Wisconsin’s Big Cats

Dateline Milton, Wisconsin:

Kevin Edwardson has been trapping wild animals for years, but he wasn’t prepared for the creature that lunged at him from a hay mound in an abandoned barn last month.

It was a cat. A very big cat.

The news examination is a long one, gives the usual rundown on track finds and sightings. You can find it on the Chicago Tribune site.

Intriguingly, they mention the photographs we have lately been talking about here.

The Internet has proved a boon to the cougar-phobic, rapidly spreading rumors and hoaxes. Recently, state wildlife managers in Illinois took the unusual step of declaring that two widely circulated cyberspace claims involving cougars were specious.

One false rumor has Illinois officials deliberately releasing cougars to thin the deer herd. Another involves photos of a cougar purportedly poking into a cabin in southern Illinois. Officials have traced the photos to a site in Lander, Wyo.

Back in Milton, just north of Janesville, Wis., the cat story isn’t about rumors.

It began before dawn on the morning of Jan. 18 after a fresh snow. A farmer noticed unusual animal tracks in his driveway. They were more than three inches wide with no sign of claws. That ruled out a dog, which can’t retract its claws. Cats, on the other hand, do when on the prowl….

More here, Chicago Tribune, February 22, 2008.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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