Reported cougar sighting near Canterbury dismissed as 'clearly a housecat'

Another New Brunswicker has come forward with "evidence"of an eastern cougar, but animal experts who reviewed his images are dismissing it as a much smaller and more common feline.

"This is clearly a house cat," said Donald McAlpine, head of the natural history section of the New Brunswick Museum, curator of researchand head of the museum's zoology section.

"To me, it looks like a domestic cat with the long, striped tail and thin legs," said Pam Novak of the Atlantic Wildlife Institute.

McAlpine and Novak were shown images that Saint Johner Rick Boucher said he captured in September and August in Canterbury, a rural village in southwestern New Brunswick.

Boucher said the animal he first saw near his girlfriend's place in the middle of the day last July was four to five feet long.

"It was brown and ... the hide on it had that real sleek appearance."

"When he jumped I could see the whole body stretch out and the long tail behind him."

He said the pictures he later got on a trail camera showed striped tail markings that are characteristic of cougars under a year old.

WATCH | Is this footage of an eastern cougar?

N.B. man says he's captured an eastern cougar on video, but expert skeptical

1 year ago

Duration 1:00

Rick Boucher says the cat he's captured on video is an eastern cougar. Donald McAlpine, zoology curator at the New Brunswick Museum, isn't convinced and says there's little evidence the province ever had a resident cougar population.

According to the zoologist, however, the markings in the photos do not match a cougar's.

"The body should be heavily spotted. The top of the tail should show a heavy stripe, as well as the fainter rings," said McAlpine.

Additionally, the head is too small, he said.

"The proportions are off for a cougar kitten."

Boucher was not dissuaded.

The avid outdoorsman and retired power engineer for Horizon Health has been on a mission to prove the existence of cougars in the province since 1970.

"It would be so magnificent if New Brunswick could claim to be the home of the cougars," said Boucher.

He's sure he saw a cougar while on a hunting trip as a teenager. He and his uncle were up on the roof of a log cabin on a bluff overlooking Mispec River on Old Black River Road in Saint John, he said.

"We were sitting there watching a nice stretch of the river down below, and all of a sudden this large cat came walking down the sandbar on the side of the river," Boucher said.

"Tawny brown" in colour, it "leapt" six to seven metres, or 20 to 25 feet, across the water "like a coiled spring," he said.

"We could see him clearly, and it was just an awesome sight."

There are "many hundreds of cougar reports now archived" in the New Brunswick Museum, said McAlpine, but he's still waiting for evidence that's strong enough to convince him the animal has actually been in the province.

Researchers found "solid DNA evidence" of two cougars in 2003 in Fundy National Park, according to Parks Canada.

"Unfortunately," said McAlpine, the small amount of hair was consumed during the genetic analysis, and there were no images to go with it.

Contamination, a sample mix-up or a hoax are all possibilities in his mind that seem "impossible to confirm or refute."

Frequent hoaxes

According to a document in the species-at-risk section of the provincial Department of Natural Resource and Energy Development website, the best evidence of cougars so far hasbeen suspected cougar scat and tracks found near Deersdale in 1992, a cougar caught close to the Maine-Quebec border in 1938 and a cougar reportedly shot in Kent County in 1932.

Regarding the latter, McAlpine noted there are no Kent County landmarks in the photographic evidence.

He said he's learned to be skeptical after more than half a dozen photos sent to him turned out to be hoaxes.

McAlpine gets five to 30 reports of cougar sightings a year usually with no accompanying evidence.

Given the number of people in the woods hunting, trapping, ATV-ingand operating trail cameras, we would probably have a definitive photograph, or a dead cougar by now if there were any around, he said.

"I think they're seeing house cats. They're seeing dogs, bears just about anything with four legs has been called a cougar."

For Boucher, the rejection of submitted evidence fuels a bit of suspicion.

Authorities could be reluctant to confirm a resident cougar population, he said, because it might require protection measures and be bad for business.

McAlpine maintained he is still open to the possibility of finding a cougar in New Brunswick.

"A surprising number" of Americans are keeping them as pets and the population of cougars in western North Americais expanding, he said.

It's possible that one of those animals could wander into the province.

A cougar tagged in North Dakota turned up as road kill in Vermont, he noted.

"I certainly don't dispute that, and I'm interested in following up on some of these legitimate reports."

"I'm willing to be convinced. I'm just waiting for that cougar photograph to come along."