Woodsman Peter M. Falandes, a self-described “old codger” from Charlemont, chimed in about wild cats and beyond. Saying he has a good knowledge of local wildlife after spending “a lot of his life in the woods,” his typed letter touched on mountain lions and Canada lynx.

Falandes doesn’t know what the fuss is about mountain lions. They’ve been around for decades, according to him, and he has even encountered two over the years, the first while partridge hunting off Legate Hill Road in Charlemont in 1959. The animal entered a clearing on a hill and, unaware of Falandes’ presence, walked to within 12 yards of him before detecting him. It then spun 90 degrees and “ambled off into the scrub pine.”

“As I was armed with bird shot, I did not consider shooting at this lion unless it made a hostile move,” he wrote; and there was no need to when the animal fled. … There was another close-range sighting of a lion shortly after this incident.”

Falandes’ second cat sighting occurred in 1982, in the middle of Lenox Swamp, also in Charlemont, but he didn’t go into the details. He did, however, give his assessment of the big-cat situation.

“Due to the lack of constant signs and/or sightings,” he wrote, “I think the lions are few in number with a large range, at least at this time.”

As for Lynx, Falandes has a more recent encounter to share, again in Charlemont, while hunting with a scoped rifle during the 2005 bobcat season. “I observed what I initially thought was a large bobcat but when I put the crosshairs on it, I realized it was a lynx,” he wrote. “The lynx was in the open and I was using a 6X scope at approximately 75 years, so there was mistake in identity. … A friend of mine had the exact same occurrence, only at closer range in Buckland.

I myself  experienced a similar sighting while sitting motionless in a deer stand overlooking a ravine across the street from my home eight or 10 years ago. I noticed movement along a stonewall and, once it got close enough, positively identified it as the largest bobcat I have seen. It stood perhaps 20 inches at the shoulder, long-legged like my male Springer Spaniel. In fact I have described it several times since as the size of 42-pound Ringo. I have seen several bobcats since, none approaching that size, but thought it could have been a large male like the 38-pounder I saw Conway trapper Eddie Rose carrying out of the woods along the Whately/Williamsburg line many years ago. After reading the description of lynx in a recent Vermont Fish & Game Department press release, it occurred to me that the animal I saw could have been and probably was a wayward lynx.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.