Local woman claims to have seen 'panther' near Goldbug, Ky.see pic.

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My position is I'd shoot it and then have it stuffed. If Fish and Game made any noise, I'd point out it must be someone's escaped pet -- which is their official position -- and I'm holding the critter for the owners to claim. If they can positively identify it and after they pay me for the damage it did to my livestock.

Until then, it stays in my living room.:p
 
Vern, the Dept of fish and wildlife in Ky says they would be a legal shoot as an "exotic"
 
I think that's the way it would go here, too. But it's never been tested in court. As I see it, the worst they could do would be to try to confiscate the pelt, which I could stop by claiming it as seized property in trust for an unpaid debt.
 
I live in Florida and we still do have panthers, however they are not supposed to be in my area (Pasco County) but I keep seeing large cat tracks (twice the size of my retrievers paws) in the Green Swamp and along the Withlacoochee headwaters area. A young panther was killed a couple of years ago on I-4 and it was headed north at the time.

I have also lately noticed claw marks 4 and 5 feet up rotten trees and smashed logs, black bears? Needless to say I now carry a .357 loaded with FMJ when I am hiking and camping there and the dog now stays home.

Honestly, I don't know how I feel about it, it's not like we don't have enough predators with a million plus alligators living everywhere there is a little water. At least you could hike through the woods for the most part without worrying about them as long as you stayed away from their holes.
 
This reminds me of a hilarious incident at a Microsoft training at a Bed and Breakfast outside of Denver several years ago. We had been warned about possible Mountain Lions in the area and to not go hiking alone.

I'm sitting on the deck studying and two attendees from some big city or another come running as fast as they can out of the woods having just walked into the screaming about a Mountain Lion. Not 30 seconds later the B&B owners cat saunters out from behind them and up to the house.
 
We don't have the big cats here. The aliens eat em up quick as they get imported from Kentucky.
 
I'll lived in central Ohio all my life, and believe for a FACT that there are cougars in Logan and Hardin Counties.
40 plus yrs ago,me and 2 buddies got "stuck" in an old sugar camp across from where St. Rt. 347 and St. Rt. 33 "intersected". After we agreed to get help at first light, we started hearing "very strange nosies" cat like for sure close for sure!!!
Well we slept in the truck,,doors locked and windows up. Next morning we get help from the closest farmer with a tractor,,,,,tell him our situation and he asks us---------IF WE HEARD THE BIG CAT LAST NIGHT!!!!
He says he hears them all the time and keeps his young livestock "locked" in the barn at night.

5 or 6 yrs ago, while camping at Salisbury Lake just west of Kenton, daughter and SIL were "cat fishing" late at night and came running back to camp, swearing that they saw "glowing eyes" and heard low "cat growling" noises. The next morning others campers asked if we heard the "large cat"!!!

With all "their" territory being bought up and houses everywhere----"wild critters" gotta move somewhere!!!

Hell the BEST places to go hunting are all the Metro Parks around Columbus!!
More squirrels, rabbits, and deer than you can shake a stick at, and most will "eat out of your hand"!!

Raccoons at Delaware State Park are AWESOME about 6pm during the summer!!

UJ
 
i live in southern/central Ky, but a cougar sighting dosent bother me that much, cougar, black panther, mountain lion, or bobcat, they all fall to the .45

anyway that picture kinda reminds me of the bigfoot footage:D
 
For years, they said there were no Black Bears in Eastern KY. Now there are plenty. The picture is not great, but it would not surprise me in the least that a mountain lion/cougar/panther migrated into the remote Eastern KY region. There are sightings in the Blue Ridge area, and Eastern KY is not that far away and pretty rugged and rural, especially some parts.
 
try for the throat.

Sorry, Art, but I must disagree . . . a coug would rather bite thru the BACK OF THE NECK, into the spine (hence their preference for attacking mule deer from above). I'll agree they are widespread, come in a variety of color phases, and are extremely stealthy & sneaky. Judging from the pic, I can honestly say that the subject in the photo was feline & black.
 
There are a few hybrids, crosses between housecats and jungle cats, that look like small black cougars. They are called chelsies, and can weigh around 35 lbs., I beleive. They have very fussy digestive tracts and if not fed properly make quite a mess, resulting in their release. Supposed to be a few in Illinois and Florida. People buy them to have a realistic looking wild cat, not just as large.
 
(To be snarky, Florida panthers must not be real smart. Many have been killed by cars.)
Click to expand...

I've had the opportunity to read several post-mortem reports on Florida panthers that were found dead. A surprising number appeared to have been killed fighting with other Florida panthers. Ornery suckers -- no sense of solidarity.
 
It looks like it has a fairly heavy body but you cant make any real determinations due to the poor quality of the picture.
 
I don't know. Looks like a house cat to me. Very short face and the posture just doesn't look right. Hard to say though since it's such a bad picture. And as others have said, black is a fairly rare coloring for mountain lions/pumas/panthers.

Never seen one in the wild, but I've come across their tracks and scat while hunting. Even in Nevada, where they have almost a year round season on them, it's rare to see them out and about.
 
Unless they are doing something bad leave them alone. They be independents and are not Democrats or Repubicans!:D

They are part of our world, take care and enjoy them. The stories about them are entertaining.
 
Wow, so many identifications, many with some good reasoning and confidence levels, and yet they don't all jive. I am not sure how anyone can make a decent determination of whether the blurry black cat-like object that has no scale for relative size can actually be determined to be on type of cat or another. I also like the comments about posture and how the cat carries itself being used to make the ID. It is a still photo. You don't know if the cat was stationary at the time of the image or moving. If moving, then the cat is caught in mid stride and can be within a who range of motion that may make it resemble something it isn't for that frame.

Heck, from what I can see, it is a one-eared cat. Does that mean anything? Sure. It means it is a crappy photo at an angle that makes it look like one ear is missing.

Not a clear image of a 'cat' in unknown motion context with no scale = NO positive ID
 
Pulling that newspaper into a graphics program and
tweaking it a bit, I find:
- the mythological Chimera
- the legendary Chupacabra
- the dread spawn of the infamous Rorshach Test.
attachment.php

What do you see in that picture?
 

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Attack from above? Back of neck. Attack from in front? Hmmm. From above or from behind, I'd guess, is probably more common, although most human encounters in BBNP seem to be face-to-face. The one attack-for-food of which I know in BBNP left serious head and facial wounds on the six-year-old child.

I only know of two lion/deer encounters which were recent enough to figure out what happened. A hunter killed a buck which had claw-mark wounds just in front of the hips, where the lion had attacked from behind but landed too far back and the buck escaped. (The deer's nose had been driven into the ground hard enough to break the lower jawbone; the deer thus was on his way to starvation.) The back of the neck would have been the logical target.

The other case was a friend finding the remains of a dead buck down in Long Draw; the scene had blood "scattered all over the canyon walls". While the buck was mostly eaten, it was clear that the throat had been pretty well chewed--and the back of the neck probably wouldn't bleed as the scene described.

"What do you see in that picture?"

Well, reminds me of a Rohrshach inkblot.
 
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