Where can I find Depth of Field reference charts? Still, people say they know what they saw out there. The Mountain Lion is a large, slender cat with a smallish head and noticeably long tail. Colorado is the perfect habitat for mountain lions. Mountain lions have killed humans in the wild, though sightings and encounters are rare even in the American West and Canada. Check out our online field guide to read more in this series. I don't believe someone's imagination could stretch a six inch long tail to three feet! If you're interested in this, please pass on this link, and if you see a cat, please let me know! Its fur is a light, tawny brown color which can appear gray or almost black, depending on light conditions. Biologists traced it back to the Black Hills of South Dakota, from where it ventured nearly 2,000 miles looking for a new mate. Mountain lions can live in almost any habitat including forests, prairies, deserts, and swamps. This will be one of your best identification marks, along with size. However, it is clearly a mountain lion, and I'm presenting this poor image as a baseline reference for anyone recording a mountain lion on a game camera, or seeing one. But many others believe wild mountain lions are traveling from Western states, where as many as 30,000 could exist, and across the Midwest to Pennsylvania seeking new territory. I usually follow-up on these reports and, via email or phone conversations, I receive more details. Of interestRamapough Lenape chief: National park in PA and NJ would be among 'most destructive things' since colonization. Oregon has a large, stable breeding population of mountain lions. He knows and was familiar with bobcats, and it was not a weird house cat that he and his friends misjudged in size. Fish and Wildlife Service officially declared the Eastern subspecies of the mountain lion extinct, which would seem to bolster the skeptics. Geologist Dr. John Yolton made the identification. The head of the puma is small in comparision to a house cat when compared to the entire body. The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) also reports evidence that humans arrived during the last glaciation or soon after. PHILADELPHIA (AP) An instinct coiled way down in the human brain knows the difference between a bobcat and a mountain lion. There is also a small population of cougars in Florida. For example, leopards and jaguars, normally spotted cats, have a melanistic color morph, the 'black panther,' the black leopard or black jaguar. I am hoping that more and more people will learn of my own interest in this, and will pass on this information and that I'll receive more reports and, hopefully, sometime, a game camera photo that is definitive. original web site, although if I ever have enough time I might And book one of these Poconos cabins rentals for the best outdoor access to these activities. They've been extinct in the eastern part of North America for more than a century. If we continue to be bombarded with manipulated photos and untrue claims in most cases by people who just want to get attention then we may be very resistant to accepting the "real McCoy" if or when) one finally arrives. Do Mountain Lions Attack Humans? For many who have believed to have seen a cougar in the wilds of the Poconos, these arguments might be less than convincing. Learn more about us & read our affiliate disclosure. Heres What the Data Says. One came to her as the result of an owner's divorce. 2023 www.poconorecord.com. Those cats for which DNA evidence was recovered had come east from South Dakota, part of the known, modern-day, U.S. mountain lion range. I've seen so many examples of these distortions, exaggerations and lies over the last couple of years that I've grown very dubious about anything I see on a computer. . Although there was no evidence that the 2011 mountain lion ever set foot in Pennsylvania, DNA evidence confirmed that it had been both west and east of the state. Over the last two years I have occasionally posted a Question of the Month soliciting sightings from people who believed that they have seen a mountain lion in Pennsylvania or in other areas in the mid-Atlantic states. Images from a homeowner's surveillance camera show a tan cat with a long body, beyond a chain-link fence. During this time, male mountain lions will travel in search of females. After all, how many people have pumas? Well, right behind our property lies a mountain ridge, one of several that makes a continuous forest that extends, with little interruption, for scores of miles in three directions. Did they migrate south from Canada? And again, while they may have been mistaken, they certainly were completely convinced that they had seen a puma. "He doesn't like men too much," said Suzanne Murray, owner of East Coast Exotic Animal Rescue in this south-central Pennsylvania town. No projectile points or spearheads were found with the remains, indicating the animal may have died naturally rather than killed by native hunters. Albinos are often very light sensitive, and they certainly are conspicuous, and most do not live very long. After all, skeptics often suggest that puma sightings are just deer sightings, so it would be logical to worry that a hunter might shoot an endangered puma, mistaking it for a brown deer. Now, if there were any escapes, and if any of these bred with a possible minuscule number of eastern pumas, a relic native population, wouldn't the gene pool be corrupted? Two different people told me that they, or a close relative, had seen pumas on more than one occasion. The northeastern U.S. population is thought to have disappeared in the 1930s. If pumas do exist in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, could they all be released cats or escapees? There are deserts, mountains, and swamps in the state of Utah, all of which are suitable for mountain lions. I've spoken to PGC personnel, two being friends, and neither believe there are pumas in Pa. One cited how a bobcat's tail can be much longer than you expect, although I've never seen a bobcat tail longer than, at most, twice the size of the tails illustrated above of the bobcat. Several populations of Gray Squirrels scattered around the country are black, and recently I heard of a neighborhood of black Eastern Chipmunks. In the area around the border of Pennsylvania and West Virginia there are mountains and deep caves that contain some of the coal mines that were a major part of the state's industry in the early part of the 19 th century. None of these sightings has been authenticated, and many of them, including a recent, alleged mountain lion picked up on a surveillance camera in Lackawanna County, turned out to be bobcats. Recently, a man I spoke with told me that he was reminded of a sighting he and two friends had 20 years earlier, and after recalling the incident he was motivated to call his college buddies and reflect on their observation. But no one that I've communicated with had these preconceptions, and seeing what they saw was a complete surprise. At one time this fact almost resulted in this cat not being protected, since it wasn't a pure strain. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Just take your pick of all these incredible Pocono lake house rentals or just a Pocono cabin for rent, in luxury of course! The Game Commission concluded they were coyotes. Not only do hunting licenses support the various state game commissions, and in some states the acquisition and maintenance of public hunting lands, but hunters are a huge boon to local economies each fall, with purchases of food, lodging, hunting equipment, etc. The last documented sighting of an eastern cougar was one killed in Maine in 1938. Everyone is familiar with albinism, the absence of pigmentation that results in a white, essentially pigment free animal, defined by pink skin and pink eyes. In Pennsylvania, I receive a few reports of black, big cats, which makes one wonder -- are there melanistic (black) pumas out there, or are those sightings always wrong. Angel, her African lioness who snarls at strangers, is a big girl. What does a Mountain Lion look like on a game camera? All of these forests are, with few exceptions, open to hunting, and hunting is a very important industry in Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia. Scientists debate whether the large prehistoric mammals became extinct at the end of the Ice Age due to over-hunting, or rapid climate warming. Granted, the image is not great, and I used some Photoshop adjustment layers to enhance the image, making it a bit easier to see. Who knows? As a state known for its mountains, its no wonder that mountain lions live here! This happens usually around the 18-month mark. On that, I've had emails sent with game trail photo attachments, or killed pumas, supposedly shot in Pennsylvania, but these were hoaxes. There is no known estimate of the number of mountain lions inhabiting Texas. Contact the AZ Animals editorial team. It's 90-something degrees, but Rocky's stare feels like ice down your pants. Biologists who investigate these reports claim that several may, indeed, be mountain lions, but most likely they're animals that have escaped from captivity or have been released by their. Mountain lions were once widespread across North America, but their range shrunk dramatically as they were pursued through unregulated hunting and by farmers aiming to protect their livestock, and moved off the landscape by habitat fragmentation. I wanted to know if they're here, so I called some people I trust and asked them one simple question: Are there mountain lions in Pennsylvania? I'd love to hear of any reports you have. A Mountain Lion Cover Up The cat was far enough away that I couldn't get a size reference, and I believed the cat was further away than it actually was. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. She feeds and cares for them with donations and grants. The same goes for New York and several other eastern states. Have some feedback for us? He saw his cat at very close range -- 20 yards or less, and when I pointed out to him that pumas are never black he said that perhaps it was the light. There are approximately 4,000 of those 10- to 40-pound cats in the state. Imagination? By the mid-1900s pumas were eliminated from almost all of the eastern states, and by mid-century were officially extinct east of the Mississippi, except for a remnant population in southern Florida. Same story as 'black panthers' across the country, because of course there, scientifically, can be no such thing. One of these days, though, I'll get one that won't be, and I hope that will be soon. You know, the Penn State Nittany Lions.". the more visible white on the chest, the lack of spots, the huge hind quarters. Some outdoor enthusiasts insist they have seen the big cats here and believe them to be naturally occurring, native animals. "While it seems unlikely, it's not impossible that these animals are showing up in PA," said David Foster, a biology professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg. Caribou remains, dated by radiocarbon in excess of 10,000 B.C.