With bowhunters sitting in their treestands these days, one of them, Steven Curtis of East Colrain, pulled into my driveway noontime Saturday. Meeting for the first time, he wanted  to share color trail-camera photos of a claw-scarred deer other hunters in adjacent stands may soon become acquainted with …  pondering  the possibilities.

This doe, probably in the 100-pound range, displays deep, unmistakable, thought-provoking, healed claw marks gouged across both  ribcages. Obviously, she somehow escaped a large, clawed predator, which judging from the available photographic evidence, pounced on her back and tried unsuccessfully to take her down for  venison dinner.

A bear? Bobcat? Um, dare we suggest … a cougar? Hmmmm? Who knows? The jury’s out. But in Curtis’ experienced-woodsman assessment, and mine, the scars holler wildcat, and most likely cougar. Yes, quite possibly a wayward young male disperser far away from his distant western birthplace, wandering far and wide eastward for females and his own new territory. Such a cat would be immature, inexperienced and not quite a man yet. Thus, perhaps, the doe’s miraculous escape.

Think of the possible scenarios of attack by such an animal, which would either jump down from a low, sturdy tree limb or off a shelf of mountain ledge overlooking a tight pass. Then again, yes, I suppose it could have launched the attack from ambush cover at ground level, though that seems less likely. Regardless, there are many sites that meet all three descriptions in our vast forested uplands, and none can be ruled out just yet without expert testimony.

Now, mind you that I have been told in the past by credentialed wildlife experts — respected sources such as former MassWildlife Deer Project Leaders Jim McDonough, John McDonald and Steve Williams — that bobcats and northern lynx will indeed take down a young deer by pouncing on its neck from above, simultaneously breaking the spinal column and opening the jugular with its teeth in one lethal fell swoop resulting in instant paralysis and rapid death. But a bear attacking in such a fashion from above? I have never heard of that.

I put out a feeler to an expert who has not yet responded. So I’ll wait for a response and I’ll keep you posted.

My guess? Well, dare I say another cougar disperser passing through my neighborhood? Yes. That’s the way I’m leaning. No, can’t be sure, but the scars along both of that Houdini  doe’s ribcages scream mountain lion.
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What an amazing outpouring of sympathy and amateur diagnoses from dog-owning readers concerned about my 12-year-old springer spaniel gundog, Lily, who’s getting old and showing visible signs of age.

Last week in this space, I described my pet’s second troubling spell characterized by unsteadiness on her feet and inability to jump up onto my truck tailgate, which has since her juvenile days been no problem.

Given many thoughtful responses to last week’s column, I have to believe Lily’s dealing with vestibular disease, a vertigo-like affliction related to the inner ear that’s basically untreatable, according to several dog owners who have done what they could to cure it and ended up just living with it.

Several correspondents said vets sometimes refer to it as “old-dog syndrome,” which I can live with because Lily is indeed an old dog, not to mention one tough bitch and alder-swamp buster. Her registered name is Old Tavern Farm’s Tiger Lily, and she has lived up to it every day of her life.

One correspondent from up the hill in Heath emailed me with his diagnosis and then, a day later pulled into my driveway with his 14-year-old bitch, Lois, lying contently on his black Silverado’s front seat. The disease more advanced than Lily’s, Lois displayed somewhat cloudy eyes and subtle side-to-side head movement. I witnessed this same head motion for a day or two after Lily’s first seizure-like event in the spring, but it faded fast and has not returned.

Though still not certain whether Lily will be able to perform in the field this year, I am not quite ready to write her off just yet. Last week, a few days after her latest setback, she maneuvered through a dense wild-rosebush border and continued south through dense, thorny wetland brush to flush a pair of woodcock, one after another. So let’s just say the instinct and desire lives on. I have an idea she’ll flush and return some pheasants in the coming weeks.

That said, here it is Day 5 of the pheasant season, and I have yet to slip into my Filson bibs and pound my favorite coverts. Still early, friends who’ve been out report flushes are few and far between, which doesn’t surprise me early. Pheasant hunting always improves after birds have been stocked for several weeks, compared to the Week 1 birds quickly wiped out by the opening-day onslaught.

Trust me, I will get out this week. I’ve been busy thus far, plus it’s been way too hot for my liking this week. So, let the birds multiply and the temperatures drop and we’ll be up to our old tricks, me and Chubby and Cooker or Killer or even new man Skinny Williams, who texted colleague Big Boiczyk Sunday evening about setting up a Saturday hunt. Though I hate hunting Saturdays and bucking the crowds, I just may take Skinny out, even if he is a school teacher. I seldom got along with schoolteachers, though there were rewarding exceptions. Skinny’s saving grace is that he’s Frontier’s baseball coach and I’m an old hardball man from way back. Plus, he’s a childhood friend of my boy, Johnny Pepyne, the infamous Frontier schoolboy entrepreneur. So, yes, this pairing of Smikky and me may just bear succulent fruit.

We’ll see. Well worth a try. I dare him to demand I raise my hand before asking questions. All that would do is stir up old issues.

The autumnal equinox is here, landscapes and backyard maples are sporting that familiar early-fall tinge and, yep, cougar feedback from high priests is alive and well.

It didn’t take long for Cougar Rewildling Foundation (CRF) President Chris Spatz to chime in on last week’s column titled “Cougar Rewildling Could Happen Here.” Actually, there is probably no one on earth more eager for  such a development. That’s his foundation’s mission: to bring cougars back east. But he knows the he and other cougar advocates are really up against it politically. It is thus not difficult to surmise that he’s pessimistic at best about cougars returning to the Northeast, based on what he knows about government policy where cougar populations are alive, well and itching to migrate out to new domains.

The major problem is that state and federal wildlife and law-enforcement officials, always swayed by public outcry, opinion and safety concerns, are pulling strenuously in the opposite direction. While some of these wildlife experts are indeed sympathetic to the noble beasts’ plight to repopulate places from which they were long ago extirpated, most public officials know that the return of any large carnivores capable of inflicting bodily harm or even death upon human beings are not generally welcome, even on the fringes of rural neighborhoods. Thus, in a place like South Dakota’s picturesque Black Hills, where some 30 years ago cougars returned after, give or take, a 100-year absence, state officials would rather be safe than sorry, so to speak. So, in recent years they have instituted what cougar defenders consider draconian harvest quotas aimed at keeping big cats buried deep in the wilderness and away from even rural folks, never mind suburbs and urban areas.

This dilemma is spelled out in minute detail by science and nature writer William Stolzenburg, whose intriguing new book “Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat’s Walk Across America” follows the media-darling cougar that traveled more than 2000 miles from his Black Hills birthplace to Milford, Conn, before meeting its maker on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in the wee hours of June 11, 2011. Although this juvenile male “disperser” may not have been the first cougar to make such a cross-country journey in search of a female and new territory of its own, it is the first and only documented case, one that may solve the mystery of at least some of the hundreds of sightings reported in the Northeast over the past 30 years. The fact is that there’s really no way of knowing for sure. On the other hand, there’s no way of saying it’s impossible, either. Now that South Dakota and other western cats are being tranquilized and collared for research studies, others may well show us the way to rewildling and hint at the possibility that such migrations have been randomly and rarely occurring for many years.

Spatz wouldn’t likely argue against that hypothesis, given what he now knows about male dispersers as a result of the western collaring and telemetry tracking initiative. Young males do indeed wander greater distances than initially believed to escape the ire of dominant males in established territory, and to find females. The problem is that the same type of research shows females reluctant to travel nearly as far.
“No wild female (with a fresh case in Tennessee still pending) or kittens have been documented east of the Missouri River,” wrote Spatz last week. “The closest breeding colony remains Nebraska. Young males can disperse thousands of miles ’til the cows come home. But if females don’t make into the Midwest, let alone farther east, there can be no rewildling.”

Fair enough. But having read, enjoyed and comprehended Stolzenburg’s book on a fascinating subject of longtime personal interest and study, the author seems to suggest that re-establishing cougars to their old eastern haunts would eventually happen by natural migration and range expansion with friendly wildlife-management objectives. Which is to say that if the wildlife-management goal was to allow western big cats to multiply at sufficient rates to expedite range expansion of males and females, sooner or later they’d repopulate available wilderness areas through the Ozark Mountains as well as Great Lakes country, not to mention farther east in the Adirondack, Green, White and Appalachians mountains all the way down the East Coast to the Blue Ridge and Great Smokies.

Although Spatz doesn’t expect such a liberal cougar-management policy to be enacted in the Black Hills anytime soon, he didn’t argue with the inevitable-rewildling hypothesis if such the goal was to push populations east.

“Yes, it would happen eventually,” he wrote, “but it’s 700 miles from the central Nebraska colony to the next best habitat identified by (CRF colleague) John Laundre as well as the Cougar Network in the Ozarks and northern Minnesota.
“Every male that’s made that trek for the last 25 years has either been killed or disappeared. Females tend to stay within 100 miles of their natal range. Prairie range expansion has crept only 150 miles in 25 years. That means it would take at least 50 years to get halfway to the Ozarks under good conditions. The question is: how will females raise kittens to dispersal age while stepping stone across this hostile landscape where no male has survived in 25 years?
“So much must change in puma management across 2,000 miles to get them back to New England.”

Agreed.

Then again, never underestimate the power of Mother Nature, and don’t just dismiss out of hand every local cougar sighting you hear of. Obviously, after that 2011 Connecticut road kill, it can happen, probably will again and has before.

Like yesterday, I clearly remember the day it was brought to my attention: June 11, 2011. The breakfast alert came by email from old friend and valued source John McDonald, the former MassWildlife Deer Project Leader by then working as a wildlife biologist out of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (USFW) Hadley office.

Yes, it was true. Finally, after scores of reported New England sightings publicized right here over more than three decades, a real, big, live mountain lion had met its maker after midnight on a Milford, Conn., highway. And, oh yes, the question of its origin was a hot topic indeed. Call it bad timing. Just three months earlier, USFW had changed eastern cougar status from endangered to extinct. In other words, the king of North American wildcats, once native to the East, was no longer considered rare. According to the USFW, this cat no longer existed. The announcement was celebrated by many who said, “Told you so,” and, well, then again, criticized by those who  totally disagreed. So, go figure: three months later, a 140-pound male that measured nearly eight feet from nose to tip of tail, with no visible signs that it had ever been held in captivity, turned up dead on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, in a Long Island Sound town in the evening shadow of New York City.

What was interesting about my informant for this news flash within hours of the road-kill was that McDonald had warned me as a friend and longtime source to stop publicizing cougar sightings, which are not accepted as evidence by authorities but rather as misidentified house cats, golden retrievers, bobcats, deer, chipmunks and you name it. Well, honestly, chipmunks should be stricken from that list. But you get he point.

Although I can’t remember the exact wording of his morning email, I can paraphrase it as a cautious compliment somewhere along the lines of: Congratulations on your perseverance regarding this subject. A dead adult cougar showed up last night on a Milford, Conn., highway. We’re not sure where it came from but are investigating escaped-pet or animal-farm escapee as possibilities.

Hmmmmm? Anything but a real, live, wild cougar somehow finding its way to New England, where it once roamed freely as a valuable carnivore in the Northeastern ecosystem. Well, no such luck, fellas. By simply eyeballing the dead creature, it was clear from the start that it was a wild beast that had all of its claws and wore not a sign of tattoos, ear clips, computer chips or other identification markers placed on it by humans for identification. No, this young male was no pet.

Later, after gathering DNA samples and cross referencing them with the ever-growing federal database, it was discovered to be the same cat that had earlier shown up and left collectible DNA evidence through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario and Lake George, N.Y., before arriving in posh Greewich, Conn., and dying as road kill on the Wilbur Cross Parkway at 12:30 a.m. The DNA samples taken from the carcass, likely in the presence of U.S. Special Agent Thomas Ricardi, namesake son of former the state Environmental Police captain and current wildlife-rehabilitation expert who lives in Conway, matched the cat to five other samples along its 15-point, 19-month, 2,000-plus-mile trek through hostile territory all the way from the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Now, thanks to William Stolzenburg’s new book, “Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat’s Walk Across America,” most of this cat’s so-called record journey is blended into a documented tale of cougar rewilding in the Black Hills based on scientific analysis of  radio-collared cougars tracked wandering to find new territories after expulsion from dominant cats’ domains where they’re born. If no one interferes with this natural migration, one would expect juvenile males in the 2-year-old class to be on the move out of dominant males’ territory looking for female mates and into new territory to establish as their own. Thus, over time, one would expect their range to eventually expand eastward all the way to the coast.

Called “dipersers,” no one was sure how far these wayward cats would travel seeking a female, but it was clear early on that 200- and 300-mile treks were common. That radius was later increased to 700 miles when a young Black Hills male found its way to Oklahoma, where it was killed by a speeding sagebrush freight train. Then these dispersers started showing up in Iowa and Nebraska and Arkansas and Kansas and Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Kentucky, where sooner or later they would either be killed accidentally on a road or rail or die at the hands of law enforcement officials wired for public safety. More than one pathetic disperser met its end cowering under a porch, backyard trailer or you name it. Defenders say such a response is unwarranted, that these cats should be tranquilized, moved and saved. Law enforcement would rather dispatch these potentially problematic cats to eliminate any possibility of human fatality or injury resulting from attack.

Given what they now know after years of radio-collar tracking, in a perfect world the juvenile males would break new trails in all directions and, sooner or later, females living in saturated western territory would follow, eventually building new reproductive cougar populations nationwide and into Canada and Mexico and perhaps beyond. Although it appeared that this process was well underway five and more years ago because of an ever-increasing Black Hills gene pool, that migration process has been derailed by aggressive recent overhunting in South Dakota, where, over the objections of cougar-rewildling advocates and progressive, deep-ecology state and local wildlife and conservation advocates, the state has set generous bag limits leaning in he direction of keeping numbers down in the name of public safety, not to mention vociferous complaints and hysteria from ranchers, sheep herders and residential cougar-phobes.

What this big cat that died in Connecticut proves is that there are no geographical or manmade obstacles capable of keeping similar dispersers from repopulating the East over the long haul. And who’s to say his was the first, that others before him were real and not hallucinations or misidentification? These cats are good swimmers and can learn to negotiate superhighways and  secondary back roads alike. Fact is, there is no such thing as an insurmountable mountain range capable of barring their door in any direction.

The list of sources relied upon by the author Stolzenburg — a prolific Reno, Nev., science and nature writer — is chock full of experts used by this space over the years. We’re talking about scholarly Chris Spatz and Helen McGinnis of the Easten Cougar Foundation that morphed into today’s Cougar Rewildling Foundation, and rabble-rousers like Bill Betty and John Lutz, with both of whom I still maintain an open line of communication despite my reluctance to jump full bore into their government-conspiracy camp. I listen with interest to all of them and others as well and form my own opinions about the credibility of their tales and the potential cougar comeback in the Northeast, which I do not consider impossible.

I was surprised, given who he did talk to, that Stolzenburg didn’t discover USFW researcher Virginia Fifield, who was sent to the Pioneer Valley to investigate cougar sightings and reports from 1981 through 1985. Headquartered in Hadley before the new, state-of-the-art USFW office was built, she investigated hundreds of reports and recorded one solitary “confirmed” track found in the mud left behind by a Goshen puddle. Similar studies by other folks of Fifield’s ilk are cited in Stolzenburg’s fine book, and Fifield’s finding would have only enhanced his argument.

As for me, well, Stolzenburg’s book provided one more voice on a fascinating subject that has captured my curiosity ever since several workers taking a break in the mid-1970s during construction of the new Whately Glen Reservoir reported a sighting in broad daylight. It was not a phantom sighting by a single man but rather several witnesses reporting the same mountain lion sighting, and word spread like wildfire through South Deerfield. Since then, there have been many more credible Pioneer Valley sightings reported here and elsewhere, and there will likely be many more. Stolzenburg adds to the discussion and makes it blatantly clear that cougar rewildling in the east is far from impossible if allowed to happen. Then again, who’s to say it won’t happen despite overzealous wildlife management policy in cougar niches like the Black Hills? If so, it’ll take more time than if their goal was to increase the population and expand the range back to its colonial borders.

The Beldingville bears just keep on giving in this, a week that has thus far offered ideal morning weather for bottomland rambles. So, of course I took robust, refreshing walks through familiar riverside habitat each day, doubling the normal distance to extend the splendor of a cool north breeze, bright blue sky, and sparse, white, wispy clouds silently drifting south like dreamy, distant cotton swabs.

Had I time and willing companions other than the dogs, I would have headed for an upland hardwood wonderland to investigate ridge-top forest that looks quite inviting and lush from afar despite the dry spring and summer some call a drought. And you must understand that time is running out for woodland treks, with bear season looming the day after Labor Day. After that, explorative woodland romps could be hazardous to one’s health, not to mention potentially dangerous to a pair of rambunctious springer spaniels, one 12 but still plenty frisky when everything lines up.

Walking the wilds can stir the most pleasant, probing and profound pondering. It was German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who wrote: “Only thoughts reached by walking have value.” And one of our own, Henry David Thoreau, believed that a lifetime of walking within a 10-mile radius of home could produce infinite new discoveries. Both men have stood the test of time. What they said in their day is still true and pure. That’s what gives them merit. Their words of wisdom have stood the test of time and will continue to do so for the ages. Walt Whitman, an American literary giant who overlapped Thoreau and the Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century, was once asked whose words would be followed longer, Thoreau’s or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s. Without hesitation, Whitman correctly named Thoreau, considered a lesser literary figure and scholar than Emerson in his day.

But enough of that temporary digression spurred by invigorating morning walks in perfect weather, and back to our Beldingville bear discussion, because another articulate voice entered the fray last week. Which reminds me. I’d be a liar to deny that more than a few times it has crossed my meandering thoughts while hiking that it may have been unwise of me so close to hunting season to publicize recent interesting bear encounters in that rural Ashfield neighborhood. “What if,” my inner sanctum has queried, “hunters populate the woods up there and take out that sow which appeared to be with four cubs in a friend’s garage?” Well, let’s just say that was not my desired outcome when identifying the bears’ whereabouts. In fact, truthfully, I’d hate to learn I played any role in leaving four orphaned cubs to fend for themselves in our idyllic western uplands.

To briefly summarize the bear tales I am speaking of and have written about the past two weeks, first Jack Shea and dog Nye had a scary encounter, then neighbors Lester and Nancy Garvin had an unrelated sighting worth sharing in their nearby garage and yard. And now, after reading the two previous narratives, another sophisticated wildlife observer chimed in by Friday email, wishing to share his perspective on the mini-attack and potential bluff charge endured by Nye and Shea, plus the unusual configuration of a sow and four cubs that showed up at the Garvin homestead. What was unusual about the Garvins’ sighting was that the different sizes of the four cubs appeared to indicate two pairs of offspring born in successive years — rare for bears, which typically mate every other year, raising cubs into their second spring before rejecting them to produce another litter.

Our most recent correspondent is Deerfield Academy English teacher Joel Thomas-Adams, who has previously responded to other columns. A little online poking around will tell you that the man is much more than a teacher at one of the world’s most respected prep schools. With a concentration in English and environmental studies, he’s an Oxford Rhodes Scholar who’s studied bears of all types during stops in the Northern Rockies, the Bitterroots, the Great Smokies and the Nantahalas. These days, he doesn’t have to travel far from his Old Deerfield home, with bears inhabiting the Pocumtuck Ridge to the east and, to the west, t’other side the Deerfield River, in the Old World. And that doesn’t even include his own backyard the foraging black beasts occasionally visit. In Thomas-Adams’ opinion, the scenarios described in my last two columns were not “mysterious.” To the contrary, he says that what he’s read is to be expected under the right circumstances.

“In the case of Mr. Shea, what clearly happened had less to do with (foraging of) blackberries (in dense, shielding cover) and more to do with the presence of a cub,” wrote Thomas-Adams. “Whether he saw it or not, (Shea) and/or his dog must have crossed the line between a mother and her  cub, probably treed. Just about any black bear, otherwise, would just move on to avoid conflict. The incident you reported is classic cub-defense behavior.”

Ok, understood and accepted. But in defense of Shea — who spent three hours in my company the day after his harrowing incident and actually accompanied me on my daily walk while waiting for the veterinarian to stitch-up his pet’s chest — he too suspected a cub or cubs were nearby, even though he never saw one like he had 30-some years ago when bluff-charged by a bear in the same area with infant daughter Emily in tow.

“Regarding the four cubs of various sizes,” Thomas-Adams continued, “it’s relatively predictable after such a mild winter. ‘Induced ovulation’ for bears is considerably more amazing than mere opportunism. Sows can carry fertilized eggs from several potential fathers and decide which to implant and which to jettison, usually depending on how much fat they’ve stored when it comes time to den. All fattened up with a good den and a clement winter coming on, she might well have implanted four eggs last fall.”

Thomas-Adams says he’s twice witnessed sows with four cubs, “and a sow with three cubs used to visit our backyard (and feeders) predictably each June. In turn, one of her cubs had three offspring and kept up the practice, returning (last June) with three tiny cubs that she treed in our backyard when I interrupted her destroying my feeder.”

Again, I must defend Dr. John McDonald, the expert I reached out to for analysis of the Garvin sighting. Reviewing the available information, McDonald laid out three potential scenarios that could explain four cubs, two larger than the other two, which would lead one to believe they were from different litters over two years. McDonald — currently a Westfield Sate University wildlife biologist with previous stops at MassWildlife and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — first speculated that all four cubs could have been from the same litter and two were noticeably larger (possibly males). So he did have that option covered before launching into two more possibilities.

Thomas-Adams didn’t limit his insightful musings to the black-bear discussion. No, he went on to a describe a diminishing family of orphaned coyote pups he’s been observing for some time in Deerfield’s South Meadows, along wetlands that I myself know very well from pheasant hunting. Better still, he closed with an enticing little tease about a subject dear to me. In mention of the intriguing standing stones of ancient lore and local mystery on high, lonesome Burnt Hill in Heath, he implored: “I’d love to hear more (based on something besides woo-woo mysticism, of which there is plenty around here) about indigenous stone formations. I was checking out the ones on a high ridge in Heath recently, and there is an as-yet untraced network that may well have much to tell us.”

Oh my! He’s preaching to the choir there. I have been immersed in deep history and deep ecology of the Pioneer Valley for three or four years now, and Mr. Thomas-Adams’ little nudge toward that high Heath mystery among low-bush upland blueberries is right square in my wheelhouse.

Let’s save it for another day.

COUGARS TALES: First, a Hog Hollow Road/Buckland sighting by Sandy Cardinal, who wished she could furnish more information but, “was too surprised to even fumble for my phone/camera.” However, she could say that her driveway is about 800 feet long and, driving out, about halfway down “we saw the cougar, about 25 or 30 feet in front of us. It was turning from the driveway to return to the woods on the right, where there is a patch of lawn about 12 feet wide, then another 20 feet under tall trees, slightly shaded, before the woods close in. At first I thought bobcat until it finished its turn and we saw its full length and tail. I’m estimating its back was about 3 feet long with tail to match. Color was a deep tawny, darker at the tip of its tail, which had a slight, not quite upturn at the end. It was in no hurry but moved with strength and purpose. It never looked back at us.”

Ms. Cardinal says she’s been enjoying playful back and forth with neighbors ever since her sighting, teasing them that she’ll add a rope with feathers to make her walking stick a large cat toy and calling “here kitty, kitty’ as she wanders. Her neighbors are “teasing back that they’ll bring along some Meow Mix.”

Meanwhile, for the second time in a month or so, longtime Heath correspondent Rol Hesselbart forwarded a New York Times article about reintroducing mountain lions to the Northeast (if they are not already here in limited numbers). First, the reintroduction was proposed as a way to reduce a burgeoning whitetail deer population, which has become hazardous to the health of highway travelers, not to mention expensive for insurance companies, who, of course, defer the cost to policy holders. The thinking was that reintroducing an efficient deer predator like cougars would act as a natural check and balance. But can you imagine the public outcry? It would be immense … and, for some, hysterical.

Now, this week, another NYT article proposes a similar Northeastern program to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease, which is rampant in the New York City suburbs, coastal Connecticut, New Jersey and beyond. The latest proposal is to bring back cougars and timber wolves to keep in check the most prevalent carriers of the tick-borne disease: deer, mice and chipmunks. Also, the article suggests that reintroduction of the two efficient predators would also cut down the ever-expanding “coywolf” population expanding into out urban and suburban neighborhoods. Sometimes called a hybrid coyote, this canine we’re by now all familiar with is, according to the NYT article, one-quarter wolf, two-thirds Western coyote and part domestic dog.

Hmmmmm?

We’ll see how much traction these proposals get.

CATFISH DERBY RESULTS: Brothers Gary and Rick Hallowell’s seventh-annual Last Cast Catfish Derby held “anywhere on the Connecticut River and its tributaries for 36 hours last weekend (Friday night through Sunday) drew 48 competitors and raised $330 for Franklin County Big Brother/Big Sister. Old pro and previous two-time winner Bob “Catfish” Bedaw of South Deerfield looked like he would again walk away with top prize by catching an 11-pound, 5-ounce channel cat. But then the wily team comprised of James Lund of Montague, and father/son Mike and A.J. Sackett of Gardner put their heads together and pushed Bedaw aside. When it was all said and done, Mike Sackett won the $150 top prize with his 12-pound, 11-ounce cat. Second place ($100) went to Lund for his 12-pound, 1-ouncer, followed by Bedaw ($50) in third and Dave Chmura of Hadley ($25) in fourth at 11 pounds 2 ounces. Ken Magdycz of Plainfield won the $25 Sam’s gift-card door prize. The tourney was hosted by the Turners Falls Rod & Gun Club, with its clubhouse quietly nestled on the southern shore of Barton Cove. Pipione’s Sport Shop generously donated $100 and served a ticket headquarters.