W hen I accepted the assignment to write about my quest to uncover the truth regarding the existence of cougars in New England, I had little idea what I was agreeing to. All of which is to say that if Alexander Crowell wasn’t afraid on that long-ago Thanksgiving Day, he probably should have been. It is what wildlife biologists call an “apex carnivore,” which means it can overpower pretty much any other creature in its environment-with the exception of an armed human. The catamount is a creature of stealth and concealment it stalks its prey, which on the Eastern Seaboard would likely be deer, moose, porcupines, beavers, and domestic livestock. Its distinctive feature-the one that sets it apart from other North American wild cats-is its tail, which is thick and often as long as its body. Its closest living relative is the cheetah. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. The big cat on the ground before him, motionless, yet somehow still embodying that particular feline litheness, as if, with the flick of its tail, it might bound to its feet and disappear into the woods. ![]() Bearded, bowler hat, expression impenetrable behind facial hair and the stoicism of an earlier era. There, too, is Crowell’s photograph, grainy and old: the hunter leaning against a tree stump, his head propped casually on his left hand, elbow to stump, shotgun cradled in the crook of his right arm. Matthew Johnson/Vermont Historical Society The 1881 death of this catamount officially marked the end of cougars in Vermont however, the very last Eastern cougar is thought to be an animal that was killed in Somerset County, Maine, in 1938. ![]() It was his great coolness and daring (either that, or fear) that enabled Crowell to shoot the animal at a distance of “one rod only” (roughly 16½ feet), first hitting it in the leg with his shotgun, then dispatching it with a bullet to the head from a borrowed rifle. Crowell found himself in this dangerous proximity before he was aware of it, and it was only by great coolness and daring that he severely wounded the animal and perhaps saved his own life,” reads a placard attached to the display case. Responding to complaints about a predator eating a local farmer’s sheep, Crowell and a small group of fellow hunters had tracked the big cat through the snow. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. The last catamount killed in Vermont stands under glass just inside the doors to the Vermont Historical Museum in Montpelier, a hop, skip, and a jump down the block from the statehouse.
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