain lion in the photo. No. I can’t authenticate the source of the photo. It may have been deception. Then again, maybe not.
I am not so sure about this either. I have twice seen a big cat and it did NOT have little tufts of hair on its ears nor was it only 30 pounds. One was sitting on my driveway with my headlights on it wagging its tail. It was a standoff for a few short seconds. I have other family members who have seen them around the time I saw this one, whatever it was. So the mystery continues …..
I’m not buying the story that mountain lions aren’t here in New England. I saw one myself, along with my late mother, when we were driving up Temple Mountain in New Hampshire on a sunny, mid-October day in 1971. Admittedly a long time ago, but when this huge panther with the classic long tale and big cougar face non-chalantly lumbered across the highway in front of our slow-moving Volkswagen, the hair on my neck went rigid. I was driving, and my mother said to me, “Do you believe what we just saw?!?” They’re here, and have been for a very long time.
My wife seen one on our road, I didn’t believe her until a workman in the area from NH stopped me on our road and told me he seen one too.
I don’t believe there are no mountain lions in VT because I saw one 4 or 5 years ago. While driving on Rt. 116 a few miles north of Hinesburg. I saw it cross a field, rt. 116 and then it was gone into the woods. I had 2 or 3 minutes that I could see it at about 75 yrds at first and 25 yrds when it crossed the road in front of me. There is no doubt in my mind that it was a mountain lion and not a bobcat. It was way to big and not the modeled color of a bobcat. It was an even tan all over. It was for sure a mountain lion. Fish & Game can say what they want, I know what I saw.
Yeah the official narrative is they’re gone, but nope, my wife and I have seen them twice, once in Panton and another time in Leicester. BIG cats (significantly larger than a bobcat) with long tails, tawny. It’s my belief that the biologists know it, but are keeping mum. It would create a whole federal protection burden element that is probably being avoided by not talking about it.
A friend took a photo of one, long tail plainly visible, from his game camera to Fish and Game. They looked him straight in the face and said, “That’s a bobcat.”
I had one cross Route 121 in Windham in front of my car in summer of 2015. I stopped, seeing the tawny color, thought it was a deer, then seeing the pink face, not knowing WHAT I was looking at, then the loping stride across the road, then the tail. It disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road before I figured out what it was, as I had no idea or expectation of a cat, let alone one that size.
They’re in VT. Don’t tell the tourists. They might get triggered.
I saw one in the Rockingham, Grafton, Chester area several years ago. Long J hook tail with a pug face and that tawny color. The hunting regulation manual used to say non existent but now says no open season last time I looked.
Can’t disagree with any of these comments my sighting was on 22A about 5mile north of Fair haven
I’ve seen one adult and one yearling…last year…sighted (spelling…its not cited)… and confirmed with F&W that there are onging sightings so this is just a bunch of hooey…the reason they WANT them extinct is LAND USE… conservation …their habit protected keeps money from being made by telecomms and developers… THEN they’d have to protect their food supply too…I’ve also seen tracks as well in winter.
Nothing like a lie to promote false information that benefits…qui bono, again?
Oh yeah… land grabbers…
I know this isn’t true. At least 30 years ago our horses were startled by a mountain lion crossing Middle Rd. In Colchester. We were just as surprised as they were ! Neighbors on north Middle Rd confirmed they saw it as well . It was reported.
It is very political!! If they exist then it becomes an issue with farmers and fear in the public. I have heard of so many accounts from reliable people that I believe they are here in southern vt!
They were not eliminated in the 1800’s. My great-grandmother delivered mail through the hills in Chelsea and heard one scream in the woods. Not long ago, we were told wild boars were in Northern, NY and crop damage proved they were around. Big cats are elusive and smart. They stay mostly to higher ground, coming down for food if they can’t find any near their territory. Being no one is hunting in the same numbers as years ago, the moose are rebounding, the coyotes are rebounding, the bears are rebounding…it would not surprise me a few big cats are wondering to and fro undetected much of the time.
I also saw something that looked like a large, tan, short haired cat, with a long tail, that disappeared into the brush when I was driving slowly down Brigham Hill Rd in the Town of Essex. This is a relatively remote, dirt road surrounded by forest and wet lands.
In Nov, 2001, near the Salisbury swamp, I saw a mountain lion. I knew right away what I was seeing as I’ve seen bobcats many times, and this animal was so much larger. I watched him for a good 15mins, at one point getting close enough that I could literally see his eyes (I then backed away carefully because I realized I was too close to such a predator). I watched him run across a field for about 50 yards, and he was very much a lion, about five or six feet long, with a tail some three feet long. I later went back and found tracks in the snow. The were enormous, nothing like a bobcat, much larger than even a lynx would have been.
When I walked back to my car, a fellow driving a cement truck was parked on the road. He also saw the panther. I called VT Fish & Wildlife. The guy I spoke with talked with me and later called the cement truck driver. He called me later and stated it was a confirmed sighting. His included the caveat that it could have been an escaped animal. I said, “Escaped? From where? Who could have housed such an animal?” He chuckled and admitted he didn’t know.
There have been other sightings of panthers around the Salisbury swamp area by experienced outdoorsmen.