I received multiple emails in response to my article about Delaware cougars that rain in last Thursday’s News Journal. They all are fascinating. Excerpts from the emails are pasted below.
Feel free to share your feedback, too.
Email 1 – 8/4/2011
Email 2 – 8/4/2011
Email 3 – 8/4/2011
have continued thru 2010, when the latest report we received was on March 10th near Seaford
along the Nanticoke River, just SE of the Norfolk-Southern RR Bridge.Since 1965, when recording our 1st report from a Delaware Citizen, over 150 sightings have been
reported, from the MD/DEL Line near Delmar to New Castle Co/PA Line and everywhere between. The best report came from Burrsville area, when an adult Puma was filmed crossing a farmer’s property.
Wildlife Specialists with the Eastern Puma Research Network, since 2002 relocated to West Virginia’s
Potomac Higlands in Grant County, clearly had the impression the Burrsville Puma was a free-roaming
and WILD cougar, NOT one escaped from captivity.
200 or more years ago, small numbers of breeding ‘pumas’ were known to survive around the Cypress
Swamps in what is now southern & Southwest Sussex County, near Gumboro, where sightings occur
but on a more isolated or infrequent time period…due to increasing people populations.
It is our professional opinion, Southern Delaware’s Sussex County as well as across the line in Maryland
along MashyHope Creek, then west to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, a minimum of 2 or 3
wild pumas(cougars) continue to roam the swamps, fields and woods between those locations.
The most recent Maryland sighting came from a fisherman, a retired airline pilot from near Bestpitch
in the Blackwater Refuge on May 18th, who reported seeing a large cat with long sweeping tail of over
100 pounds chasing a swamp deer.
For more information on the subject, visit our website: www.eprn.homestead.com
Email 4 – 8/4/2011
I am nicknamed “Sasquatch”, so I will be careful not to be in your hunting zone!!
– Gary
Email 5 -8/5/2011
Email 6 – 8/6/2011
But Maria showed me the article, so I thought I’d pass it on.
Happy hunting!
– John
Fair Hill, Maryland
Thanks for the feedback. It is great to see that my columns are being read — in multiple states, no less! – SMK