Have You Seen Wisconsin's Ghost Cat?

[AJE]

Wanted a large, wild Feline. Is tanish in color, weighs in at about 145 lbs and is definitly not a typical backyard critter as it is shy and elusive. It's territorial range may be as small as 50 to 200 square miles.

Hello, many of you know me as Amber or aka: AJE, this "Ghost Cat" has been an interest of mine since about 1995. Here is my eyewitness account to this topic:

Well its about dusk, a women whose home was located midway between Valders and Manitowoc wanted to enjoy a nice dip in her outside sauna when she felt her neck hairs rise and experienced an eerie feeling of being watched. She turned slowly and saw a huge, four legged peeping tom staring at her from the edge of her yard. The women froze when she realized her uninvited guest was a cougar. She was too afraid to move much less scream...time was on a standstill. Losing interest the cat disappeared on silent paws. To this day the women will no longer go outside alone or after dark.

Have you seen Wisconsin's "Ghost Cat"? Please include when and where the cougar was seen, the approximate time of day, and if you observed anything unique about the sighting.


Pic taken from: www.trailmaster.com/testimonials.php

[AJE]

By Kathryn Bracho of WBAY
Jan 2005

A few weeks ago, Action 2 News reported on suspicions of a cougar in Berlin. Marge Lind believes a cougar attacked and injured two of her horses. A veterinarian who treated the injuries agreed. But officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the injuries weren't typical of what a cougar would cause.

Now the same kind of sighting is reported in nearby Green Lake. A few people say they have seen the animal but so far no one's been able to capture evidence like a paw print or photograph.

It's not every day police get a call there's a cougar in town. Officer Jason Reysen responded, "I said, 'c'mon'. And he said, no, drive around behind the garage and you'll see it, so I hit the spotlight and I just got a glimpse of it."

That was enough for Green Lake police to call in some bear-tracking hounds, but they didn't have any luck sniffing out the cougar.

"That car right there, and that gutter, right in between there was the cougar," witness Dave Terbilcox pointed out. He is one of a few people who say they've seen a cougar in Green Lake.

But the USDAY says it thinks Terbilcox and even Officer Reysen could have seen a deer. The USDA says it needs more than witness accounts before it can investigate, but once it has some physical evidence it will send in hounds that would be more suited to searching for a cougar.

"They want a track or proof-positive besides us seeing it because we never get a good look at it," Reysen said.

Monday a group of kids was playing just a few feet away from where the cougar was spotted. That's why police officers say it's so important that residents find evidence the cougar has actually been here.

Terbilcox's neighbors set up a motion-sensitive camera.

Terbilcox is sure a cougar has been there, he says it tore up his garbage, but he says he'll let the camera do the tough part.

"I'm not gonna get close enough to the thing to take a picture of it."

[AJE]

People in the Tomahawk area are again reporting cougar sightings. There have recently been two reports, one of two cats near County Road S and a sighting of a single cougar off County Road E.

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) receives about 50 reports of cougar sightings each year, with the Tomahawk and Rhinelander areas being particular hot spots for those sightings. The number of reports and the fact that they are concentrated in certain areas leads us to believe that there are indeed cougars around Tomahawk.

Still, none of these reports has been confirmed with photographic evidence or well-defined tracks. We’d like to see someone get a good photograph of a cougar or at least get a good footprint.

DNR wildlife specialists suspect that many people who say they spotted a cougar were in reality looking at a bobcat. Unlike cougars, bobcats are known to exist in northern Wisconsin with a population of about 2,000 animals in the state.

Bobcats are less than four feet long, with pointed, tufted ears and tails about five inches long. Bobcats can weigh up to 50 pounds and resemble a large housecat. A cougar is much larger, up to six or seven feet long, with a thick rope-like tail nearly as long as its body. The coat is a tawny color and the tail has a black tip.

Cougars were indigenous to Wisconsin at one time, but are believed to have been driven away or killed off by man more than 100 years ago. In the 1800s, cougars were seen as a threat to livestock and bounties were paid for their skins. The last confirmed wild Wisconsin cougar was shot near Appleton in 1856.

The nearest known cougar population today is in Manitoba, Canada. But, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota do offer suitable cougar habitat, with large tracts of undeveloped wilderness and an abundance of deer, the big cats’ favorite meal.

We know quite a few people who say they’ve seen a cougar in the area. Some of them we trust would know a cougar if they saw one. We believe there are cougars, at least one or two, living around Tomahawk.

Yet, we’re puzzled that there is still no concrete evidence of their presence. Not a single cougar has been hit by a car, shot by a hunter or treed by hunting hounds.

If more people carry cameras with them into the woods and pay attention to animal tracks, we think it’s only a matter of time before the cougar’s presence in northern Wisconsin can be confirmed.

[AJE]

A Compelling Wildlife Success Story

North American's apex predator is making a comeback. Many wildlife biologists now believe that cougar re-colonization of the Midwest and East is inevitable. The Cougar Network's goal is to use science to answer this and other important questions regarding our most charismatic carnivore. We believe that good science is essential to insure the continued recovery and long term conservation of the species.

http://www.easterncougarnet.org/

[AlumniClub]

I heard two weekends ago about a up-north bussiness near our friends cabin, has on tape a cougar pacing back and forth on the other side of the fence of their animals. (scary)
I will update later when more "facts" are available.
~RedRaven~

[Crys]

There are definitely exceptionally large cats up in Marinette Cty and just across the border in MI, whether cougar or something else. Much too big to be a typical bobcat. When my parents lived up there, a couple years ago, they showed me huge footprints out in a clearing on the land they were on. Those were common and you could tell by the way the other wildlife acted that there was _some_ kind of predator there. I saw something I thought was about the size of a wolf but it was too dark to see what it was and when I went out there the next morning there were cat, not canine, tracks. Was it a cougar? I don't know, but it wasn't a bobcat unless it was a Guiness world-record cat...

[AJE]

Cougar Sighting in NW Wisconsin


http://www.topix.net/forum/city/berl...6HJC651BMKKR4B

[rudedog]

good topic. ive had this discussion with several people over the years.
as a child i always assumed that everyone knew that there were cougers in wisconsin. it just seemed to be a common sence thing to me.
then a few years ago i got inerested in cryptozoology, and was amazed to see that there were people looking for the "black cats". in the midwest, including wi.

first let me say, if i had developed a habit of carrying a camera with me during all my travels i could be kinda famous right now. as the guy who discover, what everyone else already knew was there.lol

second let me also say that i find it amusing that the DNR denign that there are cougers alive and well in wisconsin. many yaers ago, before the turkey reintroduction program, i used to occasionlly see turkeys in northern wisconsin, when i told a DNR warden this once during a conversation, he simply replyed" there are no wild turkeys in wisconsin". i walked away feeling i had just wasted my time having a conversation with one.
i cant help but wonder, if i had actually bagged one of thos nonexistant turkeys, would they have tryed to tell me it was a pheasant? or nail me to the wall for shooting a nonexistant game bird. one way or another there are definitly plenty of turkeys in wi now. on a good week i spot about a hundred during my travels across the midwest.

soooo, back to the big kittys. ive seen not only the tan type cougers in northern wi, the last time back in the early 80's in rusk county, north of the township of tony.(8-10 miles east of ladysmith) but i have also seen black cats within the last few years, along I94 on the western side of the state. usually the toma to wisconsin dells area. and before some wild turkey trys to tell me they were bears, i know what bears look like.( from a distance of course, i have a longstanding agreement with bears " dont eat me and i wont eat you.")

unfortunatly i havent kept up with the investigation, have they figures out if the tan or black cats exist yet? if so what is their explination for the cats existance?

i bet they'll try to tell you its just a farm cat that got into the Steroid Hormones. one way or another i need to get a digital camera .
i could be kinda, sorta, famous, or something, maybe.

[Crys]

bwahahahaha

You know, the idea of farm cats on steroids gives entirely new meaning to the old debate a couple years ago about shooting feral cats...

I'm not originally from WI; did the DNR really used to say that there weren't wild turkeys in Wisconsin? Good grief, I see them every morning in two different spots on my drive to work. It's odder to NOT see them, than to see them...

[rudedog]

yep, they really did say that there were none left. they reintroduced the turkeys back to wi. which i do have to say was a very successfull program.
actually the whole midwest now has a good population of turkeys. i see them in indiana and ohio all the time.
the same with the wolves. which i hear is also doing very well. i have yet to see one in the wild but it will be a thrill when i finally do.
i only hope in the future the elk reintroduction does as well.
rumor has it though that the moose just dont like it here and keep going back to canada.
the morning doves must have warned them to get out while they can.

as a hunter i have to wonder what goes through peoples minds sometimes, hunting fural cats, just doesnt sound very sportsman like, or tasty.
but a super cat, all jacked up on hormones, there might be some braging rights there! still couldnt eat them though, all of us that arent sopposed to have breast would end up with them.
i think ill just leave the bigger, better, mouse traps alone.

[Crys]

Ah, they were re-introduced. That explains it then.

Yeah, it does seem to have been pretty successful, at least around here. It's kind of interesting to watch a group of them and see how they interact with each other.

moose and elk: Heh. That was one of the things I thought was cool about the UP and northern LP in MI: large four-legged animals of the antlered variety wondering about downtown, usually without incident. I lived just east of Mackinaw City for awhile in the 90s and it seemed like every time I walked downtown there was a deer or some other creature coming the other way on the sidewalk. Got so I almost expected them to say good morning to me or something as they passed.

[AJE]

I know that this following clip is NOT WISCONSIN but I believe the Cougar is here in WI so I'm posting the article...


Survivor of mountain lion attack gets worse
70-year-old Calif. man in critical condition following attack by predator

NBC News
January 29,2007


SAN FRANCISCO - The condition of a Northern California hiker attacked by a mountain lion last week worsened over the weekend and he was listed in critical condition Monday morning
:arrow:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16869185/

Just a friendly reminder that all outdoor sports should be done as a buddy system!

[CarolsCritterCare]

I belong to a cougar list run by someone in Wisconsin and we talk about them a lot. They show pics of these big cats and have great stories.
My friend is convinced she has seen one in the woods behind her house in Waukesha County.
Carol

[Crys]

What part of Waukesha Cty, out of curiosity?