The Eastern Cougar (mountain lion), one of 15 subspecies of cougar living in North America, was native to our area at the time of settlement. Mountain lions are found in 12 western states and the southern tip of Florida. They reported seeing the big tail and everything everything. How to Report a Possible Mountain Lion Sighting. You saw what you saw. I'm gonna send you a letter that we researched this report and we spoke with those labs and the lab wrote in their letter to us that they could only say that Scott contained white Tea Party fur and that they could not say what deposited the scout because it's far too degraded listeners we'd love to hear from you about your mountain lion sightings if you have seen one or if you if you think you have give us a call we'd love to hear your story 1 800 8 9 2 6 4 7 7. If you believe you have seen a mountain lion and want to report it to NH Fish and Game, please contact the Wildlife Division at (603) 271-2461 or wildlife@wildlife.nh.gov to request an observation report form. Mountain lions vary hugely in average body size depending on geographic location—their size is smallest closer to the equator and largest closer to the poles. Caller: Absolutely. So there's even debate about that very subject. Tim Yeah. But if you were to get Western dispersing mountain lions just would just sort of expanding into New Hampshire. Mike Guyton pressure was almost Greyhound like very muscular large back legs on it and the coloration on it was almost an orange brownish orange color and so I stop and I look at this thing in the field and as the animal looks at me the face was very chiseled definitely not a bobcat. I live pretty much on the town line of Greenfield just a couple of miles down in the Greenfield. Sam Evans-Brown: I just want to say the bang and word you just heard I think to me exemplifies why it's really hard to come up with with positive you know 100 percent certain evidence that you've that what you've got is a mountain lions. Reports without physical evidence are not dismissed, however Fish and Game cannot verify a sighting report without physical evidence. Peter Biello: Or send us an email exchange at an HP board. We had six copies printed out each. I'm sorry go ahead you're on the air. Well let's talk a little bit about that. For me as a person who's handled many bobcats and looked at many pictures Bobcat the White chin Bobcat right off is what comes out to me and then the black the the roughs on our Bobcats we'll have sometimes have black fringes on them. So it's there was no question in my mind. Thanks for your call. Peter Biello: They make great mascots at least. Right. Had great trees behind it beautiful ferns on the ground so it brought me down on the site and the ferns on the ground matched. Peter Biello: And that will make identification for a layperson rather difficult. I can't tell you what you saw but it sounds like a mountain lion. Thank you very much for that story really appreciate it. Anyway, Mary, who doesn't flinch when a black bear bluffs a charge at her or a big bull moose tosses his antlers around and snorts at her, is running scared from New Hampshire mountain lions these days. And today we're talking about the mysterious elusive mountain line with folks who know something about it. So I reached down to grab the camera and looked back and like a ghost it's gone. Erler is a senior naturalist at the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness. SUE Morse naturalist and science director for the organization keeping track. I hope she's listening and she had spoke to a lot of different people ended up having a couple of sightings of her alone without sort of by accident. Peter Biello: And then it ran away okay. That's what we're seeing is dispersing mountain lions from the West who are just making their way through. Rick van de Poll: Oh yeah absolutely. Pelosi story here we go. You know one of the the biggest questions I have about that is it points to how much we don't know and if in fact we don't know enough. Peter Biello: Yeah. Patrick Tate: So it's very typical. Patrick Tate: Martin Like what about Panther Panther saying animals same animal and like a bit of trivia Guinness Book of World Records says the animal with the most names is in English alone they're supposedly 40 names for Mount lion. NH Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Patrick Tate reports that so far, mountain lion reports accompanied by photographs have been misidentified bobcats or housecats, or pictures of mountain lions taken from the Internet and reported as being recorded in New Hampshire. People go through great lengths to create hoaxes like this. So I will just say this is a big reason why there have not been confirmed sightings I think is that the evidence required first. Let us know your story and share your photos. From came from out west they tracked it all the way back to the Black Hills in the Dakotas. Peter Biello: Wow. Patrick Tate: Same here in New Hampshire too. WMUR NH Chronicle Mountain Lions in NH Part I and Part II. Second when I when they did forward it from Wyoming to to Michigan you know this was coming right from sample 18 and 19 had no remarkable differences from known mountain lions from Michigan or Wyoming. Sam Evans-Brown: Certainly that is a thing I've heard but again you have to think of the incentives involved here. If mountain lions do exist in the Northern New England woods, they are very few and far between. Patrick Tate: No downward pressure at all I think actually Sean turned up and we found the evidence there a number of people would finally say finally we can put this debate to bed. Caller: It had just left that field and was out. Can you tell us about that story. Pat ruse and he was sampling doing DNA samples from cats in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. So Pat you field a lot of calls about people seeing or reportedly seeing mountain lions. Select image for larger view. Get your tickets today and one for fifty dollars or six for 150 at NH PR and board. So let's let's go to the phones. These young males are tracking looking for mates and if they don't find a mate they just keep moving and moving and moving. So I know it's another unconfirmed report but you string enough of these together. What gets confusing is when you have a large adult animal and a smaller juvenile animal of a different species you can now step start beginning talking about overlapping body weights and sizes. I just stood there just a second and I came to a complete stop and then I ran away. I've had a number of people call up and say I found a scout in the woods and I want it DNA identified. Peter Biello: Oh okay. Patrick Tate: It became a very interesting investigation over time because it started becoming. But you've done some reporting on this. Mountain lion or cat running across. www.wildlife.state.nh.us, Buy or Renew Your Saltwater Fishing License, Great Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Peter Biello: Well Mike thanks very much for sharing your story. Nicholas Handy can be reached at 924-7172 ext. I'm Peter Biello. Or years or so. Peter Biello: Yeah some of what she was saying sounds like it would require getting pretty close or at least having a nice zoom lens right Sam like. Because I mean as we've heard in the past 10 minutes like there's there's some disagreement or at least some some vagueness about what an actual mountain lion should appear like in the wild assuming we can even get close enough. And what was really remarkable about the whole thing was I was maybe a half mile down on all buildings. That's next time on one day. I tracked cats and all the western states. That's why we always go back to the physical evidence to support what they're reporting. Sam Evans-Brown: And when we talk about subspecies this actually leads to to an interesting tangent which is that the field of biology recently has been sort of revolutionized by the use of DNA to determine what subspecies are. So I think the point that I just want to get across is that there is a very strong sense this here in the and not region that there is that there is some sort of mountain lion population how large it is how extensive it is. I just saw the head and the tail that was leaving. I noticed it had a really big sweeping tail that kind of curled up behind it and all but still at that point because everyone says there's no mountain lions here. But you won’t find evidence of their existence in paw prints in … Two of the known mountain lions in New Hampshire have spent their 15 years in close proximity to humans. Pat what do you think the mystique of the mountain lion. For all the men out there that don't realize it. Peter Biello: Sam I wanted to ask you a little bit about that first and then turn to Patrick Tate efficient game. Range . Really appreciate it. That's too big for Bobcat. When they were landing or taking off and it seems like it's been there for like. Caller: Are probably. John is calling from Bennington. But also I think it proves the opposite point which is that sometimes they're pretty secretive because all the way from Minnesota where the where was the first time was picked up on a game camera to New York. The nonbelievers are going to say Show us your evidence and show us prove this to us. I myself had seen something BIG cross the road — albeit from a distance. They get a lot of media attention but compared to the the amount of times that a mountain lion could attack a person but doesn't because they don't typically view us as prey. So that did it for me. And I was probably about a half a mile from downtown all village on the right. Thanks for a great thanks. OK. Rick van de Poll: Rick and I would add that if a mountain lion male takes up residence and successfully finds a female as pets there's gonna be a lot more evidence there will be like deer carcasses up in trees and territorial marking and claw marks and tracks and it you know dispersal is gonna be very tough to see or observed but residential parrots a totally different story. Can you look into this picture. And that the Florida panther was more closely related to the eastern outline than the western mountain lion was. m from a weed family Automotive on store Street in Concord is serving the Concord area families automotive needs since 1995. If you have them email exchange at an HP board or give us a call to tell us your story. We send out DNA samples to the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. If it's just in the middle of a greenfield you can't prove anything. And they asked me about the tail which I just did not remember that tail out of that whole experience. Join us for 10 minutes of bliss with John Harrigan. Patrick Tate: Nice talk to you too. Peter Biello: This is the exchange on an HD PR fine Peter Biello and today we're talking with folks who can tell us about the mysterious elusive mountain line and whether or not it is actually here in New Hampshire. But you can continue the conversation on Facebook or at our Web site and HP Borg. So I hate the idea that there's some sort of upward you know downward pressure from the bosses saying Don't you know don't tell about the mountain lions because it'll scare away the tourists. Fish and Game looked into the labs to have them confirm the information in the reports which the labs did not. Caller: I cannot recall or see the tail in my in my image of it. So I want to start the program with a comment from someone who is not in the studio with us today. And it came out we could see it had and we could see its long swooping tail. But but I've also seen it cited the opposite way that look they're very secretive. You know I think it's there's a lady Holly Ernst out in California who has done a lot of the genotyping of mountain lions in Northern California the ones that are of course most people have heard about taking down hikers bikers etc. So for our scientists to do the lumping and whatnot. He was driving south on Route 3 from Lancaster towards Whitefield just south of the White Mountains Regional High School. I mean no doubt a seen Bobcat seen his stuff. The exchange is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. But I do think that it's appropriate that a fishing game agency would recognize verifiable proof if they could. 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