Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406260015
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN<
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But what Salley, a fishing guide, was talking about seeing last week was a mountain lion. Not one but two. The people in his boat said they saw them, too.
Mountain lion spottings in Virginia tend to come in spurts about every 10 years, and when they do they divide people. You either believe that these big cats are roaming the Virginia woodlands or you don't. You've either spotted one or you haven't. There's only a little fence straddling.
"I guess in the back of my mind I never shut the door on that possibility," said Jim Bowman, after hearing from Salley last week.
As a wildlife biologist manager for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, Bowman keeps all doors open, but he admits that this one is ajar only a crack.
"I am very skeptical," he said, "but on the other hand, I file the reports and try to keep track of them."
What Bowman, and other wildlife researchers, would like is hard evidence: tracks and pictures. Most spottings don't come with any extras. Just a person who swears he's seen a mountain lion.
For Salley, it happened this way:
"We started fishing early, at 5:30, up Craddock Creek. We didn't do any good, so I guess it was a quarter to 8 that I said, `Let's go up to the dam area to see what we might run into up there - fishing-wise.' "
Salley put out four baited lines several hundred yards from the dam and began a slow troll. With him were his son, Danny, and Gerry VerSluis and his son, Scott.
"We had caught two fish," Salley said. "We were kinda busy, talking and having a good time."
When the boat rounded the point with the dam in sight, Scott noticed something walking across the log boom, which is a narrow, floating barrier designed to keep boats and debris away from the dam.
"It looks like a big cat," Scott Salley said.
Salley reached for his binoculars.
"We were 300 yards away, maybe a little bit more," Salley said. "I got the binoculars out and sure enough it was a mountain lion. He was walking very briskly, like somebody walking on a tight rope, foot over foot. It had a long, sweeping tail."
Salley described the animal as being about the size of a greyhound dog, with a catlike head and tawny color.
"When it got almost all the way across, my son said, `Dad, there is another one!' I hadn't seen the other one. I was just focusing on the first one," he said.
Salley gave the binoculars to his son, who watched the second animal, which was about 30 yards behind the first. At the end of the logboom, the second animal "makes just one big bound or leap up 8 feet and lands on top of this big boulder up there and then just disappeared," Salley said. "Nothing but a lion could do that."
Bowman said, "Some dogs look like cats." But dogs generally don't like "tight rope" situations, and they aren't very adapt at leaping boulders.
"I am going to definitely take a look at that site," Bowman said.
Reports of lion spottings often come from reliable people, Bowman said.
"You really wonder about those," he said. "I ask them, `Did it have a collar?' It may belong to somebody and have escaped."
Even wildlife experts are divided over the mountain lion, or Eastern cougar. Some think it is extinct in states east of the Mississippi. Others are believers. Maybe the lion is making a comeback, they say.
The subject has stimulated a number of research projects, but hard evidence remains as elusive as the lion itself. One thing all the studies do show: Sightings are numerous.
The Eastern Puma Research Network, an organization based in Baltimore, reported 507 sightings in 23 Eastern states in 1992. Twenty-four came from Virginia.
Since word of Salley's experience has gotten around, two friends have approached him about seeing what they thought to be mountain lions in the lake area. It usually works that way, a fresh sighting triggering a wave of other reports.
Said Salley, "It might smell fishy, but that is what we saw."
by CNB