This was a real treat..Out for an evening stroll with my dog (& a cat), looked up & was face to face with not one but two of these beauties! Both appeared to be well fed & healthy.
#1 of 2 observed.
Neither seemed too concerned with me talking quietly to my dog, telling him to stay,(which he did). they finally ambled off into the woods. Amazing how quietly they did that considering their size!

My initial thought is felid, leaning lynx, but I welcome all thoughts on this. @jonathanpoppele, @rsealy would be grateful if either of you had a moment to weigh in! :)

(Apologies, I left my tape measure in the heavy bush coat... then grabbed the lighter gear today! Note the walking stick is ruled in centimetres.)

Marks on an American sweetgum.
1.50 m from the ground.

In Ireland Brook Park (a County park), along the blue trail. The terrain is flat.

The tree in question has a blue rectangular blaze (picture 7). It can be found relatively easily.

The blue trail crosses the pipeline open area. There are about 4 blue rectangular blazes between the open area and the tree of interest.

In Beaver Dam Park, an East Brunswick municipal park

Fresh marks on a live pitch pine, along the path. They were not here 2 days ago.

The highest marks are at eye level.
Addendum:
I added 2 pictures to help locate the tree.

Fruiting a few feet away from a mature Douglas fir.
Young fruiting body.
Harvested a small portion and dehydrated for herbarium collection/genetic record.
My coinciding Mushroomobserver observation below-

https://mushroomobserver.org/509249?q=1nxwH

This fruiting body is emerging through the blacktop in the same location that a fruiting body erupted through the blacktop last year. Other fruiting bodies are pushing-up the blacktop hither and thither. One of them must be enormous, and the one pictured here is no tiddler.

It was LARGE. The cap was maybe 4" wide and the stipe was longer than that or the same. Tall. It was bruised in many places before I cut so you can see that deep blue. The flesh was BRIGHT yellow on the cap but as soon as I opened it, it started staining blue. Beautiful rusty underside with pores.

Photos by Nancy Nabak

I was out trail running and he ran across the trail in front of me. I think he had a dead rabbit in his mouth and I’m pretty sure that is why he ran up the tree with it. He ran up and down the tree twice before he made a run for it with his animal. Very exciting to see!

This was an hour-long trailing experience. A family of three mountain lions killed a deer at one end of the riverbar. They then dragged it all the way to the other end and into the brush, where they fed on it for several days. This observation shows the first part of the trail with the kill site and evidence that the prey was a deer is shown. Will show other sections of the trail later. The deer was in brush and the mountain lions (2 of them from the track evidence) jumped it from the embankment above. It was quickly dispatched and one lion carried it out into the open. One of the cubs helped drag the carcass, as evidenced by the tracks. Video will be posted soon.

This was an hour-long trailing experience. A family of three mountain lions killed a deer at one end of the riverbar. They then dragged it all the way to the other end and into the brush, where they fed on it for several days.

This observation shows the last part of the trail with the kill site. All that remained of the deer were the legs, the cranium and mandibles, a single scapula, some fur, and the contents of the rumen. (The large green mass in the photos.) There were several resting sites (beds) in the grass, where the family of three pumas had rested in between feeding bouts. The carcass had initially been buried closer to the riverbar, but they moved it, likely due to my own activities. I live right above this and had been out and about above them, without even being aware of their presence. They are quite stealthy. Until I found the tracks, I never suspected they were in the close vicinity, although I was aware of the family of three from previously finding their tracks. The last images are somewhat dark as it was after sunset when I finished trailing this out.

This was an hour-long trailing experience. A family of three mountain lions killed a deer at one end of the riverbar. They then dragged it all the way to the other end and into the brush, where they fed on it for several days.

This observation shows the central part of the trail. At one point, one of the smaller mountain lions, assumed to be one of the nearly-grown kittens, assisted the mother lion in carrying the carcass. It left a consistent drag mark, so they were not able to lift it completely off the ground. I found it interesting that two were cooperating to carry the kill. The tracks showed evidence of bearing extra weight due to increased toe splay, push-offs in the soil, claws deployed for traction, and the position in the trail. The nail marks are thin and sharp and on a plane above the base of the toe marks in the track. Fur on the ground indicated the identity of the prey, as did drag marks presumed to be from the hooves.