Cougar photographed
in Central On tario
BIG CAT SIGHTINGS ON THE RISE
By Jeff Morrison
Cougars are on the rise throughout the province of Ontario. I know
this because the lion’s share of large cat sightings are reported to me
directly, though my Outdoors Guy blog. With scant research being carried out on the prevalence of cougars in central Canada, I took this on
as a labour of love, with the idea of writing a book on the subject.
Over the past decade or so since I began monitoring signs of this elusive creature in Quebec and Ontario, I have been privy to hundreds of
credible eye-witness accounts, photos, tracks and other traces of large
cats. The most
recent came
from lawn maintenance contractor Ken Puddicombe in Bradford, Ont., south
of Lake Simcoe.
Puddicombe was
working at a client’s property on
June 13th with
his wife when
they spotted
what appeared
to be a coyote
lurking in an adjacent field. Upon closer inspection the animal turned
out to be a large cat he estimated to be about 30 kilograms in size.
“It was in clear view above the height of grass staring right at us at
about 60 yards away,” Puddicombe wrote. As an avid hunter and animal-watcher, Ken keeps binoculars close at hand, so he grabbed them
from his truck for a closer look.
“The animal had a greyish coat and piercing green blue eyes that
were fixed right on me,” he recalled. Puddicombe snapped a couple
of quick images with his cellphone and is confident the animal he saw
with its large prominent head and long tail was a cougar.
As a longtime hunter who has observed many animals in the wild, including bobcats, he knows in his heart this beast was no bobcat. Based
on the photos I would tend to agree with Puddicombe – a fortunate
fellow indeed and one of few cougar spotters to photograph the animal
in the wild.
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry maintains
there are no wild cougars in the province and that any cat observed
is an escaped captive. However the sheer number of sightings across
many regions of the province seem to dispute that theory – there are
simply not that
many cougars kept
as pets or held in
enclosures.
If you should be
so fortunate to spot
a cougar in the wild,
please contact us
here at Fish, Hunt &
Ride magazine. We
would love to hear
about it.
Distant, blurry, partial views are
typical of most cougar photos.
www.fishhuntandride.ca
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