ARE MOUNTAIN
LIONS RE-COLONIZING
CONNECTICUT?
BY TOM ZELLER JR.
Photo Illustration by Michael Clinard
Photographs by Christopher Beauchamp
IT’S
a muggy, buggy, August evening and we’ve pitched
our tents along the edge of Cherry Brook in North
Canton, Connecticut. Bo Ottmann, a 41-year-old
landscaper here, has strapped a half-frozen chunk of deer shoulder to the
trunk of a tree 20 yards upstream. Another slab — red, bloody and wet
— dangles from a high bough nearby, and a pair of motion-detecting trail
cameras are trained squarely on the meat¶“I chose that spot,” Ottmann
says of his bait placement, “so when we’re at the campsite tonight we’ll
have a visual on what’s going on. I want to be able to see it.¶Despite being
less than a quarter mile off the main drag, the “it” could be many hungry
things in this leafy and nominally ex-urban part of the state, not far from
the Massachusetts border and about 30 miles southwest of Springfield.
As in many states in the Northeast and New England, coyotes and black
bears are making a steady comeback. Bobcat are also common.