Searsburg school board member Gary Sage says he was on his way home from a supervisory union meeting in Wilmington last week when a large cat crossed in front of his truck on Route 9. The animal came from the direction of the Deerfield River, and ran across the road heading for an old gravel bank on the north side of Route 9. When the animal first approached the road, Sage thought it was a deer. “Then I realized it wasn’t a deer,” he said. “It was going too fast for a deer. By the time it was in front of the truck it was only about 10 or 15 feet away.”
Sage said the animal in his headlights was no deer, in fact it was unmistakably a mountain lion. “It was about 150 pounds, and its tail was as long as its body,” he said. “It had short ears and a big square head with a short nose. It was cream colored, a little lighter than I would have expected.”
Sage called the state fish and wildlife department to report the sighting, and spoke to state wildlife biologist Doug Blodgett.
Blodgett is the chief mountain lion specialist for the state, following up on many of the 40 to 50 sightings reported in the state each year.
“He was 100% sure it was a catamount,” Blodgett said. “He had no doubt. But we need something we can sink our teeth into.”
Sage and a number of other local residents are putting trail cameras out in likely spots in the hope of capturing one of the elusive cats in a digital image. “That’s what I need to be able to say that’s a mountain lion,” Blodgett said.
There have been a number of photos taken of suspected mountain lions in Vermont over the years. The problem, Blodget says, is that the photos are either of insufficient quality to make a positive identification, or the animal is partially obscured. A photo taken by a motion-activated trail camera in Eden, in Lamoille County, in 2007 showed what was clearly a large cat. Unfortunately, there was no tail visible in the picture. Spots on the cat’s forelegs could indicate a bobcat, a lynx, or a juvenile mountain lion.
Blodgett said he gets many purported mountain lion photos. He recently received a video clip of an animal that the sender believed was a catamount. But the two-second clip taken from a motion-activated video camera only shows the back end of the cat as it disappears into the foliage. Although it’s clearly not a bobcat or a lynx in the video, there’s no evidence that it’s a mountain lion. “That’s a good example of what we get,” Blodgett said. “I said I thought it looked like a house cat.”
The videographer sent back another video of a deer taken in the same spot, so that Blodgett could compare the size of the cat to the deer.
“I still thought it was a house cat,” Blodgett said. “But I told him, ‘look, I can’t be sure of any of this. It’s just a wisp of a thing going by.’”
This is the first time Sage has seen one of the cats, but he has suspected their presence around his property, and he has spoken with other people who have seen the cats or the evidence they leave behind. “A year ago last winter I saw a track in the snow above the pipeline on Sleepy Hollow Road that I know was a mountain lion,” Sage said. “Other people have seen tracks. People have tracked them (on the north side of Route 9).”
Sage said one reliable resident saw what appeared to be a mating pair of mountain lions on their property over the course of several weeks, but declined to report it to authorities. “When you say you saw one, people will tell you what they’ve seen, but they don’t want to say anything publicly.”
In August, a sample of suspected catamount scat was collected on Old Ark Road in Wilmington, shortly after a sighting in the same area, and a sighting along Look Road. The sample was sent to a laboratory for DNA testing, but Blodgett said his office hasn’t received any results from the testing yet.
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