Cold Track wrote:I'm not really going to call you on this cecil because I have seen shows about the black panther being in Florida, but didn't you say in another thread that you caught or somebody you know caught a cougar that was 270 lbs.?
I just reread your thread and I`m confused cause you are talken about panthers in fla then droped in a 270 lb sized cougar !? I did say that there was a huge black cat in tn. I seen him he was over 4 ft at the top of the back in seeing him but he was no black panther they run 167 lbs according too the zoo who has em now and then . I know Dale an Cleetus said jaggs in southamerica that they hunted was sometimes well over 300 lbs. and the cross between a black colored jaggwarr weight must be that size 270-320 lbs in my guestamation ? Ive never seen one killed and weighed but myself an Cotten and Junebugg has all seen that big black cat up a tree a few times and the guestamated he with his long legs/long body and big feet an big head an thick built body in that weight area.
jack
With all the lion hunters today, no one has managed to get a picture of a black panther. I wonder why that is. I have never talked to a hunter who has seen a black panther, drunk or sober. As far as Jags, there is no evidence of any straying very far north of the Mexican border. There is more evidence to prove the existance of Big Foot and mutant canines than black panthers.
In the area I live almost any hunter who has spent much time in the woods at night has treed or killed a albine coon. For some reason that genetic thing happened here a long time back and they keep cropping up. I have seen kitten coon treed together three normal and one albino so they mix in litters. I have seen them range from snow white to a pale palimino color. So they certainly can crop up for a long time to come.
Several years ago I was contacted by a local vetrenarian, who asked my if I knew how to skin out a for life sized mounting. I told him sure I had skinned a lot of them. Well he said there is a traveling cat show in town and they had this big old Florida Panther in the show and he had an old injury that they treated him for all the time. Well for some reason they got mixed up on his dosage and overdosed him and killed him. They wanted to have him mounted to display anyway, so he called me.
Wel they brought this big old dead son of a gun out to my place and it was in August as I remember, and pretty dang hot. Well he had been dead about 18 hours and they hadn't put him in a cooler and he was already swelling up and smelled pretty bad. Now of course this had been a hand fed animal and he never missed a meal, but he was a big rascal. I never put him on a scale but they told me he weighed 220 pounds, and he might have but having weighed and looked at a lot of big lions several over 200 I would have guessed him around 190, but still a big animal. He was very dark, much darker than any lion I had ever seen. His hair was very short and I attributed that to living in a pen, but they said that is pretty normal for those cats living in a semi jungle and semi tropical region. I don't know if you have ever felt the hair on a jaguar from the tropics or a leapard from the savanah region of Africa, byt this critters hair was about like that. He was just another cougar as far as I could tell from that other than his color, hair, and a rather long and more angular head than the big toms from this area.I got him skinned alright but I had to take a couple of gag breaks because he was sure a ripe smelling bugger. But I could see that if a cat of this color bred another one, or even a crop out gene in the cross could certainly produce a black or nearly black sibling.
I caught a mountain lion a few years ago that was very dark in color. Alot darker than any I have seen. An older lady that lived in the area where it was killed said she had seen a black cat. It was not black but was very dark. I could see how it could have been mistaken for a black cat.
Phil Soucy mounted a lion treed by Wade Lemon that had a coal black chin/throat. Melanistic I guess. People claim to see them yet no one trees one?? Think it has to do with light refraction on lion hair!
I don't know about black ... but my dad and hunting partner treed a white (not light tan) lion in 1999. He was white as a sheet with some dark hairs peppered on inside of his forearms. not a true albino because the eyes were not red, but nose and pads were pink. He was a large 150 lb class tom as well which makes him more amazing. I won't post any pictures, but if anyone ever wants to swing thru my way, I'd be glad to show. So those off-colored cats do show up once in a while but extremely rare.
This is from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the bobcat is from florida, the jaquar is from south america and the leopard is from Asia.
This was Quoted in National Wildlife Magazine :
There are no authenticated cases of truly melanistic cougars. Black cougars have been reported in Kentucky and in the Carolinas. There have also been reports of glossy black cougars from Kansas, Texas and eastern Nebraska. These have come to be known as the North American black panther. None has ever been photographed or shot in the wild and none has been bred. There is wide consensus among breeders and biologists that the animal does not exist and is a cryptid. Sightings are currently attributed to errors in species identification by non-experts, and by the memetic exaggeration of size.
With that being said I think I would have to see physical evidence that one truely exists kinda like big foot and lockness. We have treed several dark phased cougars but none I would say were black. All the readings of such greats as Ben Lilly and Dale Lee I do not remember any stories of Black cougars.
I have never seen a picture of a black cougar, but Dale Cole put a picture of a black bobcat in the full Cry a few years ago. And a deer hunter killed a calico cougar(white and tan spotted, no black) around grangeville idaho a couple years ago. There were several pictures of it in the local papers. In one area I hunt the majority of the bobcats I catch have at least a couple white toes and two I have caught had white stocking feet. I keep hoping one day I'll catch a albino bobcat there but no luck.
about the black panther being in Florida, but didn't you say in another thread that you caught or somebody you know caught a cougar that was 270 lbs.?
