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Big Cat in East Texas


Minoh

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How many have seen Otters, Mink, Ring Tail Cats, or flying squirrels in the wild. Not a hole lot of people have and yet they are alive and well in East Texas.

 

Medman you are correct, I definitely have seen otters and flying squirrels in my part of ET. At our family tree farm off Hwy. 84 between Rusk and Palestine our pond and the neighbors pond have recently been invaded by otters, which can be a real nuisance because they are eating the fish in the pond, and for their size, they can eat....

 

As for the panther debate, a few months ago I saw one cross Hwy. 7 (I was traveling East) just after I exited I-35.....it almost got hit by an 18 wheeler as it crossed the road in front of me and the rig and this was in broad daylight around 10am.......beautiful animal, but very unusual to see one in broad daylight like that. (and no it was not black, either).

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Obviously it is impossible to prove a negative, Bleeds. Since you seem to be hell-bent on arguing this with me, the fact that I am referring to is that there has never been any recorded evidence of a "black" cat in the United States. EVER, and that is a fact my friend any which way you want to slice it. Could there be one out there? I don't know and neither do you. According to your theory, there could be polar bears that have migrated to Texas.

 

Like I said, there are tons of trigger-happy rednecks that would put a bullet in one of these things in a NY second. If there's one out there, it better be wearing kev-lar.

 

 

Not hell-bent on argueing, only in pointing out your suppositions are based on opinion, not fact. You have had plenty of people on here who have reported seeing one, yet you refuse to believe them.

 

Polar bears would not migrate to east Texas. Aside from the climate not being condusive to their survival, they've heard about the rednecks of which you speak.

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I have seen both, a black cat & flying squirrel.

 

About 10 years ago I was deer hunting with a co worker off Hwy 94 west of Lufkin. We were hunting on the North side of 94 past the Neches River about 5 miles. I saw a large black cat cross by the deer stand I was in around 8 ish that morning. I swung my rifle around had it in my scope before it crossed the trail into brush. My co worker said I was the second person to see it on this deer lease in the past month at that time. All I know is I was glade I was in a deer stand off the ground. It was a beautiful animal.

 

You can choose to believe this or not if some chose. But it was black like our Lufkin Panther statues around Lufkin HS.

 

Our cat caught a flying squirrle a few years ago & had it traped against a window at dusk. It was injured & died during the night. It's the only one I have seen since.

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Just from this topic alone there have been sightings of multiple cats in east texas. I guess parks and wildlife department is made up of liars, and these good ol east texans are seeing a bunch of cats!

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/mlion/

 

According to biologists who do this for a living.

1)There are no black panthers in North America, and NO ONE has ever captured or killed a black mountain lion.

2) mountain lions are generally found in mountains , cayonlands , or hilly areas with good cover! ( yet everyone in east texas is seeing multitudes of these non- existant creatures crossing highways daily!)

3)They are found in the trans pecos and south texas brushlands regions and have expanded their range to the include parts of central texas. ( tpwd missed the boat on this one, we have cats everywhere in ET and they say they don't live here).

 

Could there be a mountain lion in ET, sure it could happen. Is there mountain lions in ET, no, data shows that there isn't!

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I have been sitting on the sideline watching this debate for quite a while and have decided to put in my two cents worth.

My position is this: Do I think there are cougars in East Texas? Yes, most likely as isolated individuals just passing through, or a population of extremely low density. Do I believe that large black cats exist in this area? No, and here is why.

 

Let’s say that a hypothetical large cat exists in Upshur County. It is not a bobcat, a housecat, a dog, a wild hog, a deer, a bear, or an otter. What are the chances that it is black? The possibilities are:

A. It is a true black panther, a black leopard, whose home range is halfway around the world. The only way it could be here is to have escaped from captivity, a million-to-one shot. I’ll be generous and say that this possibility is 0.01 %

B. Jaguar, home range no closer than northern Mexico and southern Arizona. Combining the distance to the home range and the relative scarcity of black jags in a given population, again I say 0.01% possibility.

C. Black Cougar, never verified to exist, but let’s say that the wildlife agencies have it wrong and one of every thousand cougars is black for a possibility of 0.01%

D. Jaguarundi, dark gray, larger than a bobcat, smaller than a cougar, and rare enough to be listed as endangered. Known to exist in the Rio Grande Valley and possibly in the Big Thicket region of southeast Texas. With the rarity of the animal, I can’t go higher than a 5% possibility.

 

So now we have a 5.03% possibility that the big cat is black, using very generous estimation to get it that high. (My opinion is that I have overstated the possibilities by a factor of ten and the real value is more like 0.5 %.) And this is just the odds if the animal in question is in fact a cat. A sighting adds the factor of the witness properly identifying what was seen. Throw in misidentification of some of the above named non-felines and the odds go even lower.

But it seems like 75% of all sightings of big cats that I hear of are of black cats. On one isolated sighting, anything is possible, but that is bucking some pretty heavy odds for most sightings to be black cats. It’s kind of like telling me that your baseball team is averaging 2 runs scored per game and your pitchers have a combined 9.50 ERA, yet the team’s record is 25 wins and 5 losses. I can’t say that it is completely impossible, but I can say that it is EXTREMELY unlikely.

 

 

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Okay, if you got through all of the above post, let me relate what happened to me recently. Driving down a country road late one afternoon, I rounded a curve and saw a large bobcat standing in the middle of the road maybe fifty yards away. As I got closer, it moved off into some weeds along the side of the road. I saw it very clearly and there is no doubt that it was a bobcat, but as I got closer, the combination of the shadows from the weeds and the alignment of the low sun behind the animal, it appeared to be solid black. When the bobcat finally decided to run, the quick motion created an optical illusion that made the stubby tail appear to be two feet long for a split second. I believe that if someone had come along and just seen the bobcat in the weeds and zipping into the woods, they would have reported it as a black panther sighting.

My point? It is easy to see one thing and mistake it for something else. People who claim black panther sightings are not lying; they absolutely believe in what their eyes told them. But the overwhelming odds are that they are mistaken about what they saw.

 

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after talking to my family that was there that night, we all agreed that we have been wrong all these years. the vote however is split on what we "really" saw that night. the very large and very black "mystery animal" with a curling long tail that sounded like a woman screaming perched about 8 ft off the ground in the middle of a V in an oak in our front yard has been determined, by an overwhelming vote of 2-1, to be a deer. otter, wild hog, and dog also received votes. so how many black deer sightings have there been? i stand corrected....and now, on with the countdown.

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Just from this topic alone there have been sightings of multiple cats in east texas. I guess parks and wildlife department is made up of liars, and these good ol east texans are seeing a bunch of cats!

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/mlion/

 

According to biologists who do this for a living.

1)There are no black panthers in North America, and NO ONE has ever captured or killed a black mountain lion.

2) mountain lions are generally found in mountains , cayonlands , or hilly areas with good cover! ( yet everyone in east texas is seeing multitudes of these non- existant creatures crossing highways daily!)

3)They are found in the trans pecos and south texas brushlands regions and have expanded their range to the include parts of central texas. ( tpwd missed the boat on this one, we have cats everywhere in ET and they say they don't live here).

 

Could there be a mountain lion in ET, sure it could happen. Is there mountain lions in ET, no, data shows that there isn't!

 

I think you are confusing the two issues. The question of whether there are mountain lions (cougars) in East Texas has already been confirmed that yes there are. I myself, have seen a dead specimen killed near Jacksonville. Now, this "black panther" (leopard) that everyone claims to see has never been captured or killed, not only in East Texas but in the entire United States.

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I think you are confusing the two issues. The question of whether there are mountain lions (cougars) in East Texas has already been confirmed that yes there are. I myself, have seen a dead specimen killed near Jacksonville. Now, this "black panther" (leopard) that everyone claims to see has never been captured or killed, not only in East Texas but in the entire United States.

I would like to see the pic of the cat killed in ET.

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I would like to see the pic of the cat killed in ET.

 

Hoosier, sorry but I don't have a pic. This was in the mid-90's, so I'm sure there have been others since. This cat was killed in the Love's lookout area near Jacksonville. From what I remember, it was a juvenile male around 75 lbs. The man that killed it was hog-hunting with dogs and killed it with a 9mm pistol after the dogs had it surrounded. It was later confirmed by state biologists as a wild mountain lion. We used to sell wild hogs to this guy, and when we were over at his place one day he told us this story. It was hard to deny when he showed my brother and I the animal wrapped in plastic in a chest freezer.

BTW, this cat was not black.

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Hoosier, sorry but I don't have a pic. This was in the mid-90's, so I'm sure there have been others since. This cat was killed in the Love's lookout area near Jacksonville. From what I remember, it was a juvenile male around 75 lbs. The man that killed it was hog-hunting with dogs and killed it with a 9mm pistol after the dogs had it surrounded. It was later confirmed by state biologists as a wild mountain lion. We used to sell wild hogs to this guy, and when we were over at his place one day he told us this story. It was hard to deny when he showed my brother and I the animal wrapped in plastic in a chest freezer.

BTW, this cat was not black.

I believe you, and the state acknowledges that 1 cat has been killed in 3 East Texas counties. Wood, Cass, and Cherokee. No other cats have been killed within several counties in any direction. I am not disputing that a cat has been killed in ET, just that all these folks see them by the thousands when the numbers show that its not reasonable. Since 1983 3 mountain lions have been confirmed in ET, in the counties listed above. I do know that in the 1970's a chimpanzee was killed in northern Van Zandt county, yet nobody is arguing the infestation of chimps that we have in ET. Cats have a range that is close enough for one or two to wander in occasionally, or 3 in 25 years by the numbers. The fact is that 3 cats in 25 years tells me that cats do not reside in east texas on a regular basis, or even at all. Not trying to dispute all the eyewitness accounts just that these animals haven't become residents here. 3 cats could have been pets, lost in transport, hitched a ride from the deer lease, whatever, just not a resident in my opinion. I would love to eat some crow and tree one with my coonhound tomorrow, but i'm not gonna hold my breath for it!

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THE BLACK PANTHERS OF THE LOUISIANA-TEXAS BORDERLANDS: ARE THEY EXTINCT?

By W. T. Block

 

When the writer was a youngster in Port Neches, Texas during the 1920's, there were still alive a few of the old-timers of Texas' "Big Thicket" or Louisiana's "Neutral Strip," who could tell hair-raising tales about the big black cats, that screamed in the jungles at night while they searched for their food. If one looks up the word 'panther' in a dictionary today, the latter defines it as being a "cougar," "puma," or "mountain lion," or the black mutations of the spotted leopards, jaguars, and cougars of Africa and America. What are generally referred to as 'panthers' in the United States today are about thirty big cats in the Florida Everglades, which very much resemble a mountain lion, and they are so endangered and weakened from in-breeding that that species will probably disappear very soon as well.

 

Before World War II, the Texas-Louisiana gulf marshes were huge fields of sea cane, averaging 15 feet high, that for some reason have generally disappeared. In his memoirs, K. D. Keith, an ex-Confederate captain and resident of Beaumont and Sabine Pass between 1850-1870, wrote of animal trails through the cane marshes of Sabine Pass, where once deer, panthers, and black bears abounded. The writer's grandmother, Ellen Sweeney, formerly of Grand Chenier, Louisiana, often repeated stories of Civil War days when she was a teenager, and all the men were away in the Confederate Army. She noted that as darkness approached, the frontier settlers of Grand Chenier and Cameron barred their window shutters every night (there were no glass windows there then) to keep the panthers out. After dark, they could hear the screams of the big black cats as they left the sea cane marshes for higher ground in search of easy prey - that is, goats, sheep, hogs, or even on occasion, a human.

 

Panthers, like many of the world's predators, sought their prey the easiest way possible - that is, with the least endangerment or risk to panther, and the least expense of energy, such as stalking, running, or trailing. Instinct taught Mr. Panther very quickly that a broken leg or fang left him quite physically impaired and thus vulnerable to other predators. Hence, panthers became expert at pouncing from tree limbs. And they clung to the sea cane marshes, to the creek bottoms, or the Neches, Sabine and Calcasieu River lowlands, where large numbers of feral hogs congregated to fatten on the "mast" of the nut-bearing trees. The only enemies of panthers that did not carry a rifle were the bears or huge alligators. One alligator killed at Beaumont in 1896 was 18 feet long; another killed in Southeast Texas in 1840 was 20 feet long. (Galv. Daily News, May 29, 1896, p. 5-C; Houston Morning Star, May 20, 1840).

 

A brother-in-law of the writer, Charlie Phillips of Hillister, Texas, now long deceased, often told of the panther that always followed him home. Phillips taught during the winter days of 1910 in a one-room Tyler County school out in the forest, and he rode home on horseback each day just as darkness fell. He claimed the panther always followed a hundred yards or so behind him, screaming like a woman in agony, but he never needed to fire his gun, and his horse never needed any prodding.

 

Before 1880, black panthers roamed in relatively large numbers everywhere between the piney forests of East Texas to Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp and Florida's Everglades. Apparently, Texas had at intervals three species of the big cats, the panther in the east, the tawny cougar in the Pecos region, and on extremely rare occasions, there were reports of a spotted "Mexican lion" (el tigre), presumably a smaller species of spotted jaguar, that sometimes roamed across the Rio Grande River into Texas. Although perhaps the panther preferred an inoffensive sheep, goat, or pig for its dinner, there are still graphic accounts to be found on microfilm of people fighting off panthers after a fierce fight, or actually being killed and eaten by them.

 

The writer has located only one story about a spotted "Mexican lion" being in Jasper County or elsewhere in East Texas, although surely there must have been other accounts. The following story appeared in Galveston Weekly News of February 18, 1892, reprinted from Jasper Newsboy, as follows:

 

. . . Quite a curiosity was filed with the commissioners' court Monday under the Scalp Law, the scalp of an unusually large Mexican lion, which was killed in the lower section of the county by John Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd and his son were in the thicket hunting and came upon the monster, which showed a disposition to fight rather than run. The boy shot the animal, and his father told him to run. The boy never hesitated to take his father's advice, whereupon the animal made at Mr. Shepherd, and he shot him in the head. After he was killed, it was found that the boy had also hit the animal in the head, but the ball had glanced off, without entering the skull. The skull shows the head to be very near, if not quite as large, as an ordinary African lion's head.

 

The adult male panther perhaps reached a maximum length of five feet, exclusive of his three-foot tail, and reached a maximum weight of 250 pounds. The Houston Telegraph and Texas Register of August 20, 1845, observed that "a 450-pound panther was killed by Mr. Whitehurst of Brazoria County..." The weight was most certainly some one's "guestimation" and was probably grossly exaggerated. In an article captioned "Terrible Combat," the Houston Morning Star of November 19, 1844, page 3, described a woman in Nacogdoches County successfully fighting off a big panther. An encyclopedia recorded that the "heaviest mountain lion on record weighed 227 pounds…"

 

An article in Galveston Tri-Weekly News of October 10, 1872, recorded the death of a Florida woman, who had been killed and eaten by a large panther. In 1874, the Vicksburg Times carried a story, reprinted in Galveston Weekly News of June 1, 1874, page 5, partially told as follows in graphic detail:

 

…Killed And Mutilated By A Panther--Information was brought to this city (Vicksburg) last evenning of a horrible death that occurred near Delta on the 14th inst. (May, 1874). A colored man started to drive a team loaded with provisions from his home near Delta to the interior of the parish (Louisiana). He had been gone about 15 minutes when the team came dashing back without the driver. Suspecting something wrong.... they walked nearly a mile, when they came upon a scene that almost took their senses away.

 

…The body of the man was lying in the road, and a huge panther was standing over it, eating one of his shoulders... When they got back (with a gun), the panther was still engaged eating its victim. They fired, but did not succeed in killing it, and the panther ran away into the woods...

 

There was no location named Delta found on the road map of Louisiana, but there is a small village named Delta City, north of Vicksburg.

 

Both the Beaumont Enterprise of September, 17, 1881, and the Galveston Daily News of September 22, 1881, carried accounts of a panther attack near present-day Lumberton, in Hardin County, Texas, revealing the ferocity of two of the big animals that refused to give up their prey, as follows:

 

…Panther Attack--On the evening of the 2nd inst. (Sept. 1881), while returning to Beaumont from Lipscomb's (log) camp on the East Texas Railroad, Henry Winters and Alfred Creswell, colored men, were attacked by two large panthers, and they only saved their lives by clubbing them with heavy sticks. The fight lasted over 20 minutes, when the infuriated animals were made to retreat, but not until the lower clothing of the two men were literally torn off them...

 

Another animal attack reported in the Daily News of March 30, 1882, probably involved a large bob cat or wildcat rather than a young panther, although the editor referred to it as a 'catamount.' Mrs. Emily Smyth of Jasper County was the recently-widowed wife of Judge Andrew F. Smyth, a Texas Revolutionary veteran and for fifteen years, captain of the Neches River cotton steamers, Comargo and Laura. According to Jasper Newsboy, Mrs. Smyth and her son George W. (nephew of G. W. Smyth, Sr., signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence) heard a noise at night, which disturbed a calf and two mules in the barnyard. Young Smyth went outside with a gun, which he soon left beside a barn door, while he investigated the cause of the disturbance. His mother followed him outside, and suddenly a big bob cat jumped on Mrs. Smyth, began biting her shoulder, and clawing her back. In desperation because he could barely distinguish the animal amid his mother's screams, he held the gun muzzle against the animal's head and pulled the trigger. The cat fell dead to the ground, and Emily Smyth, although painfully bitten and scratched, was fully recovered within a few days.

 

Another verifiable panther episode (Galveston Daily News, January 14, 1897) occurred in December, 1896, when Captain J. J. Jordan took a load of supplies aboard his cotton steamer, the Robert E. Lee, and sailed up the Sabine River to Brice's Landing (a log skidway). On the return voyage, Jordan ran into low water, and he had to anchor the R. E. Lee at Droddy's Shoals to await a river freshet (high water). Hearing his dogs baying outside in the moonlight, Robert Jordan, the 14-year-old son of the captain, fired a shot at a large cat in a nearby cypress tree, and a large black panther fell to the ground. As the dogs gathered snarling around him, the panther, only momentarily stunned, began defending himself with every fang and claw, when suddenly young Jordan grabbed a pine knot and struck the panther across the head, which killed it. Jordan skinned the animal, had it stuffed at Orange, and mounted it as a trophy on the pilot house wall of his father's steamboat. That story is also recounted in the author's Cotton Bales, Keelboats, and Sternwheelers, published by Dogwood Press of Woodville in 1995.

 

The Sabine River panther, which probably survives today only as the tawny cougar or mountain lion of the Western States, will always be at odds with the ranchers, because of its propensity to kill sheep and livestock. Hence, park rangers in the Western States prefer to release captured animals in the high mountain ranges of Idaho, where they can survive, as well as thin herds, of aged and sick deer and elk, and likewise keep the cats away from angry ranchers.

 

The question remains unanswered whether or not any black panthers survive in Texas or Louisiana to the present day. No sightings have been reported now for many years, that is, that are verifiable. About 1952, a truck driver, traveling at night along Highway 62 between Buna and Mauriceville, Texas, believed he saw three panthers crossing the road eastward toward the Sabine River bottoms. About 1980 there was a reported panther sighting in the outskirts of Beaumont. And about 1985, a panther was reported killed near Tyler, Texas, although most probably it was a tawny cougar, that had drifted far east of its normal habitat. And since then, another panther has been sighted in the jungles surrounding Cow Bayou in Orange County.

 

It seems now that the black panther is either extinct or nearly so. None have been reported killed by a gun or run over by a car in many years. A century ago, an East Texas bear hunter's prowess was measured by the number of bears he killed each season. As evidence, Galveston Weekly News of January 28, 1878 observed that: "...E. Stephenson, the old bear hunter of Southeast Texas, killed last season 33 bears and up to date this season, has killed 49..." There were many reports of bear attacks as well. In March, 1878, a single bear reportedly killed both "old John Scott, a chief of the Alabama Indians..." and his son with a single bite, which crushed their skulls (Galveston Daily News, Mar. 15, 1878). Even the black bear of the East Texas piney woods is probably extinct as well, and while man fears the grizzly bear of the Rockies the most, there were also many people in East Texas and Louisiana killed by black bears in frontier days. With scarcely a doubt, however, the big panther was the more vicious of the two killers.

 

W. T. Block.

Copyright © 1998-2008 by W. T. Block. All rights reserved.

 

 

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floridapanther.JPG

 

"Historically, the Florida Panther occurred throughout the southeast United States, from Texas, Louisiana, and the lower Mississippi River valley north and east to the Atlantic Ocean, including Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and parts of Tennessee and South Carolina. Today approximately 70 panthers remain in parks and nearby private lands in southwest Florida. The Florida panther is one of the most endangered animals in the world. The only known wild breeding population occurs in south Florida within the Big Cypress Swamp region. Radio telemetry has also tracked panthers into locations ranging from the St. Johns River drainage from Okeechobee county south to Putnam county."

 

I can see how this cat would look black in the shadows.

 

From what I understand the panthers (mountain lions) of TX are a sub species of the above cat.

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Well since I started this thread I just want to report the cat has left agian. :happy65: We have seen no evidence of him for about a month. So if the cycle continues in about 8 to 10 months he will come back, take out a few dogs and other pets and then the cycle repeats.

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Well since I started this thread I just want to report the cat has left agian. :happy65: We have seen no evidence of him for about a month. So if the cycle continues in about 8 to 10 months he will come back, take out a few dogs and other pets and then the cycle repeats.

 

 

To be honest, that is the way they are. They are migratory in nature and have been know to travel up to 1000 miles. Have to put out some cameras the next time he/she come around. You know abot that proof issue???? JK. I believe ya and ahve seen them myself.

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