People are prepared to believe incredible claims

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN fascinated with what people want to believe. And there is no topic that fascinates me more than the subject of cougars in Ontario.

As news editor of Ontario Out of Doors magazine, I have been sent dozens of photos of cougars over the years that were supposedly taken by trail cameras in Ontario. Some were incredibly easy to refute by finding them online on other (usually western hunting) websites. For others, you didn’t even have to do that.

I recall one person sent me a photo of a cougar sneaking up on a deer in front of “his” trail camera that he claimed was set up somewhere in southern Ontario. The only problem with this photo is that the deer in the photo was a mule deer, which do not exist in southern Ontario. Another person sent me a cougar photo from southern Ontario that had magpies, another western bird, in them.

Thus far, I have never seen a credible photo or video of a cougar that you

could prove was taken in Ontario.

That’s not to say there have not been incidents of cougars in Ontario. There have been and most are escaped pets or zoo animals. The most famous incident occurred a few years ago when a cougar that mauled a dog was shot near Bracebridge. Believers of cougars in the province went nuts for here was actual proof of an Ontario cougar. That much was true. The part that was left out was that the animal in question had been de-clawed and was shot in very close proximity to a zoo that dealt in exotic big cats.

Having said that there have been two credible incidents of cougars in Ontario: one, a sighting near the Manitoba border and the other a track and scat sample by Wainfleet bog in southwestern Ontario.

Are there wild cougars in Ontario? Likely. It’s a huge province.

The problem is hundreds of reports and photos are put out every year and most of them are pure bogus, cases of mistaken identity or from out of province.

When it comes to cougar sightings and photos, very few people put any critical thought into it.

Take, for instance, a video that started doing the rounds yesterday. It certainly shows a cougar. But the person who took the video claims it was taken in Kinmount – and there is nothing in the video that proves that. Yet, he placed it online and people immediately started believing him. No other questions asked.

By the way, that person’s Facebook page also has what is purported to be a photo of U.S. civil war-era soldiers standing over a dead pterodactyl. No judgment here; just a little background.

Maybe I’m cynical, but I’d like to see something to confirm that claim. For instance, it shouldn’t be difficult to find a nearby track or hair or scat to verify it. Or, at the very least, show the trail camera’s SD card to a news source or the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry so it could be corroborated. That’s never done, however. And I doubt it will be done in this case.

Yet people will believe someone they don’t know when he says a cougar is roaming about. And they’ll repeat stories about cougars spotted in an area by a friend of a friend of a friend ...

All this is OK with me. Believe what you want to believe.

My problem is that generally the people that believe all this are the same folks who tend to be skeptical when I claim the bass I’m holding in a photo is 18 or 19 inches.

Go figure.