Another Cougar sighting

I don't know how to post the link to article but if you type in windsor star cougar sighting it is the first thing that comes up, it was near kingsville. The guy and his wife that seen it seem pretty confident with what they say but no pictures. There was a sighting in lasalle around a year ago also which they said they seen what looked like tracks in the area. One thing never reported that I can add is we were doing a job just outside lasalle in a more rural area and my boss swore he seen one come out of a cornfield and cross into the bush but as he pulled out his phone for a picture his phone started ringing by the time he got to his camera it was gone. Wasn't me that seen it but he is not the kind of guy to make stuff up, so who knows they could be roaming around.

Ok...now here comes the jokes about which bar they/he saw her in.. just standard for the board.

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Originally Posted by Snowwalker

Ok...now here comes the jokes about which bar they/he saw her in.. just standard for the board.

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Sigh.
Yeah, that gets old fast.

MNR gets calls about cougar sightings almost daily in southwestern Ontario.

There are 10 cams in every bush, and every hunter in a tree stand is holding a phone with a HD camera taking pictures of everything that walks by. Yet year after year there are daily sightings and zero pics. The sightings are almost always a low-light fleeting glimpse, like it ran across in front of a car at night.

I'm not saying all sightings are bogus, I'm just saying that almost all sightings are bogus.

There was one found dead near Thunder Bay a couple of years ago and the cops shot one with a collar on it a few years before that. Lots are owned as pets and some get away. Wild cougars roam very large distances (sometimes thousands of kilometers in a year). It is very possible that there are a cougar or two passing through southwestern Ontario right now but it is not possible that there are enough cougars in southwestern Ontario to make even a fraction of the sightings credible.

Yeah benjhind, it's crazy how there are no pictures of them anywhere. One prominent outdoors writer told me a story about him seeing one only to be ridiculed by his peers afterwards, always regretted saying anything. As well, a friend of mine allegedly had one on his property near Georgian Bay, he sent me the picture ( he doesn't care at all about this kind of thing) and it was clearly a cougar, YET, it was like any other Sasquatch/UFO picture, just not clear enough/proof enough, so the legend continues.
Having said that, I find myself confused regarding the one they found up north this year hit on the side of the road.

The reports said, "They compared the genetic profile of the cougar to a database of cougar samples from South and North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oregon and Florida," she said. "They determined with 95 per cent probability that the cougar is most closely related to individuals from the region of the Black Hills of Wyoming, and South Dakota and northwest Nebraska."
That statement was part of the suggestion it's not part of a native Ontario population, but why can't our population ( I say that very loosely) be genetically similar to those from the northern states listed? I'd understand more if it was "95% Florida panther" but can't they be the same? Regardless, I love this topic and am forever curious. *que x-files music*

Yup heard that they be bringing in the cougars to control the feared wild boar invasion......

and the late night truckers looking for a warm body on a cold night....
THERE!

Actually it has been confirmed that there are cougars in Ontario, what cannot be decided is if these are Eastern Cougars. But considering the Elk in Ontario are not natural then so what about the cougars they are just as natural as the elk running in Bancroft.

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Originally Posted by punkrockerpj

and the late night truckers looking for a warm body on a cold night....
THERE!

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That is lot lizards not cougars.

I was in an environmental program that was following the elk introduction. From what we were told, the elk were native to the area, but settlers in the south pushed the white tails north, and they had the brainstorm and passed it to the elk and it wiped them out.......
Maybe I'm remembering wrong but I do believe that was what we were told.

Elk were native. They got wiped out. They've been reintroduced. The herd is spreading. Now some people are lucky enough to hunt them.

As for the Cougars, they once were native. The eastern cougar was declared extinct in the US. In Canada, rumors abound. But the majority of the stories appear to be about escaped or released cougars that were once in captivity.

In 2008 the MNR moved the status up from Extirpated (too few numbers to count) to Endangered (facing imminent Extirpation).

https://www.ontario.ca/page/mountain-lion-cougar

Had a friend of mine talk to a retired c.o about cougars and all he would say is there is no season on them in Ontario take that for what it's worth.

MNR will now, if not already done, be required to develop a cougar population rehabilitation strategy under the species at risk legislation.

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