SEQUIM — Seven lambs killed last week on Maxine Secor’s farm just outside Sequim fell prey to a cougar, state Fish and Wildlife Department officers believe.
On Thursday morning, Secor went out to check on the 10 lambs she had been keeping on her 2.5 acres southwest of town.
Seeing only three, she called out for the others — and then walked farther into the field to find seven carcasses, all killed Wednesday night.
“I was just sick, sick as can be,” said Secor, who has lived near Sequim since 1970.
Fish and Wildlife Officer Win Miller, at Secor’s Friday morning, said the cougar may have come over from Happy Valley south of town, where eight other lambs were killed Oct. 25.
Miller believes a cougar attacked those young sheep on Joanne and Fred Hatfield’s Kol Simcha Farm.
‘Same cat’
“There’s a chance it could be the same cat,” that visited Secor, he added.
Secor’s green pasture at Silberhorn Road and Seventh Avenue is well-known for the mountain sheep that graze and give birth there.
Secor has seen near-jams of traffic as motorists slowed down to look at the lambs and their parents, soay sheep — small, primitive domestic sheep from a tiny island west of Scotland — known for their big sets of horns.
Happy Valley and Burnt Hill are prime living space for big predators, Miller said. And unfortunately for the local shepherds, “sheep are easy to kill.”
Miller wasn’t optimistic, however, about tracking the cougar that visited Secor’s place.
“It’s hard to find a needle in a haystack,” he said Friday. “It’s been a day, and it rained hard overnight.”
Even if he’s able to reach and hire hound hunters, Miller said their dogs are unlikely to pick up a strong-enough scent.
The officer doesn’t consider the cat dangerous to humans. He noted that in 125 years, Fish and Wildlife has recorded one cougar-related fatality in all of Washington state.
Secor, who was raised on the West End and is familiar with large wildlife, said she has mixed feelings about hunting and killing the cougar.
Finding prey “is their nature,” she said, speculating that since so many lambs have been killed, the cougar may be a mother traveling with cubs born last spring.
Last summer, a cougar was blamed in the deaths of three goats and three miniature horses on the Toandos Peninsula, an isolated finger of land between Dabob Bay and the Hood Canal.
On Sept. 8, hunter Bill Thomas of Coyle killed that cat, a 120-pound female according to Miller.
After that, Fish and Wildlife opened a selective cougar hunt to run from Dec. 1 to March 15 in a small portion of state Game Management Unit 624, which stretches from Quilcene to Port Townsend to Port Angeles.
Hunting cougars with dogs will be permitted only in a small portion of that area, from state Highway 104 south to the Quilcene River. The permit application deadline was Oct. 19.
North Olympic Peninsula residents who see signs of a cougar are asked to report them by phoning the State Patrol at 360-478-4646 or by calling 9-1-1.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
