Cougars on the Swing

[GatorBait]

Sightings of one rare animal have Wisconsin DNR wildlife biologists fielding calls almost daily.

A spike in cougar sightings has the department working on a policy to deal with reports and a possible cougar population.

The quiet town of Porterfield in Marinette County has been abuzz the past few months.

"Probably about two months now neighbors have been talking about it, seen it," Eddie Bieber said.

They're talking about a cougar, which a number of residents report seeing.

Nathan Hermanson says he spotted one at dusk, laying in his front lawn.

"I was sitting in my front living room there, and I opened the shade, and it stopped, looked up, and then ran back across the road," Hermanson said.

Hermanson saw the cougar laying just about 100 feet from his front door. While it was the first time he had seen anything of the sort, the DNR says sightings like this have become more and more common.

Cougar sightings spiked in the last decade, increasing by a handful annually to 244 in 2009.

The first DNR confirmation of a cougar in a century came in 2008. Just two more have been confirmed since, but biologists say more are likely out there.

"The three I should say are what we've been able to confirm as individuals. We suspect there are more, but others that haven't been confirmed as specific individuals yet," Adrian Wydeven, the DNR's mammalian ecologist, said.

The spike in sightings and the possibility of a cougar population has the DNR writing a working policy.

"We need to determine just who and how we're going to respond to these cougar observations, how we do the observations, in which situations we may try to capture and radio collar and monitor cougars," Wydeven said.

While the Porterfield cougar has not been confirmed by the DNR, folks in that area say seeing is believing.

How sure is Hermanson that it was a cougar? "A hundred percent," he answered.

[DonBo]

They got pictures of one near Webster this spring. No doubt there's a few around.

[JEK]

The DNR around Grant County say it is just a big dog. WTH I knew that certain person that saw this so called (big dog) it was a cougar,why would they say such a thing? Jerry

[tacklejunkie]

LOL!!

When I saw the title on the, "On the Forums" column I thought.....

Oh...never mind

[Cooter]

There have been other 'cougar' threads!