Cougar sightings expand; More cats seen north of Barrie
Posted By colin mckim
Posted 3 years ago
It's not a barn cat.
Nor a bobcat. Not with that long tail.
The big cat photographed in March by Bill Robson on his wooded property on Town Line near Marchmont sure looks like a cougar.
Robson spotted some wild turkeys that day and grabbed his camera to take some photos.
While he was standing still snapping shots, the big cat crossed his yard on the far side of a line of fir trees.
"It's a cougar all right," said Robson's friend, Janet Turner.
Turner has never seen the cougar herself, but, in April, she heard the strange, bloodcurdling cry the animal is believed to make at night.
"If you were superstitious and believed in banshees, that would be the sound," she said.
Neighbour Paul McKerrol, who runs a horse farm, got in his pickup truck one night to chase away a big cat that was prowling around the barnyard where there was a colt and a baby goat.
As he pursued whatever it was through the back fields, shining a spotlight in its direction, the wild animal kept turning and snarling, Turner said.
McKerrol still believes a horse killed in Oro-Medonte a few years ago was attacked by a cougar, something never officially confirmed.
The Ministry of Natural Resources maintains there is no definitive proof wild cougars are living in Simcoe County.
But, since a story earlier this week about sightings in Severn Township, a number of people have contacted Osprey News describing their own sightings of the elusive feline.
A woman who drives to work along Monck Road said she has seen a cougar crossing the road near the Scottish Hills Golf Course on four occasions this summer, usually just after dawn.
Cougars are not new to the area, according to Orillia resident Norm Cameron. He said he saw two cougars playing on the side of Highway 169, near Washago, on a moonlit night in January 1980.
He followed tracks the next day and found some droppings (scat), which he took home and put in a freezer.
Cameron told a local naturalist what he had seen and found, but his story was dismissed.
Still, the naturalist said he would contact the MNR.
