I tried to get off the big-cat chase last week, just mentioning it in passing at the end of the column; but apparently readers haven’t had enough yet, thus the e-mails and phone calls reporting additional cougar information over the past seven days.

As I sat at my desk Wednesday morning mulling options for this week’s column, first an e-mail from Marilyn Berthelette greeted me to report a Feb. 13 cougar sighting on North Taylor Hill in Montague, then a phone call from Roger Ward to report a confirmed sighting in Alstead, N.H., where his brother was a longtime chief of police. But let’s not digress. When I sat down to pen this narrative, I intended to focus on the Whately Glen, and several sightings there. So let’s travel to that idyllic spot some three miles west of Sugarloaf Mountain. Once known as Sanderson’s Glen, it’s a location I happen to know a little bit about. Fifth great grandfather Deacon Thomas Sanderson lived and ran grist and sawmills there until his 1824 death, and the family remained there until the mid-1930’s, when the property changed hands.

The first cougar sighting I ever heard of occurred at the Glen in the early 1970s, when the basin for the upper South Deerfield reservoir was being cleared. A couple of local boys were having lunch when, to their amazement, a cougar walked right past them. Since starting this cougar chase 2½ months ago, I have received three additional reports of cougar sightings in the wild, densely wooded area. Let’s take a look.

Our first sighting was reported by Chet Ostrowski Jr., whose family ran a farm for many years just northeast of Trinski’s Pond, where he was surprised to spot a cougar along the northern perimeter of the Great Swamp, as dense a jungle as you’ll find in Franklin County. “I never said anything about it because I thought people would think I was crazy,” Ostrowski said. “I happened to see movement up against the woods and it ran up a deadfall, gave a blood-curdling screech and disappeared into the woods. It was about 100 yards away when I saw it; had to be six feet long. It all happened very fast.”

Ostrowski isn’t alone. Two other witnesses, totally unfamiliar with Ostrowski’s tale, came forward to report cougar sightings in the area — ones difficult to dispute.

The first report came from John K. Parker, who lives a stone’s throw from Trinski’s Pond, on Hobbie Rd in the Mill River section of Deerfield. His sighting occurred some 15 years ago, when his son was still napping daily and he and his wife had discovered that a ride in the car could lull him to sleep. It was during such a slumber ride, about 3 on a Thanksgiving afternoon, that Parker’s cougar sighting occurred.

“Living in sight of White Birch Campgrounds, our natural route conducive to napping was the slow-paced Whately Glen Road that connects North Street in Whately with Conway’s Roaring Brook Road. When we headed east from Conway onto the Glenn road, after passing the last house and a pond/swampy flatland, we headed into the woods. Almost immediately, this monster cat with a long tail streaked across our path, left to right. Having witnessed much wildlife activity in our yard, with bobcats, fisher cat, coyotes, bear, turkeys, and deer, it didn’t seem unreasonable to add ‘lion.’”

A more recent sighting, not far from Parker’s or Ostrowski’s, was made by then 16-year-old snowmobiler Greg Barlow on a February morning in 1997, while riding his sled through the Glen from Deerfield to his hometown of Conway. Barlow recalls following a snowmobile trail along the Deerfield side of Roaring Brook, between the two reservoirs, when some movement on the right side of the trail caught his attention. He assumed it was a coyote at first, but when it crossed the trail in front of him he knew he was observing something special, a big cat.

“I know what I saw and it was no bobcat or fisher;” Barlow said on the phone, “it was a mountain lion, gray-brown with a long tail almost as big around as a soda can. It was 30 yards away and bound right in front of the sled. I could see its huge muscles and head. There was a lot of snow on the ground but it cleared the snow pretty good and was long, a big animal.”

Barlow was way ahead of his traveling companions so he stopped and he stepped off his sled. The cougar took some “huge bounds” through the deep snow, then stopped some 30 to 40 yards away and turned facing him. “It looked right at me, big eyes and whiskers, shorter ears, then took off when it heard my friends approaching.”

How many more reports like this must we hear before attaching credibility to cougar sightings?

Stay tuned … I still haven’t even touched on the other side of the story, that of the Doubting Thomases.

Mountain lion tales are coming out of the woodwork.

This week, during a brief stop at The Recorder, two people in the newsroom stopped with tales of sightings, one by reporter Diane Broncaccio, the other by the sister of the Composing Department’s Susan Smith. It all started the way most cougar discussions begin — Smith telling the story about her sister’s sighting in her East Colrain back yard, Broncaccio overhearing the conversation and chiming in with a tale of her own, one she dubbed “my cougar story,” which occurred in Heath. A similar scenario could easily unfold at the barber shop, super market, church, town hall, ballgame, tavern … you name it, the conversation could take off there. All you need is one person bold enough to admit publicly that they’ve seen a big cat and the stories begin to piggyback. And that’s precisely what has happened in this space over the past month: One teaser tale has turned into a running commentary that’s now in its fifth consecutive week; and let me warn you now, this won’t be the last you hear about it here. There’s simply too many stories for one newspaper column. More than I would have ever imagined. In fact, an interesting tale just arrived in my Inbox this morning, one that occurred eerily close to several other recent sightings. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That one can wait while we address others from the ever-growing pile of printouts on my desk.

Today we’ll begin with Rocky Stone of Orange, a typical reporter of big-cat sightings, timid but credible. An Athol native and current coach of the Athol High School football team he once played for, Stone is a class act who has “followed the recent columns concerning cat sightings with much interest.” So, add it up, he waited a solid month to throw his hat in the ring. Prior to his “coming out,” he had shared his story only with his father, Chuck Stone, a sports and news reporter for the Fitchburg Sentinel and the Athol Daily News.

Stone’s tale goes back to 1956 when, as an 11-year-old boy living on Highland Avenue in Athol, he spotted something out his bedroom window that left an indelible impression. “It was a very large cat and I assumed it was a black panther that had escaped from a zoo or circus,” Stone wrote in an email.

When sheepishly informed, his father filed his son’s report in his memory bank and, during the mid ’60s, discovered a couple of newspaper articles he thought would be of interest. One story, probably from the Rutland Herald, told of  numerous panther sightings around central Vermont; another, by longtime Maine outdoor writer Gene Letourneau, told of a cougar carcass found in New York state. The Vermont paper was offering a $100 reward for its cat. Rocky Stone squirreled away those clippings 40-some years ago and dug them out recently to contribute to this column’s cougar chase. Think of it, would a man who invented a tall tale at age 11 still be able to locate clippings his father sent him in college over 40 years ago if he wasn’t certain of what he saw from his bedroom window? Very doubtful.

“Interestingly, a few years ago I read an article (when and where I’m not sure) about mountain lions which stated that black colored varieties do appear in the species every so often,” he wrote. “So I am certain that what I saw from our house in ’56 was a black-colored mountain lion. The pursuit of the mountain lion in the Northeast is analogous to the search for UFOs, people frequently spot them but the government officials always seem to be in denial.”

Coincidentally, an earlier email sent by Donna Scott of Ashfield also described a dark-colored big cat she saw “around dusk four years ago” in Conway, off Route 116. She spotted something approaching the road and “jammed on her brakes.” The creature crossed the road in front of her and ran up a hill on the other side of the road. “It looked like a panther (grayish colored) and I was mesmerized by how graceful it was.” she wrote. … “It was gorgeous, about four feet long (minus the tail) and its back would maybe come just above my knee. It was definitely feline looking and running. Very sleek and graceful. Gorgeous!”

Excited by the sighting, Scott telephoned her father, an outdoorsman and hunter “who knows a lot about nature,” to run it by him. He told her it sounded like she had seen a cougar, but he was confused by the color. As far as he knew cougars were brown. He suggested she research it to see what she could come up with, so she went to the encyclopedia and came away convinced. “I was astonished to see that what I saw was actually a cougar, and they can be grayish,” she wrote.

“Yes,” said Tom Valiton of Buckland when told of the color issue. “Remember I told you that there’s no mistaking the brown of a cougar, that it’s unique, nothing like a deer. Well, she’s right. It’s a gray/brown. No mistaking it.”

Valiton should know. He was on the scene of a cougar kill in Texas during his years in the Marine Corps and was featured in this space last week for seeing the same big cat twice within two weeks on Hawks Road, near the Shelburne-Deerfield town line.

Because Ms. Scott owns a retail store in Ashfield, she had ample opportunity to discuss her sighting with customers. She was surprised to learn how many had similar tales to share. “Since my sighting I have had over a dozen people stop by and tell me about theirs,” she wrote. “One day when I was unfortunately not in the store someone I had never met, a hunter, stopped by and left a message that he had pictures of cougar tracks and even a picture of a gray cougar taken about two miles from my sighting the following winter. But he was scared to show the picture!”

Scot says she’s had “discussions with natural biologists, but I know what I saw.”

Along the same vein is a contributing email from John Lucas, formerly from Shelburne and now living in Cadyville, N.Y. His uncle from Millers Falls mailed him two of my columns about cougars and he dropped me an line to question why official responses to big-cat sightings try to cast doubt on the witnesses. Lucas’ most recent sighting occurred on his expansive New York state property “several years ago, when a very large cat crossed our field at a Thanksgiving dinner. Fortunately we had several friends and relatives here and it was seen by all of us. There was no question it was a mountain lion.”

Lucas reported the sighting to a local outdoor columnist “who claims to be an expert on outdoor life,” and the scribe tried to tell him it as a fisher cat. Then, following several other reported sightings in the area, the same columnist dismissed them as nonsense.

Last fall Lucas says he was walking his dog through a field he owns when a mountain lion passed 50 feet in front of them “in high gear. I have never seen an animal run so fast. My dog just froze and stared, he weighs 60 pounds. This cat was twice his size.”

Lucas went on to compliment me for “supporting the sightings down there. We need someone like you up here. Our sportswriter is Dennis April. I think he gets his information from the Internet and should be on the comic pages.”

To be fair, I must admit I’ve received credible reports from trained professionals who doubt the existence of mountain lions in New England. That discussion is for another day. First, we must get through the other side of the story, the one wildlife officials seem determined to sweep under the carpet. It gets interesting.

Very interesting.

This mountain lion story we’ve been chasing the past few weeks has legs — good, strong, healthy legs that are taking us on a wild ride through Franklin County and beyond. Yep, we may be onto something here, judging from the steady response.

The reports keep coming, all of them worthy of attention. Seems that once witnesses start disclosing what they’ve seen, others are more willing to join the conversation, no longer concerned that they’ll be greeted with ridicule and scorn. Hopefully it’ll continue.

So far, 12 eye witnesses have contacted this space, seven by e-mail, four by telephone, and one by personal visit, snapshots of cougar tracks in hand. Also, what originally set this runaway train in motion was a cat track in fresh Conway snow observed during deer season by me. I queried two abutting landowners and found that both had either seen a big cat there or knew someone who had. Also, a farmer who lives above me reported three sightings in a cornfield this past fall. All tolled, that’s 18 sightings or evidence of big cats. Can there be any doubt there are more people out there with tales to tell? Don’t bet against it.

Twelve of the reported sightings occurred in Conway, Shelburne, Deerfield or Ashfield, many within a small area on both sides of the Deerfield River. Three other big cats were spotted in the Montague-Wendell area, two were seen in southern Vermont border towns, and another was reported in Colrain. Interestingly, two of the people who contacted this space reported two separate sightings, one of them actually two in the same location over a two-week period. That man, my old baseball coach and hunting companion Tommy Valiton, knows a big cat when he sees one. He was once on the scene of a Texas kill and helped a friend field-dress the animal.

“The one I saw here was in 1990, on my way to a stress test in Springfield,” said Valiton, who lives in Buckland. “I was traveling with my wife and a friend and we were taking the back road to Route 91, through the Old World.”

As they traveled through a wetland, there, right in the road, was a big cat, which acted confused, according to Valiton. “It went one way, then the other, looked at us and took off. We go a good look. Then two weeks later, I’m taking the same route, this time with my bride, and it crossed the road right in front of us in the same place.”

Not long after that, at a Shelburne Falls social gathering of Frontier Regional School teachers, members of a bowling league, colleague Al Richards from Sunderland approached Valiton.

“I took the back road in and you’ll never guess what I saw.”

“Let me guess: a mountain lion?”

“Howdya know?

“Because I’ve seen two recently.”

Richards was impressed.

The other person who reported twice seeing a big cat is Sean King of Colrain. The first sighting took place “several years ago” traveling home from bowhunting along Jacksonville Stage Road in Halifax, Vt.

“I knew immediately it was a cat by the way it moved. The last thing I saw was its long, skinny cat’s tail going over a stone wall. It acted exactly like a house cat only it was bigger than a dog, 80 pounds or so. I felt as though I had seen a ghost.”

His second sighting occurred while driving up Colrain Mountain, not far from the sculptor’s iron rendition of a black panther along the east side of the steep road.

“It was a cat the same as the one I had seen before, with the unmistakable cat’s tail. It crossed the road right in front of me. And just to make my story completely unbelievable, it crossed within sight of the sculpture.”

Eighty-two-year-old Robert Remillard of Northfield is no stranger to big cats or stories about them. He called on the phone to offer some historical perspective about a big cat he witnessed in 1940 on a foggy slope in the village of Green River, Vt.

“I saw it briefly on a side hill, then it bound into the fog and disappeared. There were other cat sightings around that time in southern Vermont. One I remember was in Dummerston, where a cat walked between two girls through a ravine. It created quite a stir.”

In fact, Remillard said the Brattleboro Sportsmen’s Club offered a $100 reward for the cat, a pretty hefty price in those days. Then the Bellows Falls and Rutland newspapers offered $50 rewards.

Remillard has carried an interest in big cats ever since. He once attended a presentation by United States Fish & Wildlife biologist Virginia Fifield, who was stationed in western Mass. during the 1980s specifically to investigate cat sightings. Over a decade, Fifield responded to many reported sightings but was able to confirm just one cougar track in a Goshen mud-hole puddle.

Remillard said he attended Fifield’s evening talk at UMass with his brother. “She said you could tell a cat track because they left no claw prints, and that cats followed the food chain. Wherever there are a lot of deer (or turkeys), they’ll be there. There was a woman from Four-Mile Brook Road in Northfield at the meeting who had seen big cat. Makes sense. There were a lot of deer up there at the time.”

The cat tales keep coming. There are many more right here in a pile on my desk. Let’s run with it.

I can’t say I’m surprised that last week’s cougar column drew some feedback from local eyewitnesses. In fact, truth be known, I was hoping to stir the pot. Seems like a great cabin-fever topic.

The controversial subject of New England mountain lions has lain dormant in this space for some time despite knowledge of many reported sightings either in the press or by word of mouth over the past decade. I have not turned a deaf ear to such reports, just stopped commenting on them, not wanting to “beat a dead horse.” But like I said last week, when the big cats start showing up in your back yard, it’s time to pay attention.

By mid-morning of the day last week’s column hit the street there were two e-mails waiting in my Inbox, one from equine enthusiast Laurie Neely of Orange, the other from longtime Sunderland native and current Montague resident Karle Kushi. The next day another response came by way of the telephone. It was old friend and semi-neighbor Joe Judd, who unbeknownst to him had been mentioned anonymously in the column he wanted to discuss. Two of the three respondents reported seeing a big cat; the third had seen and photographed a track that had been brought to his attention by the landowner. Interestingly, two of the three witnesses had been rebuffed by authorities when reporting their sighting. The officials understandably do not want to spawn public hysteria.

Kushi reported seeing a big cat and later tracks left by one in north Sunderland 30 or more years ago. “They’ve been around the area for a long time,” he wrote. “My wife had one jump across the road in front of her car about five years ago on her way to work at UMass. It happened on Turners Falls Road, just before Randall Road, where the power lines cross, coming from the Montague landfill.”

Neely’s observation, coincidentally also on her way to work at UMass, occurred last fall in the Wendell State Forest. The big cat crossed Farley Road in front of her vehicle. “There is no doubt about it,” she wrote. “I had a clear view, maybe 50 yards away. … I was driving toward Millers Falls from Wendell. It was crossing north to south, into the woods from the side of the road that borders the Millers River. Dog-sized, light brownish in color, it had a very long tail that curled up toward the end.”

Believing she had made an important observation, Neely reported the sighting by telephoning the United States Fish & Wildlife Service in Hadley and posting it on the Five-College Bulletin Board. Many responses from people who had seen big cats appeared quickly on the bulletin board, two of them reporting cougar-sightings in Leverett and Montague, “in the hills that are pretty-much contiguous with Wendell State Forest,” according to Neely.

“A number of people (from the bulletin board) contacted me to say they too had seen big cats, and that the F&W office had a policy of not responding or verifying cougar sightings??? Indeed, my message was never returned.”

Judd, who spends a great deal of time in the western Franklin County woods, has never seen a big cat himself, but he was alerted to the presence of one in his neighborhood, as I was, and went to the scene of a sighting, where he discovered a clearly discernible track and photographed it. Knowing many high-ranking MassWildlife officials personally, he disclosed his discovery, offered the photo to substantiate the presence of a big cat in Shelburne and was snubbed by an old friend.

“I was a little surprised by the response,” Judd said. “Apparently, they don’t want to publicize these things. I’ll come by with the photo Saturday afternoon after 3, so you can take a look.”

I looked it over and it looked like a cat track to me … a big one.

So what should we make of these mountain-lion sightings cropping up throughout New England?

They’re certainly noting new. The first sighting I recall hearing about was way back in the 70s when construction crews were clearing the forest on both sides of a Roaring Brook hollow for the new Whately Glen reservoir along the Whately/Conway line. The news spread fast around South Deerfield.

“Yeah, the guys were sitting there at midday eatin’ sandwiches and — Bingo! — outa nowhere steps a mountain lion, long, sloping tail, and it walks right past them, bold as brass.” At least that’s the story I recall.

Since then, there have been many similar sightings. More than you can count. Northeast Kingdom, White Mountains, backwoods Maine, North Shore, Quabbin, Goshen State Forest, Shelburne, Colrain. You name it, a cougar’s been seen there. Or at least it seems that way.

Myself, I’ve been in a lull when it comes to writing about big cats, but I’ve more than covered it over the years, and circumstances dictate that I touch on it again.

Why?

Well, it all started in Shelburne at the start of shotgun deer season when an old softball teammate piqued my interest. Right there, in a veritable wildlife refuge near my home that I’ve hunted some, he claimed there’s been a big cat prowling. Saw evidence, had a local woodsman inspect it and, sure enough, appeared to be a big cat.

Bemused, I filed it in my memory banks, behind all the other similar info I’ve encountered over the past 30-some years, and moseyed on.

About two weeks later, on my normal routine with my dogs, I stopped to chat with a neighboring farmer and, lo and behold, more food for thought.

“Have you seen the mountain lion?” she asked.

“No, what mountain lion?”

“There’s been one around here. Three people have seen it around my cornfield the past couple of months. If you see it when you’re hunting, shoot it. I want to see it.”

Hmmmmmmm? Interesting.

Here I am, not two miles as the crow flies from the site my old softball buddy identified as a big-cat’s domain, and now another report, in my mind a credible report.

At the very least, it gets you thinking. You start to wonder, if there’s a big cat in my neighborhood, then why haven’t I seen it or at least sign of it? A puzzling question.

I discuss it with my hunting buddy, run it by my wife and ponder it over and over again: If there’s a big cat living where I’ve run my dogs twice daily for a couple of years, wouldn’t you think I’d be aware of its presence?

Maybe, maybe not.

Within days of my impromptu neighborhood chat, I’m hunting along the Deerfield River in Conway and my hunting buddy, an old trapper from way back, approaches me in the woods. We’ve completed a small push, four or five deer, fresh tracks in the snow, have burned us, fleeing down a steep bank toward the Deerfield, and it’s over. Off to somewhere else.

“Hey, Bags,” he says, motioning with his hand and arm, “follow me, there’s something I want to show you. It’s only a little out of our way.”

So off we go, him leading the way through the hardwood stand. We pop out into a rye field, angle toward the back corner some 80 yards away, poke into the tangled edge overlooking the river far below, and pick up his boot prints. He walks maybe 30 feet, stops, studies the ground and points.

“Yeah, right here, take a look at this and tell me what you think.”

Two feet from his right foot is a round impression in the snow, big around as a softball, pads clearly discernible. Cat tracks. Big ones.

“Let me tell you something: I’ve trapped bobcats, 30-plus pounders, and that’s no bobcat. Too big. And it’s no bear, either. Gotta be a big cat.”

We backtrack, find a few more clean impressions and I’m convinced. Big cat. The kind you’d hate to see curling its lip at you.

“We’ll have to stop and talk to the farmer one of these days, see if he’s seen a big cat in the neighborhood.”

A few days later, my friend talks to the farmer on the phone and asks him the big question.

“No, I’ve never seen one but my son did a few years ago, t’other side the river, over by Cosby’s. He said there was no mistakin’ it. Had a long, sloping tail.”

A few days later we’re shootin’ the breeze in an abutting landowner’s dooryard, talking about deer and turkeys and bears, and we pose the question. Ever seen a big cat here?

“Yeah, I swear I saw one over there, across the road, walking through the pasture. At first I thought it was a deer, then a coyote, but then I saw the tail. Sure it was a mountain lion. Never seen it since, but I guess they’re around.”

Perhaps so, but they must have an uncanny ability to avoid people … most of the time.