A quick glance backward from the door of his diner had Ted Lye reaching for his binoculars and a gun.
It was Sunday night around 8:30, just getting dark enough for the deer to be out and grazing.
Crouched in the grass about 300 feet away from him, Lye said he saw a Cougar.
The Cougar, officially called a Puma, was large and crouched low as if hunting. The tail was as long as Lye's arm and the hide was the same brown as a yellow Lab.
"It was slinking along the grass," Lye said. "And it loped across the field toward Ernie."
Ernie is a Pot Bellied pet pig that lives in a barn behind the diner.
Lye said he walked toward the barn to make sure the Puma stayed away from the pig, but he didn't see the animal anywhere around him. Though the grass was long and its cover thick.
Josh, an employee at Ted's Range Road Diner also took a look at the Puma through Lye's binoculars.
Robert Burcher, a resident of Slabtown in The Blue Mountains first heard of a Puma sighted in the area in December 2008. He lived out West for a while, and still had friends there. Puma's in the west aren't rare, but the animals are elusive no matter what province they roam.
Burcher calls himself a "keen observer and tracker." He's spent the past several months researching the Puma, learning their eating and killing habits and the nature of their tracks and roaming patterns.
Burcher's friend sent him a Puma hide and skull from one that was tracked and killed in B.C.
He uses the hide for "proof." If he hears of a Puma sighting, he contacts the people who saw it, and brings the hide over, set up on a sawhorse so it's about the right height.
When Burcher brought the hide to Ted's, Lye said there was no doubt, that's what he saw, though the animal he saw was crouched and perhaps smaller.
Burcher said the hide belonged to a full grown male.
Andy McKee, fish and wildlife biologist in Grey County for the Ministry of Natural Resources said there's no scientific proof of Pumas in the area.
"We don't know much really," he said. "We haven't had a confirmed sighting ... what we really need is a body part or DNA."
Tracks are acceptable, but they have to be perfect to confirm they are Puma prints.
McKee said it is possible that there are Pumas in the area, but added that any animals in the area would most likely be escaped zoo animals or released pets.
Pumas are wild animals, and McKee recommends that any person in close vicinity with the animals exercise caution. They have, on some occasions, attacked humans. But the MNR is not issuing a warning, and is not acknowledging Puma presence in the local area.
"We can't come out as a public service to say there are Cougars around without having real proof," he said.
McKee added that if the MNR received acceptable proof that there was a Puma in the area, he doesn't expect the Ministry would take any action except to confirm the animal's presence.
Stuart Kenn of the Ontario Puma Foundation, a not for profit organization formed about seven years ago to research the Puma in Ontario disagrees with McKee, and said there are Pumas in the area.
Kenn said the Foundation puts up cameras and fur catchers along trails and wooded areas, prime for Puma hideouts, all over Ontario, including the woods stretching from Owen Sound to Collingwood and through The Blue Mountains including Duncan, and especially the Escarpment areas.
Kenn estimates, based on the scientific data the foundation has collected including several sightings, camera footage, scat analysis, DNA from fur analysis and kill data, there are about four or five Pumas that make their way from Owen Sound to Collingwood, down toward Heathcote and Castle Glenn.
Kenn noted that the area on the St. Vincent/ Sydenham Town Line and the forested area toward Walter's Falls is home to a female Puma. The animals tend to avoid open farmland, especially when the option of a thick forest is available.
Puma ranges for males can be up to 1000 square kilometers. Females tend to have about half that range. Though a healthy concentration of food, water and shelter significantly reduces the need to roam. The particular female near Walter's Falls, according to Kenn, travels through the forest and valley into Hoath Head and Woodford.
Kenn said the foundation thinkgs there may be a Male living in Kolopore Forest, and he travels around the Castle Glenn area and Duncan along the escarpment edge.
Pumas used to be native in Ontario, but were severely persecuted in past years and retreated into isolated places in Ontario. Kenn said some animals moved up North to the Sudbury area, Barrie's Bay, Ottawa Valley, Sault St. Marie and Kenora.
"There were isolated pockets where they did manage to hide from humans," said Kenn. "Over the last 100 years, they have regained some territory."
He said the animals are breeding, and the foundation is aware of one Puma den outside the Niagara Falls area.
The high deer population is helping the Puma thrive, since white tailed deer are the preferred diet for the animals.
Kenn said the Pumas in the area could have come from the original cats that went into hiding in the more isolated Ontario locations, they could be transient cats from Manitoba, Minnesota, Michigan and Quebec, or they could be pets or escaped zoo cats.
The North American Puma is an endangered species, according to Kenn. The animal would eat pretty much anything, but they tend not to go near domestic animals if they can help it. They hunt mostly in the morning and evenings when deer are most active.
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