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Cougar — Part 2
Images coming soon.
The last cougar killed here in Northeastern New Hampshire, where I write, was shot in a neighbouring town something like forty years ago. But there are still rumours from time to time of them having been seen in the northern part of the State, especially since deer have become more common. In the Eastern States they appear to have made their homes in hollow trees oftener than among the ledges, while in fair weather they were given to sleeping out-of-doors, stretched along a branch in the shade. On their hunting excursions they steal noiselessly and cat-like through the thickets, scarcely displacing a twig, still-hunting being their favourite method of obtaining food. Though usually silent, they at times utter a loud penetrating scream.
Among hunters there is a pretty wide-spread theory that the cougar's change in colour follows the seasonal change of the wild deer's coat, becoming more or less spotted in summer to imitate the young fawns. This is, however, quite erroneous, for although the kittens, like those of all the cat tribe, are spotted, the adults are never mottled. The shade varies in winter and summer, and there seems to be a good deal of individual variation, some being browner and others more of a blue gray.
In Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's admirable article on the cougar in Scribner's Magazine he writes: "Fables aside, the cougar is a very interesting creature. It is found from the cold, desolate plains of Patagonia to north of the Canadian line, and lives alike among the snow-clad peaks of the Andes and in the steaming forests of the Amazon. Doubtless careful investigation will disclose several varying forms in an animal found over such immense tracts of country and living under such utterly diverse conditions. But in its essential habits and traits the big, slinking, nearly uni-coloured cat seems to be much the same everywhere, whether living in mountain, open plain or forest, under Arctic cold or tropic heat. When the settlements become thick it retires to dense forest, dark swamp, or inaccessible mountain gorge, and moves about only at night. In wilder regions it not infrequently roams during the day and ventures freely into the open. Deer are its customary prey where they are plentiful, bucks, does and fawns being killed indifferently. Usually the deer is killed almost instantly, but occasionally there is quite a scuffle, in which the cougar may get bruised, though as far as I know, never seriously. It is also a dreaded enemy of sheep, pigs, calves, and especially colts, and when pressed by hunger a big male cougar will kill a full-grown horse or cow, moose or wapiti. It is the special enemy of the mountain sheep. In 1886, while hunting white goats north of Clarke's fork of the Columbia, in a region where cougar were common, I found them preying as freely on the goats as on the deer. It rarely catches antelope, but is quick to seize rabbits, other small beasts, and even porcupines.
"No animal, not even the wolf, is so rarely seen or so difficult to get without dogs. On the other hand, no other wild beast of its size and power is so easy to kill by the aid of dogs. There are many contradictions in its character. Like the American wolf, it is certainly very much afraid of man; yet it habitually follows the trail of the hunter or solitary traveller, dogging his footsteps, itself always unseen. When hungry it will seize and carry off any dog, yet it will sometimes go up a tree when pursued even by a single small dog wholly unable to do it the least harm. It is small wonder that the average frontier settler should grow to regard almost with superstition the great furtive cat which he never sees but of whose presence he is ever aware. The cougar is as large, as powerful and as formidably armed as the Indian panther, and quite as well able to attack man; yet the instances of its having done so are exceedingly rare. But it is foolish to deny that such attacks on human beings never occur. . . . It cannot be too often repeated that we must never lose sight of the individual variation in character and conduct among wild beasts."