Deer season may be over for most of us, but for one lucky Michigan cougar, the season is still wide open.
Eli Schaefer, who lives in Houghton in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, had one of the luckiest placements of a trail camera that we have ever seen. He'd set up trail cameras in the areas that he hunts in, including one in Toivola, on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Once bow season was over, he went to collect the cameras and, flipping through the images, caught sight of something extraordinary.
On Dec. 30, Schaefer's Toivola camera caught sight of a cougar, also known as a mountain lion. They are something of a rarity in Michigan; in fact, for over 100 years, wildlife officials believed that cougars had been hunted to extinction in the state. Their presence wasn't reconfirmed until 2008, when the Department of Natural Resources validated several Michigan cougar sightings. Fifty-two sightings have been confirmed since, though DNR research indicates that the cats aren't breeding in the state but simply moving into Michigan from more-western states.
The most recent cougar sighting in Michigan was in Ontonagon County in 2022, making Schaefer's cougar the first in a year.
And Schaefer's camera didn't just catch a cougar walking by—it caught two videos of a cougar hunting deer. In the first video, the massive cat wrestles with a thrashing deer in the corner of the screen, pinning the deer to the ground. In the second video, the cougar drags the deer away and off-screen.
Schaefer seems to be a bit of a cat whisperer, as this incredible video isn't even the first time he has caught evidence of cougars in Michigan. He told Fox 2 that, two years ago, he found spots of blood on the road and followed them into the forest. Eventually, he saw tracks left by a big cat and found a deer carcass buried under leaves and dirt, a common tactic cougars use when they plan to return to their kill later. Then, last October, a different trail camera of Schaefer's caught another cougar prowling through the forest.
Wildlife officials don't know how many cougars currently live in Michigan, but Schaefer may be on his way to seeing them all.
READ MORE: What To Do If You Encounter a Mountain Lion In The Wild
