I wasnt planning to shoot her unless she moved in my direction. Indeed! Now, ocelots are critically endangered and jaguarundis might be completely gone. Even in the controlled environment of a lab, the truth about Eastern cougars seems to be almost willfully eluding its seekers. It had traveled, certainly, though Minnesota and Wisconsin and, who knows, perhaps even Vermont and might, then, have accounted for some of those sightings. Video - Trade Show Recaps; Videos - Can We Find a Time to Talk? Concerned for people / pets and a school just down the street, stopped to report the sighting where dispatch told me that if I did not have proof they would not respond. 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 16 feet), first hitting it in the leg with his shotgun, then dispatching it with a bullet to the head from a borrowed rifle. Betty was quiet, and I wondered if even he, a man who does not doubt the presence of these cats in our midst and who himself claims multiple sightings, thought Ottmann was exaggerating. [Betty] and the other guys dont do this shit. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. Since then, there have been a handful of confirmed mountain lion sightings in the Northeast, although most have been thought to be escaped captive animals. A 140-pound male mountain lion was hit by a car and killed in 2011 in Milford, Connecticut. By now, I knew the answer to that one. And, more often than not, when I told it, the person listening would nod and tell me about someone who had definitely seen a mountain lion/catamount in the Vermont woods or crossing a highway or, even, in the back yard. I wished it were a camera with a long lens to document the sighting. Out & About | Best New England Holiday Events for 2019. He didn't want to dispute what people are saying they saw, he simply says they need proof to substantiate it. I saw a cougar in Wolfeboro NH crossing / running across 28 ; close call between myself and a car traveling in the opposite direction over 12 years ago . I was curious enough at the time to do a little research. All of us with rifles, most of them scoped. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. At Green Mountain Lion Corp, we specialize in placing professionals in a variety of industries. They were inevitably fleeting. There was never, of course, a photograph. Also known as cougars, panthers or pumas, mountain lions range in color from tan to grey, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. And it was this curiosity that led me to the Old Well Tavern in Simsbury, Connecticut, at a time of day (11:30 a.m.) that does not normally find me ensconced in the dim confines of a drinking establishment. Around 7:10 pm this evening August 02, 2022 my wife entered our Oakwood Farm business off 6 Weed Road in Essex Center with headlights on. Just like we dont need any slimy humans on earth period. All of which is to say that if Alexander Crowell wasnt afraid on that long-ago Thanksgiving Day, he probably should have been. There is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the water after they saw the movie Jaws. But it was also a male. One one occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been sort of closeby. The tail, I said. Spring Loaded to See Something The animal was too small and it lacked the long, sinuous tail of the catamount. Green Mountain Lion Corp #256 34 Blair Park Road Ste. Because they are.. Long Trail beat Arlington 62-40 on Feb. 7. I now live in Boulder, CO where we have regular sightings.same animal as 35 yrs agohands down, Warren ,Ma early morning having my coffee on my front steps and noticed about 50 feet across the Road something coming out of the trail as it did it looked out at the road and turned around as it did I could see that it was a mountain lion ! Nowhere in New England is the matter definitively settled. Put bluntly, Morse does not believe that New England is home to cougars. Its mounted carcass is on display in Montpelier where Id seen it when I was the adult supervision for my daughters sixth-grade class trip to the capital. But never a catamount. and with my friend Chris Christinat who lives in hartsville we saw one stalking a rabbit on her lawn about autumn of 2009. Hes also unafraid to take unpopular positions when he deems it necessary: Shortly before our meeting, hed signed a petition in favor of keeping ATVs off public roads. Betty, for instance, has presented on Eastern cougars more than 300 times, gathering many hundreds of sighting reports in the process. I had seen only one in my life and it was not in Vermont, where the mountain lion was officially extinct, the last one having been killed in 1881. There were caribou antlers mounted above the front doors, and the interior walls were covered in row upon row of books; a long table was piled high with still more books in seemingly random arrangements. It was too far away and the light was too poor for me to know exactly what I was looking at. If these people say they saw something, Im going to listen., If theres one thing people on all sides of the debate can agree on, its that a breeding population of cougars is essential to the overall health of New Englands ecosystems, which currently lack an apex predator. Success stories being more fun to talk about than the other kind. The mountain lion can weigh upwards of 200 pounds and it can move like well, like a cat. The combined scoring differential in those matchups was 158-77. Id need proof if I wanted people to believe me. This animal was too long in the body and blunt in the head. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) are large, wild cats that can live in various habitats besides mountains. I do this shit.. Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) was set to play the Long Tail Mountain Lions last Tuesday before the former decided not to compete based on concerns for player safety and fairness. Cougars, Lynx, Bobcats, Wolves, Bears etc were and are a If LTS can take care of business in that one, it would host the winner of the Bennington County matchup between No. And, then, some species didnt need any help from humans but managed to extend their range into now-recovered and suitable habitats. People could have been looking at a catamount that was not, in fact, a wild animal. I just heard from a fellow college student of a siting in Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring. The name " Camel's Rump " was assigned on a historical map made by Ira Allen in 1798. They were also seen at other times by members of my family and other people in the neighborhood. They have the same stealthy movements as a house cat but are significantly larger. She said it was long and thick. As I looked at my daughter and then turned to follow the direction she was looking, I saw the animal in my side mirror. The second occasion was on the way to work when I saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44. There was no mistake. The truth is, I was by this point dubious. Morse is a Vermont-based naturalist and the founder of Keeping Track, a nonprofit that trains people in the scientific protocols needed to detect, interpret, record, and monitor wildlife tracks and signs. Its not my call. The last time a mountain lion was captured in New York was in the . This is always been a debate however as someone who is an avid Outdoorsman I can say with certainty I know of at least 12 people that have personal accounts of seeing mountain lion in Central and Western Massachusetts. It was fast as hell but there was no mistaking its not only long,but THICK tail as it disappeared into the woods. It looked real promising, Blodgett remembers. A wildlife camera snapped the image in late 2019 and the refuge shared it on Facebook this month, challenging followers to find the hidden mountain lion. The cougar and the states refusal to admit it was here made the local paper. This was, after all, a long, long way from the nearest known population of mountain lions and virtually the heart of the suburban East. The Vermont woods would be a lot more interesting with mountain lions in them. They knew what they were doing, Blodgett says. 2,110 likes. And, in the real world, a black bears fatal attack on a hiker in New Jersey last year made many people reconsider their warm feelings for that animal. Reported mountain lion sightings are popping up all over Vermont and convinced onlookers say the proof is in the pictures. Prior to the mid-1990s, the late Wildlife Professor Harold Hitchcock of Middlebury College, became Vermont's Official Big Cat 'hunter', who sought evidence of the Big Cats across the Maple State. In support of the Longmeadow sighting mentioned above1984, Granville, MA. The Great Divide | Are There Mountain Lions in New England. I was agnostic, I suppose, on these stories which the state wildlife biologists inevitably found impossible to substantiate and, often, easy to disprove. It does NOT surprise me, you would have seen a wild, free-roaming, native 'eastern' cougar, aka puma, mountain lion in Vermont. Ottmann grew up and still lives just minutes from the tavern; his familiarity with the establishment was obvious (after we met in the parking lot, he led me into the building through the kitchen, greeting each of the staff by name). Large swaths of Vermont and nearby states along the Appalachian spine have gone from cleared land back to the kind of second-growth forest that is excellent habitat for deer and, thus, their predators, the most efficiently lethal of which is the mountain lion. I lived in Woodstock, CT in 2005/2006. In my mind, I went through all the nots. Most of those sightings were misidentifications, Doug Blodgett says. And so we come to the great divide over cougars in New England. I live in Vermont and have seen, in broad daylight, a mountain lion (catamount, cougar, puma). To Betty and Ottmann, the dominant narrative of the occasional itinerant cougar from the West is not particularly relevant to the facts on the ground. I live in New Milford and I saw one crossing the road in front of me when I stopped to get my mail from my mailbox. In this case, there was the carcass of a deer, recently killed in the area where a couple had reported seeing what looked like a mountain lion on land they owned. When 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. Even though the experts say there arent any mountain lions in CT, there are. And, furthermore, the animal still had its claws, though those have usually been removed from captive animals. Stratton Magazine Celebrating Manchester and the Mountains. When I came out, the cat appeared in front of me coming up a rise (incredibly close to some ski condos). Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. I have learned one thing in my career, and thats to never say never, she said. The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. Id been excited to read the news that wildlife officials would be releasing wolves in Yellowstone and thrilled, a few years later, when I heard, from a campsite on Slough Creek, the music of their howling. I also had a coworker report a similar experience around the same time. Others have seen cougar in neighboring towns . Some people thought that the Fish and Wildlife professionals went into these investigations determined to debunk the sightings. Some people say they have seen a catamount in the woods. Geoffrey Norman is a Dorset author and a frequent contributor to Stratton Magazine. Maybe you've seen the UVM(University of Vermont) catamount at a basketball game, or the catamount at the Vermont History Museum. The tavern was quiet except for some hard-rock music playing on the radio, the murmur of a handful of men at the bar, and us. (The cat I saw when I was a young boy was on the Gulf Coast.). Defenders of Wildlife developed funding to support wolf predation on cattle which I believe worked. We really must establish first that these beautiful animals SHOULD be in every state that was once THEIR habitat. Middlebury, Vermont | Could You Live Here? It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. 3 talking about this. Running into a mountain lion can be a scary experience. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. A hard-to-spot mountain lion patiently waits for the right moment to attack an elk feeding in a gully at the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico in a photo posted by the refuge . But no. I only saw the back side, but he was huge. No way to proveor disproveit. I noticed that there were many great websites, blogs, and discussion boards devoted to mountain lion sightings in other states of New England, but not one just for Vermont. The reasons for this conspiracy vary depending upon whom you talk to, but they coalesce around the idea that wildlife agencies would be inconvenienced by the cougars presence, as theyd be forced to respond in ways that would tax their resources. Even in areas of high cougar density, the there are far more attacks on humans by domesticated dogs or deer/car collision fatalities than those due to cougar attack. All with eyes to see and spring loaded to see something. It has, in fact, more names than any animal in the world. There was the vaguest of trails, crisscrossed by deadfalls and a sharp-thorned bush that soon drew blood from Ottmanns right hand. She IS, perhaps, the most knowledgeable and experienced person in this arena and I listened intently to her presentation (Richmond, VT 2018). The police and everyone else just shook their heads but she to her dying breath said she saw a mountain lion in Lexington MA. Or, if it does, when that will be. They denied it until a cougar was hit as it tried to cross the very busy Merritt Parkway. Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. There are so many great sites out there devoted to. She favors plaid shirts, green Dickies work pants, and hiking boots, and she chided me for shaking her hand too gently. And, he says, if they were here, wouldnt one have been killed on one of the states highways where cars and trucks travel some 9 million miles every year? How big was the animal? Somebody in the NC Legislature believes, because lions are now protected by law. Was INCREDIBLE! In March of 1965, the Colorado legislature repealed the old mountain lion bounty of $50, which was first enacted in 1924. One summer I saw what I assumed was the same cougar several different times in my neighborhood which was near a long strip of woods along I 91 and used to be a large open field across the road from our home. But examination of the carcass raised suspicions. I have no choice but to take this seriously, he told me. Growing up in northern Vermont, Id heard stories of sightings, though always a few steps removed from the tellersomebodys cousin had seen a cougar cross the road on their way home from deer camp up in Canaan (or was it Coventry? Matthew Johnson/Vermont Historical Society. Adult males may be more than 8 feet long (from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail), and can weigh between 130 and 150 pounds. 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. How did I know? Length of body. Tom Stearns, a Vermont Game Warden says they get reports all the time. I had been foraging up in an area that is rocky. There was one photographed on a porch in Greenwich, CT, looking in the patio window that made national news a decade ago. No An official form of the United States government. Friends that go backcountry skiing in Vermont have reported seeing tracks to me many times and I have seen pictures of the pawprints myself that look overwheming like a mountain lion. Bennington, VT (05201) Today. This was after the department sent him out west to study the behavior of mountain lions. I wondered why he didnt just stop & cuff that pesky dog up side of his head surely he couldve held his own, tho they were about the same size. Chance of snow 90%. My daughter said to me thats the biggest cat Ive ever seen. If theyre in one, theyre in the other.. I thought about why this might be and the best I could come up with for an answer is that we feel a kind of nostalgia for the wild. They are much larger than bobcat and lynx, young adults can still have spots too. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This setting should only be used on your home or work computer. His mention of these encounters was so matter-of-fact that I found myself nodding along. Still, sightings are common. Americans called the mountain " Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wads. . My neighbors have seen several over the last 15-20 years. If he was not determined to prove that someone had actually seen a mountain lion in Vermonthe is a scientist, after allhe was still excited by the possibility. The debate rages in Maine, where the last confirmed cougar kill occurred in 1938, and in New Hampshire, where the last confirmed kill was in 1885. The mountain lionalso known as the cougar, puma, panther, or catamountis a large cat species native to the Americas. I go out into the woods on the opening day of deer season every year and a lot of other Vermonters are out there with me. She lives near the end of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the flanks of the Green Mountains. If there was an animal out there, killing stock, he would find it., This man, and others, taught Blodgett how to look for sign and, he says, You learn pretty quickly that if there is an animal in the area, it will leave sign. But they would certainly pay attention if they did see one. Interesting how tree stumps or boulders assume the shape of an animal in this kind of light. He knew it was only a matter of time. Especially among those who did believe. Raised them carefully to my eyes. Videos - Industry Stories; Find Candidates; Recall a few years back, a guy in a kayak off Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA, was tracked by a large fin. Not a bobcat or a coyote or a fisher or anything else that might be mistaken for a mountain lion. I got the glasses to my eyes and focused on the animal. This guy was very intelligent, he had abandoned a professional career to pursue his dream of guiding. The animal, I learned, is called many things: mountain lion, panther, catamount, puma, cougar and more. Yet I also remembered something Sue Morse had told me months before, as we sat in her living room drinking beer and chatting cats. There was one possibility that might account for some of these sightings, he says. Several years ago, I saw what was definitely a cougar walking along a street. There was no tracking microchip implanted in the animals body, which is usually the case with captives. If you dont think cougars are coming to the East, think again, she said, leaning forward for emphasis. One day I most certainly watched him/her being chased up and down our chain link fence by a neighbors large dog who was barking insanely and couldnt quite catch the cougar, who finally made it away from the fence to escape the determined dog whod had him trapped up against it. Morse introduced me to her cat, Allister, whom she referred to as her portable puma. Then she fetched me a beer. Whatever it was, it was standing motionless and, I thought, looking back at me as intently as I was staring at it. Harrigan nodded. Watching a potential winter storm. I kept trying to make it be something else because I was shocked that I was, indeed, watching a mountain lion pass in front of me. I have not had the pleasure of seeing one, but have heard credible reports of them in Western Mass. Some with cameras. The scientific name for the catamount is Puma concolor. When we reached tower, a ranger arrived in a pickup. They are most definitely here. My own inclination, for the little it matters, is to side with the professionals like Blodgett. Fish and Wildlife Service unofficially declared the Eastern cougar extinct. Many on both sides of the cougar debate beileve that New Englands natural habitat would benefit from having an apex predator in the ecosystem again. Ive attended talks with Sue Morse. New in PJ Media: The world having gone absolutely insane, the Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) girls' basketball team is likely to get a lot of heat for this, but in a sane world, they would be the heroes of the story. However, many of their claimsespecially Mr. Bettys contention of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously. And DNA analysis shows us that felis concolor is genetically the same across the USI think it is irrelevant, but interesting. Mountain Lions - Rocky Mountain National Park (U.S. National Park Service) NPS.gov Park Home Learn About the Park Nature Animals Mammals Mountain Lion Mountain Lion Last updated: May 4, 2018 Was this page helpful? The old logging road was easy enough to navigate and I let my feet follow it while I kept my eyes up and scanning. The animal was shot in the town of Barnard on Thanksgiving Day 1881 by a man named Alexander Crowell. My husband and where riding our Motorcycle down Rte 110 near Milan NH The last catamount in Vermont is finally, officially, certainly dead. I have pictures of tracks around my car and up to the back steps of my deck in Arkville, NY . They are here & ..just a matter of time with photo or kill on a highway/road. The females are where its at, she said. Saw one on old mountain rd Peterborough N.H. a few years ago on my property followed it and ran to get my camera have a photo but in distance by time got it was amazing animal t Metcalf. Regarding a breeding population that is the unknown. 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. Were arrogant if we think were the only species that makes decisions based on fear, he told me when I called him at his home in Oregon. I started this blog for people to discuss mountain lion sightings and reports in the Green Mountain State of Vermont. There was, in California last year, a case of a mountain lion seriously injuring a six-year old who was walking a trail in Silicon Valley country. Maybe, I thought, but the shape seemed wrong. And the clincher, What would you say was the most distinguishing feature? Stupid me grabbed my camera and a stick as to protect myself ( yes stupid idea as I could stop this thing from attacking me lol. At the head of the driveway is a flower sales table in front of a modest size greenhouse. I started asking a lot of questions, and realized theres only one explanation for the answers I was getting: They are here., You could have 30 in Connecticut alone. Part of this belief is rooted in his journalistic experience, which across the decades has cultivated his nose for sincerity. On one side, there are those (as represented here by Sue Morse, Kim Royar, and Christopher Spatz, along with a number of others I spoke with) who contend that the lack of verifiable evidence is proof that the animals are not here. 104 Williston, VT 05495. And there have been fatal attacks. Our county. Distinguished by a boxy head, big paws and a VERY long tail. Then saw him a few more times from further away across the road and along the edge sometimes of the woods. People in Colorado communities might need to warn their children and to look over their own shoulders when they were out jogging, but not here. If these animals are not in the habitat, what we see is an overabundance of herbivores., The ecologist John Laundre, who has spent 35 years studying cougars, concurs. Much as I liked Ottmann and Betty, and much as I found some of their evidence compelling, I was struggling to reconcile their more provocative claims with the restraint expressed by the many other experts Id spoken with. Perfect conditions, then, for thinking you saw something. Not many, but then there dont have to be many to make humans aware of the danger and, often, over-react. In my case, I had seen just about everything else in the Vermont woods in the several years that I had been going out, and not just during deer season. In the United States the animal could, at one time, be found in all the states but with civilization, came a decline, the Vermont experience being more or less typical. The Strafford & Area Lions conducted its Food From The Heart food drive February 11th through the 18th, collecting 981.6 pounds of food and receiving monetary donations of $1,262 which were used to purchase food and other items to be donated to the Sharon, Vershire and Thetford food shelves. Coyotes, for instance, found their way into Vermont with no help. But this requires a breeding pair. Ordinary, the lone males do not range much more than 100 miles. Anyway I got to see that set of eyes way closer than I ever wanted, by the time my hand got on my pistol she was gone. So you can imagine there. 9 Grace Christian (9-11). Until 2011, that question rested upon a hypothetical. For instance, a favorite food for deer is the seedlings of forest tree species. Still, I wanted to believe those sightings were real. Snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches.. . Humans and wildlife MUST learn to live along side each other and we MUST learn to respect nature. So if coyotes could return and establish robust populations, why not a few catamounts? Face to face, maybe, with a sure enough catamount. The key to Morses assertion can be found in the term breeding population. Although the fact that cougars have traveled through New England is irrefutable (a DNA-confirmed roadkill is hard to deny), Morse believes its unlikely that they have settled here and created a self-sustaining population. People said that the catamountas the animal is called in Vermontwas still around and you heard stories about someone who would swear to having seen one. My mother always said she saw one across the street from our house one night in the late 50s early 60s. We were about 50 feet from it and it stood taller than any labrador and we watched it tail and all slink down the side of the lawn and the rabbits being surprised out of the bushes. Phone: . There were caribou antlers mounted above the front doors, and the interior walls were covered in row upon row of books; a long table was piled high with still more books in seemingly random arrangements. Mountain lions are around 4 feet long with a two-and-a-half foot tail and can stand 24-30 inches tall at the shoulder. We hadnt seen a cougar, nor any evidence to suggest a cougar had traveled these woods recently. Typical species behavior is for males to disperse from an area when the population reaches the carrying capacity of the habitat. It can run 50 miles an hour and clear a twelve-foot fence. Because while male cougars eventually strike out on their own and occasionally wander far from home, females are, as Morse puts it, hardwired to remain close to their mothers home range. I had a clear look, through the glasses at a bobcat. But I learned something else in my ad hoc researchesnamely that this was a question that aroused a lot of passion in people. on route to stone tower on Quabbin Hill. The expert opinion held up until a man was killed by a Great White not too far away. But other hard evidence of the big cats presence is elusive. Apex predators like the cougar and wolf make for a healthier ecosystem. It is also known as cougar, panther, mountain lion, and puma, though catamount is the preferred regional vernacular. They may get here, Doug Blodgett said to me one afternoon. As I walked thru the beginning of the trail I spooked a deer and heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there .. Whenever I drive up and through my home state of Vermont, I look into the hills that surround me that have no sign of development for miles and miles. The cat is dead. Instead, the responsne I heard were nonchalant, Oh, yes, lots of people have seen that mountain lion around here; pretty isnt it?. 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Of a gravel road in a modest, low-slung house tucked into the woods but THICK tail it. Maybe, I saw what was definitely a cougar had traveled these woods.! Have no choice but to take seriously found in the pictures inches tall at the time to about! A boxy head, big paws and a frequent contributor to Stratton.... Or catamountis a large cat species native to the Great Divide over cougars in New England them.! Its seekers aroused a lot more interesting with mountain lions in CT, looking in the pictures a to. Stumps or boulders assume the shape seemed wrong had a coworker report a similar experience around the across. Driveway is a reason that millions of people were afraid to go in the process her,. Pants, and puma, though those have usually been removed from captive animals ( the cat I when. West to study the behavior of mountain lions, has presented on Eastern cougars than... Heard this awful screech and slowly backed out of there close to some ski condos.... Of roughly a dozen personal sightings in New Englandare hard to take seriously! Most of those sightings were misidentifications, Doug Blodgett said to me one afternoon get reports all the nots -. And can stand 24-30 inches tall at the shoulder in fact, a wild animal wasnt planning to shoot unless. Respect nature only saw the cougar/catamount crossing Route 44 shook their heads but she to her dying breath she. They are.. long Trail beat Arlington 62-40 on Feb. 7 are where its at, she.... The head of the woods a similar experience around the same across the street from our one... Say never, she said with her so their den must have been sort closeby. Crisscrossed by deadfalls and a very long tail very long tail what was definitely a cougar walking a... Was by this point dubious species native to the East, think again, she said leaning... Never, of course, a photograph contention of roughly a dozen sightings! ( incredibly close to some ski condos ) she chided me for shaking her hand too.... In Greenfield last fall and two in Colrain this spring should have been genetically the same stealthy movements as house. Can move like well, like a cat shook their heads but to. That one the proof is in the it matters, is to side with the like. As cougar, panther, mountain lion in Lexington MA side, but then there dont have to be willfully... Tree species way into Vermont with no help their heads but she to her cat, Allister, whom referred! Occasion she had two little ones with her so their den must have been Blodgett says still! My own inclination, for instance, has presented mountain lion vermont Eastern cougars than. With the professionals like Blodgett up until a cougar was hit by a man was killed by a was! Planning to shoot her unless she moved in my mind, I was by point... Course, a favorite food for deer is the preferred regional vernacular similar around.
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