I’m assuming pheasant season opened with a bang Saturday. I wasn’t there to witness it. Why buck opening-day crowds? That’s my motto. Crowded coverts are not for me.

But I’m not here to chat about hunting today. We have other issues, ones I pushed onto the backburner last week after learning of an old Whately friend’s sudden and untimely death. So now it’s back to that mountain biker’s Northfield Mountain cougar sighting reported here, then a little more on the Deerfield River dams, which may or may not have contributed to and/or been capable of avoiding millions of dollars of damage along the 73-mile, power-generating river that runs from Somerset, Vt., to Old Deerfield.

But let’s begin with the follow-up on that early-September cougar sighting by Jeff Mias from Worcester. It appears that times have changed at MassWildlife after that wild Western cougar was killed on a Connecticut highway in June. Apparently, our state wildlife officials are no longer turning a deaf ear to sightings like Mias’.

I received an Oct. 4 email from Mias that started lightheartedly by debunking my speculation that, if reported to the authorities, they would likely dismiss his sighting as a misidentification or an LSD flashback. “Well,” he wrote, “the folks at MassWildlife didn’t tell me I saw an orange tabby housecat hunting chipmunks, yet!!!” Instead, his emailed report drew an appropriate response from a woman at MassWildlife headquarters in Westborough. Her response was:

“It would be very helpful to get a description of the animal you saw. Size is important. Tell us if the animal was the size of a familiar breed of dog (i.e. sheltie, border collie, German Shepard), color of fur, distinctive markings, length of tail, shape of face. These too are important for us.”

Mias was more than happy to cooperate, promptly responding with a detailed written description of what he saw that day:

“Thanks for the response. I’m most familiar with the German shepherd, so I’ll equate it to that. When I saw it, the mountain lion was at a slight crouch with the head and back level. It was clearly tracking something. In a crouch, it was probably as tall as a full-grown German shepherd. I suspect that if it were upright, it would have been slightly taller. This thing was huge. Its length was much, much longer than a German shepherd, that’s for sure! It was certainly not a smaller bobcat or fisher cat.

“The tail was down and long, kind of like the letter U. The head was quite large and round, with a short, round snout. There wasn’t a long nose on it like a Shepherd or even a wolf. It was definitely a large feline face, as opposed to canine. I don’t remember anything about the ears. There were no distinctive markings or multiple fur colors whatsoever. It was all one color, kind of a grayish, darker color. I assumed mountain lions have a lighter brown coat, so this part confuses me a little.

“Lastly, I remember the legs seemed very large, too, not in height but diameter. It was walking and the thighs seemed enormous to me. The trail I was on is pretty wide, 15 feet at least, so the sighting was only a matter of maybe six or seven seconds as it walked across the trail from right to my left.
“Any other questions, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best. My heart still races when I think about it!”

Think about it: Would a man really go to those lengths to embellish a wild, publicity-seeking hoax? Not likely in my mind. But that’s just me. Opinions vary.

Enough of that, though! On to the Deerfield dams, all 10 of them controlled by a power company named TransCanada. The first three are located in Vermont, but the remaining seven are right here in western Franklin County.

Curious about the water-release protocol before and during high-volume rain events such as Irene, I queried a staff attorney for the Vermont Public Service Board, which oversees the state’s power-generating dams. The attorney was more than helpful and, upon request, promptly emailed me a grid listing Vermont dams, their reservoir capacities, hazard ratings and other information. All three Vermont dams on the Deerfield are rated “high hazard,” which doesn’t mean they’re physically weak or compromised, just that a dam-break would lead to significant loss of life and property, not a comforting thought.

The lawyer was forthcoming with information on Oct. 3, when we went back and forth in a rapid-fire, instant-messaging-like email exchange about the dams, including my question as to where I could get a list of the Massachusetts dams along the Deerfield. All his answers were quick and helpful, but when I asked if there was a public record of daily water releases, he had no answer, just this:

“I know of no public listing of water releases. I do know the owners of dams walk a line between planning ahead for public safety, maximizing generation, and maintaining proper water levels for fish and wildlife, but I don’t know how to get access to records to see just how they are performing that balancing act. My impression from my limited contacts with the TransCanada people is that they take all three missions very seriously, but their dams are not actually under the jurisdiction of the Vermont Public Service Board except in extremely limited ways.”

Hmmmmm? A power company can use a valuable public resource like the Deerfield for private gain, yet no public records? How could that be? Doesn’t that leave TransCanada unaccountable following a devastating flood that could have been impacted by bad decisions made under duress by people affecting the river flow? I was hoping a record of historical releases would be revealing about how the dams handle their releases during high-water events. I was also interested in pre-Irene reservoir releases compared the other periods of high water over the years. No such luck.

Like I suspected from the start and have suggested here more than once, it will likely take an act of Congress or a court order to pry those Irene records free. And do you know what? It may yet happen if riverside property owners who had no flood insurance file a lawsuit, as rumored, to try to recoup losses from the power company, if culpable.

The Aug. 27 and Aug. 28 dam records should be released and reviewed, if for no other reason than to be prepared for the next dangerous tropical storm. Like a Whately octogenarian told me just Monday in his pasture, “It seems like we’re getting those 300-year storms every other year nowadays.” So, given that, isn’t it likely we’ll be facing more serious flooding in the near future?

I suspect we haven’t heard the end of this. Not by a long shot. I keep hearing rumors that may have legs down around Stillwater, The Bars and Old Deerfield. Although I haven’t been up in Shelburne Falls, I suspect there’s talk there, too.

Stay tuned. It could get interesting, contentious and, yes, even ugly.

The natives are restless.