A recent sighting
Here's the article that appears in our March issue. Sorry I don't have a link.
George Hare has seen just about every kind of furry creature that lives in the Adirondacks, but he was surprised by the big animal he spotted along the highway late last year.
“I rounded a corner, looked ahead and thought I saw a deer,” he said. “I started to slow down. As I got closer it occurred to me that I wasn’t looking at a deer. I thought maybe it was a coyote, but it was too big. I slowed some more. Finally, I got right up with the animal and realized I was looking at a mountain lion.”
Hare, the maintenance supervisor at the state’s Visitor Interpretive Center in Paul Smiths, said he saw the cat on state Route 458 on the afternoon of Nov. 15. An avid hunter, he had been returning from his camp in Parishville, on the northern edge of the Adirondack Park.
Although mountain lions are thought to have vanished from the Adirondacks more than a century ago, Hare is certain about what he saw. He described it as a large, light-brown cat with a long tail. As he passed, he looked the cat in the eyes. “It never moved,” he said. “It was looking over its left shoulder watching me drive by. There was absolutely no doubt in mind what I was looking at.”
Could it have been a fisher, another mammal with a long tail? “No way,” said the 41-year-old Hare. “I spend three solid weeks in the woods in hunting season. I have seen just about everything. I had a male fisher run up within five feet of me this season.”
Hare’s is just one of many credible sightings of panthers in recent years. In fact, state Forest Ranger Keith Bassage says he saw a panther on Route 458 in the mid-1990s. “It crossed the road in front of my truck,” Bassage said. “You could see its head. It had shortish ears, a flat face and a long, slender tail with a black tip. I was in disbelief.”
There is no question that panthers are occasionally seen in the Adirondacks. The debate is over whether there is a breeding population. Al Hicks, a state wildlife biologist, said the lack physical evidence—such as tracks or panther carcasses—debunks the theory that the Adirondacks is home to a viable population. He contends that any panther seen in the region must have been a pet that escaped or was released by its owner.
“Let’s say someone buys a panther from who knows where and it grows to the point where they can’t handle it anymore,” Hicks said. “Are they going to call the state and say, ‘I have this illegal mountain lion. Please come get it’? No, they’re going to put it in their truck and drive it somewhere and release it.”
Hicks also is skeptical of many of the sightings. Last fall, he said, a man reported seeing a black panther in the western Catskills. When a state biologist examined the animal’s tracks, he concluded that they belonged to a housecat. The man then angrily insisted he had seen a panther. So the two followed the tracks until they discovered a black housecat underneath a trailer. “Until it was staring him in the eyes, he was convinced he had seen a black panther,” Hicks said. “That’s why I don’t get excited until I see physical evidence.”
But Peter O’Shea, a veteran tracker, argues that erstwhile pets cannot account for all the panther sightings over the years. He said he has seen panther tracks a half-dozen times, most recently in March 2002 in the Five Ponds Wilderness. He also said a young panther was killed near Speculator in 1993.
O’Shea thinks that panthers never entirely vanished from the Adirondacks. “I believe they hung on by the skin of their teeth and now they’re coming back,” he said. “They’re spread out and wide ranging. If I had to guess, I’d say there are no more than a couple of dozen.”
