HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
WILD KINGDOM
what I saw!’ he adds. “You’re going to walk in ashen faced and say,
‘I just survived a close encounter
with a fucking mountain lion.”
BACK IN THE WOODS, Ottmann
stares at the campfire and shares
that, by now, he’s probably invested
thousands of dollars of his own
money in the Eastern cougar cause.
He’s purchased expensive trail
cameras, produced a Web site —
Cougars of the Valley — and spent
countless hours looking into sighting reports, or treking through the
woods of north-central Connecticut
in search of tracks or scat or hair.
I ask him if he felt vindicated by
the appearance of the Milford cat.
He said he did, but that there was
much more work to be done.
“When the information came
back that it was wild, that was a
big day for us,” he shares.
In addition to the meat, Ottmann has placed an electronic
receiver some distance into the
woods across the creek, and as we
sit and talk, he occasionally fingers
a remote-control unit in his hand,
triggering a variety of eerie sounds
in the distant receiver — a bleating
fawn, a jackrabbit — that might be
of interest to a big cat on the hunt.
“It drove home the point of
what we’re trying to do,” Ottmann says. “It said,
‘Yes, they’re here.’”
Ottmann and
a colleague
ride through
the woods
of Canton,
Connecticut,
on a mission to
find evidence
of cougars.