The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Monday that a young hunter’s report of two cougars fighting was a case of mistaken identity.
After visiting the site and examining photos and other evidence, the DNR now believes the two animals were not cougars, also known as mountain lions, but the more common bobcat.
Wildlife officials were cautious about the report from the start. Spotting two cougars together would have been extremely rare in Minnesota. They haven’t confirmed a breeding population here since the species was essentially eliminated from the state following European settlement.
The 16-year-old hunter reported seeing one apparent cougar chasing a deer and then getting into a brief altercation with a second one Nov. 7 near Nashwauk in Itasca County. He took photos and captured the animals’ screeching sounds on his smartphone.
After seeing the photos, Dan Stark, large carnivore specialist for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, at first said the sighting appeared to be legitimate.
However, when Stark examined photographs more closely, he became skeptical, noting light markings on the animal’s legs, potential tufts on its cheeks and, most notably, no evidence of the telltale mountain lion tail, which extends roughly as long as the cat’s body.
Other mountain lion observers, including The Cougar Network, suspected mistaken identity as well.
Although mountain lions can exceed 150 pounds and bobcats typically weigh up to 40 pounds, and while bobcats are plentiful enough in Minnesota that a trapping season is held annually, confusing a bobcat for a mountain lion is common. Following the initial publication of the story, the Pioneer Press received several reports of mountain lions — a common phenomenon that could illustrate the power of suggestion. At least one such report included a trail camera shot of a feline that Stark quickly identified as a bobcat.
As the man charged with tracking Minnesota’s large predators, Stark is accustomed to the bobcat-cougar mistake.
On Monday, Stark visited the site of the purported pair of cougars. He brought with him a cardboard cutout of a typical sized cougar — about 100 pounds. He raised the cutout into the same tree where the other cat had bounded a few days earlier. The perspective was unmistakable: A cougar would have loomed much larger in the tree. With the permission of the landowner, Stark climbed the stand from which the 16-tear-old deer hunter had photographed the cat, and Stark took his own pictures.
Wild cougars are known to occasionally appear in Minnesota. Biologists believe that the animals generally fall into two categories: 1) males that have wandered from the nearest known breeding population in the western Dakotas, or 2) captive animals that have found their freedom somehow. What hasn’t been seen, dead or alive, is either wild females or cubs. (Two females captured or killed since 2000 are suspected to have been freed or escaped captives.)
Nonetheless, the suspicion persists among some in rural northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula of small permanent populations that feed on whitetail deer and stay mostly hidden.
‘IT WAS STARING AT ME’
Jordan Bowen was preparing to fire on a deer emerging from tall grasses and brush that Monday when a cat lunged at the deer. The deer dodged the assault with a bolt and escaped around a tree, he said. It was soon out of sight.
But the big cat stuck around. He was certain it was a cougar.
“In about two or three seconds, the cougar just jumped up into this big tree about 40 yards away,” said Bowen, who was up in a deer stand himself, affording him an excellent view. “It was about 40 feet up almost immediately. I couldn’t believe it.”
The cat perched in the tree and began snarling. It was so loud that Bowen’s brother and sister heard it from some 750 yards and 1,000 yards away across a swamp, said Dan Bowen, the their father.
The family owns land in the area and has hunted there for years. No one has ever seen a cougar before, Bowen said.
Jordan Bowen said he wasn’t sure what to do at first. He trained his rifle on the animal to get a better look through the magnifying scope.
“It was staring right at me. Seemed like 10 minutes. I kind of wanted to shoot it.”
Shoot it because you were scared or because you wanted to shoot a mountain lion?
“Both, I guess,” he said. “It was really cool, but I was also a little worried. I mean, I saw it jump way up into this tree. If it wanted to get me in the stand, it could have done it so quickly.”
He didn’t shoot, which was wise, since shooting a cougar is illegal in Minnesota unless your life is in immediate danger, and it’s unlikely law enforcement would have bought a self-defense argument for taking a 40-yard shot at a stationary animal in a tree.
Feeling more secure after a few minutes, Bowen got out his smartphone and snapped a few pictures. “I wanted to start taking video but the memory was full,” he said. “So I’m sitting there trying to delete things and then the cougar goes down a tree and this other one comes out. They started fighting, chasing each other around.”
One of the animals, probably the second, ran off, and the first continued snarling. The sounds can be heard amid wind gusts in a brief video Bowen took. In it, the cat is out of view, behind some brush.
Bowen’s report of a mountain lion, or even two, in the northwoods of Minnesota was not far fetched. Male mountain lions can wander off, or “disperse,” vast distances — more than 1,000 miles.
In 2011, scientists were astonished to confirm that a mountain lion killed 70 miles from New York City had passed through the Twin Cities the year before. DNA tests suggested the big cat was likely born in South Dakota’s Black Hills.
Male cougars have large territories, so it’s not uncommon for one to find itself essentially on walkabout in search of its own turf and a mate.
After the initial report, the DNR worked with the Bowen family to visit the site and hunt for scat and hair left behind by the big cats. That evidence led to the conclusion that the animals were bobcats, not cougars.
