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Post by jesse79 on Feb 28, 2008 19:51:07 GMT -5
im sorry Tonka but i have yet found out how to put pics on the computer or else id have trapping pics but i dont know how to. ill also tell my uncle what u said. and i have a ? for u. can we trap these cougars or mountain lions, probably not rite. jesse
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Post by jesse79 on Feb 28, 2008 19:54:30 GMT -5
oh yeah forgot to tell you Tonka, my families farm is on rt. 49 in vienna, heading tords new london food mart.
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Post by jesse79 on Feb 28, 2008 19:59:42 GMT -5
well my family owns most of fish creek landing and thats were we got the pics from, for some reason we caught over 20 porqupines in our fisher and fow, coyote traps. pretty crazy. and the mountain lion was feeding on there carcasses. Jesse
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Post by tonka on Feb 28, 2008 20:31:42 GMT -5
Thank you, Jesse. Are the pics digital?
The federal protection question is a little complicated (we're waiting on a USFWS decision on the Eastern cougar's endangered status, which is supposed to be announced this spring), but the short of it is, any cougar found in NY state, regardless of where it came from, is protected by state law, so it is not legal to hunt or trap them.
You're not far from those Camden reports last fall. That's a bit interior from where we'd expect to get our first confirmations of cougars crossing into the state from Canada, but ya never know. The last confirmation we have from the Northeast occurred in Maine in the south central part of the state in 2000, not near the Canadian border.
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Post by jesse79 on Feb 29, 2008 15:25:15 GMT -5
thanks for the info tonka. jesse.
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Post by jesse79 on Feb 29, 2008 15:27:06 GMT -5
no tonka, the pics arent digital. jesse
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Post by tonka on Mar 1, 2008 7:28:47 GMT -5
You're welcome, Jesse. If you haven't been able to scan the pics, and if you've got reprints, you're welcome to send them to me.
Chris Spatz PO Box 65 Rosendale, NY 12484
If you're family is amenable, I'd also be willing to drive up to Vienna to ground truth the pics, to verify the immediate area around the scene where they were taken from. Any legitimate evidence has to be ground-truthed in order to produce a confirmation. Unfortunately, many purported cougars pics or other evidence from the East, like pics of a huge tom that appeared this week in WV, turn out to be from western states.
Have you found any other sign since the pics were taken: tracks, scat , or deerkills?
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Post by coonhunter92 on Mar 2, 2008 19:02:16 GMT -5
Hey tonka... I heard today that back in maybe 60's there was a mountain lion in newark valley area... I also heard it was let off a game farm same with red wolves
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Post by tonka on Mar 3, 2008 9:51:20 GMT -5
I'm not familiar with that one, but a release was certainly possible.
The last confirmation was from a deerkill in Keene Valley in '97 that the DEC assessed as a cougar kill.
There was a kitten mistaken for a bobcat shot in Saratoga County in '93. The DEC traced it back to a local owner.
The next closest one was when a body turned up Saranac Lake in '68, but it's unclear if that was shot, hit, trapped or simply found dead.
You have to back to 1894 to find the next one, the last cougar bounty killed in NY state.
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Post by coonhunter92 on Mar 11, 2008 12:54:18 GMT -5
Well i guess there was one realeased from a game farm in Newark valley maybe in the 60 or 70s.. I was coonhunting lastnight and myself and another guy were walking to the tree and we walked up the pipeline and we came across a big cat track.. No claw marks in the track.. They were bigger than my fist.. (im pretty big 6'3 250) and we got to the dog and he was bloody but treeing a big hemlock with those tracks running by the tree.. Ive seen bobcat tracks before.. It was eaither a record breaking bobcat or a couger or something.. I heard something about a panther loose in PA recently
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Post by jesse79 on Mar 11, 2008 19:17:41 GMT -5
tonka, ill have to ask my cousin if i can have tjhe pics. it might be a liitle while because he let his dads friend borrow them so he could show some people. jesse
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Post by jesse79 on Mar 11, 2008 19:25:13 GMT -5
there is this old lady that lives down the road from me and she said back when her husband was alive which was in the 70's. he was driving down the road and seen this big cat running down the road so he chased it in his truck and when he got close to it he saw it was a mountain lion and drove ahead of it and parked his truck, got out and grabbed a 2x4 out of the back of his truck and started hitting the mountain lion with it and he beat it to death. he is dead now but she showed me the 2x4 he beat it with and there was blood and hair on it. the reason he killed though is because it killed his dogs, otherwise he wouldnt have killed. jesse
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Post by tonka on Mar 12, 2008 5:19:32 GMT -5
Coonhunter,
I wonder how the tracks would look after a couple of days, but is there any chance of getting back out there and taking pics, with something dropped into the frame for scale?
The only escapee I'm aware of is from Indiana. A female orphaned in Montana was rescued by a big cat sanctuary. She got out of here pen last year, and as far as we know, still appears to be out there.
Jesse,
Thank you for looking into the pics.
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Post by coonhunter92 on Mar 12, 2008 12:52:06 GMT -5
Tonka i took pics on my phone and so did the other guy.. My phone has a cracked screen so when i look at them you cant see them.. I would go back out but we got a dusting of snow.. I know tracks pretty well.. and it was deffianly not a k-9.. Probubly a big bobcat but i dont know how big a lion is.. I remember my dad telling me the next road over he was driving his car up it to go to a friends house and he seen something big run across the road with a long tail.. Till this day he thinks its a bobcat.. But If im hunting them woods again ill make sure i bring my digital
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Post by jesse79 on Mar 25, 2008 17:42:59 GMT -5
me and my friend andy kicak where walking behind my house squirrel hunting. we walked over the hill in my back yard and he said look, when i looked out there was a big cat, probably his back was 3.5 ft off the ground and he had a tail about 3 ft long, but he was like 5 ft long without his tail. well anyways i took off running after it so i could get a better look but i only seen him for a split second and he was gone. i fowolled his tracks as far as i could until it was somebody elses land. i wanted to see him again for a little longer so that way i could confirm that it was a mountain lion, but i dont know. me and andy are going to set a big blind up out in the woods and do some sqeeling rodent calls out of his electric box and see if we can get a peek at him and try and get some pics for you tonka. Jesse
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Post by tonka on Mar 26, 2008 6:22:29 GMT -5
Thank you, Jesse. Any chance of setting up a trailcam? Gander Mountain and others are selling the Wildview Extreme 2 with batteries and a 128 mb memory card for $99. A lot of places are running sales on them now. I've got four of them. They're real easy to use.
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Post by jesse79 on Mar 27, 2008 5:05:36 GMT -5
i have one trail cam set up but im looking to buy 2 or 3 more so ive got more places being watched. jesse
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Derek
#2 Newhouse
Posts: 2,099
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Post by Derek on Mar 27, 2008 15:36:21 GMT -5
i have a trial cam out set to video for turkeys and am looking to get more
i had some tracks behind my house this year that was bout the size of my hand then my grandmas friend said she saw a wolf here in Erieville i think she said it was last week and she did not get a picture of it.
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Post by tonka on Mar 27, 2008 17:36:31 GMT -5
What are you guys using for lures with the cams? I've been using a commercial cougar estrus scent and a bobcat scent, both from InHeatscents. We're using Canine Call on our cam study in the Land Between the Lakes on the western border of KY and TN, which attracts everything, just no cougars, yet.
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Derek
#2 Newhouse
Posts: 2,099
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Post by Derek on Mar 29, 2008 13:26:32 GMT -5
iv never tried lure in front of the cammera b4 and will have to try it now i just get whatever walks by it
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Post by worstcaster on Apr 8, 2008 11:16:15 GMT -5
They just had a really good article about this in the conservationist (magazine put out by NYS DEC). There is no intentional restock program. Most sightings were mistaken identity. Any confirmed cats were traced back to escapes from wildlife rehab centers and illegal pets.
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Post by tonka on Apr 10, 2008 5:59:41 GMT -5
Here's a link to the article: www.dec.ny.gov/docs/administration_pdf/0208bigcattales.pdfI thought he did a good job. It's one of the few admissions I've seen by a state biologist/wildlife rep acknowledging what's going on in eastern Canada, and he mentions all of the cougar evidence found in NY in the last 20 years (at least that the ECF is aware of). The point he makes about NY road-density hindering cougar restoration is outdated. The Black Hills of SD have a similar road density to the Adirondacks, and are probably the primary source for cougars moving into the Midwest.
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Post by tonka on Apr 10, 2008 6:14:22 GMT -5
Oh yeah...and the tracks accompanying the article are canine!
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Post by rendezvous on Aug 28, 2008 19:48:38 GMT -5
Check out Monsterquest, there are big cats everywhere!
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Post by trappintommer on Oct 6, 2008 6:37:29 GMT -5
Just heard a story second hand that someone hit a mountain lion in NY and killed it and took it home to call the DEC. Claimed it had a NYSDEC tag in its ear and before he could get ahold of anyone DEC was in his yard, supposedly had a tracking device implanted in it that sends a signal when the animal dies. Not sure how accurate any of this is but i'm trying to find out. the guy that told me i'd believe but i'm not sure who he heard it from.
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