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Is it me? Is it real?

...........but then, when that lynx escaped last week it left firm evidence almost immediately, in the form of 3 lamb carcases.
A 4" wide print (unless "approximately" means 2"-4") is the print of a very large animal. Measure your own feet...its odds on that they're less than 4" wide!
 
Some will understandably be slightly cynical about stories of large cats roaming the countryside I was myself until I saw what I can only describe as a large black looking cat (I was unable to see the colour properly as it was just before dawn and the light was not good) cross a village road in front of me in just one bound, it was far to large to have been a moggie and as I have never encountered a big cat in the flesh I am unable to say what it was.

I never mentioned this incident to anyone until one day while speaking to another angler in the same area he mentioned that he had that morning seen a large black cat at the riverside further down from where he was fishing.

This was enough evidence for me to believe that large cats do roam our countryside, evidence of their kills is there if enough research is done although I don't need that evidence as plenty of other wildlife takes prey without me seeing the results of their kills one being the Buzzard.
 
The reports of large cats have been proved to be just that...large cats. I think we have to be wary of thinking that we have a number of large non domestic cats roaming the countryside, there are very few places where such a creature could hide for any length of time, and sadly the lack of clear photographic evidence is pretty telling, let alone a dead animal. Consider that everybody carries a camera of some description, why are we just depending on sightings?
The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, and so on suffer the same fate, no evidence at all, footprints are not evidence, so I remain sceptical.:rolleyes:
 
Spoil sport :D As is clear I do believe that large none domestic cats roam our countryside , this is based purely on the testament of four people two of which I know well and trust implicitly . I think a paw print is good evidence but clearly it could be faked . I agree there is a frustrating lack of decent photographic evidence but to be fair if you were confronted by one would you be fumbling around for your camera phone or be tooled up with a digital SLR with a telephoto lense ? As I stated in my earlier post people who encounter these creatures [ basically farmers and gamekeepers ] will shoot them and keep quiet , publicity of this nature is not what they want . It's just like people who shoot otters [ allegedly ] they are not going to shout it from the roof tops for obvious reasons
 
I had a spine-tingling experience a few years ago on the Nidd. I was in full camouflage gear sitting in the undergrowth waiting for the rod tip to twitch. I probably hadn't moved for about an hour when I saw a large black head of what I would still argue today was a 'big cat' of some description, rise above the balsam on the opposite bank and dip back down straight away. It didn't make a sound and unlike Alex's experience, no vegetation was disturbed. Whatever it was, was very stealth-like in its approach. It was all over in a split second, but even if I'd had my camera handy, I wouldn't have got a shot as I literally froze on the spot! Scary stuff!
 
I had the pleasure of grayling fishing on the Nidd with Chris Lythe a few years ago. One of the members of the club was telling me tales of big cats around the Nidd area and how a pack of hounds from the local hunt refused point blank to enter one particular wood.
The case regaled at Asenby was supposed to have been a panther type/size cat drinking from one of the cattle drinks.
 
Last year, fishing in the park at the very bottom end of the river Itchen, just above the Woodmill pool, I went to have a pee behind one of the containers in the car park where the ice cream van parks, it was BUSY, walkers and kids everywhere.
I spotted out of the corner of my eye what I first thought was a Fox, but no, it was very much a Cat of some sort, very bushy striped tail, generally a greyish colour the stripes a darker shade. A little bit smaller than a Labrador I would say.
It melted away into the undergrowth as soon as it saw me.
Also
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...nt-black-panther-blamed-wild-deer-deaths.html
And
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...g-big-cat-lorry-driver-sighting-Cornwall.html
 
Neil Smart said:
The reports of large cats have been proved to be just that...large cats.
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Neil Smart said:
I think we have to be wary of thinking that we have a number of large non domestic cats roaming the countryside, there are very few places where such a creature could hide for any length of time, and sadly the lack of clear photographic evidence is pretty telling, let alone a dead animal. Consider that everybody carries a camera of some description, why are we just depending on sightings?
The Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, and so on suffer the same fate, no evidence at all, footprints are not evidence, so I remain sceptical.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Although there are very large domestic cats with as far as I can ascertain the biggest being 48 inches long including its tail what I saw in the dim light that morning was bigger it certainly wasn't just a large domestic cat.

As far as I am aware there are desolate moorlands that very few people visit where a large creature particularly a shy one could hide/keep out of the way of humans, there are also large tracts of forest in the UK that are seldom visited by many people again a shy secretive animal could easily hide in such an area.

I don't carry a camera, nor does my wife and plenty of others that I know do not and in the instance that I witnessed I would have had to have been ready with a camera just in case while driving my car and very quick to take a photograph as it was over very quickly.

If footprints are not evidence are we to take it that fossilised footprints of dinosaurs are not proof that they existed and walked that way millions of years ago, if we are then much more educated people than I have duped the public for many years.
 
Terry Simner said:
...........but then, when that lynx escaped last week it left firm evidence almost immediately, in the form of 3 lamb carcases.
A 4" wide print (unless "approximately" means 2"-4") is the print of a very large animal. Measure your own feet...its odds on that they're less than 4" wide!
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Out of interest and having a ruler handy I measured my left foot and it is marginally wider than 4" at the ball of my foot. I still don't know what that proves, if anything, but I suppose whatever left the print was quite big. Maybe it was Bilbo Baggins, a large Cat without claws or some other totally reasonable explanation. Just like to add that I think there may, possibly, be large Cats out there somewhere and that Jeff seen and heard something.

Stephen
 
About 15 years ago night fishing Denham on the river Colne a large animal walked the far bank,(completely overgrown and wild) i put the torch onto the area with no result.About 5 minutes after i turned off the torch it came back to exactly the same area opposite me,i had that feeling it was watching me,then it moved off. Whilst fishing the Carvery river in India i often night fished on my own but usually from the large Galibore rock in the water.Sometimes when fishing with a mate on the sand in front of the camp (an area near Sangam,mentioned by Jim Corbett 70 years ago in one of his stories about a man eating leopardess). The monkeys would go wild all around --then you knew a leopard was about so you plumped up the fire a bit,but you would not go closer to the water because of the crocodiles.One time a mate Bill Rolfe came back to camp from night fishing to meet a tusker (male elephant) outside his end tent.I asked him how he knew it was a Tusker and he said he shone his torch directly into its face and then ran to the nearest tent, a very lucky man.
 
Just had a thought , if someone was really keen on getting a photo of a big cat perhaps burning some catnip would bring em in close enough to get a good snap :D Bit of a high risk strategy . At least they would be in a good mood when they arrived , but then again they might get the munchies :D
 
The people I know who saw the big cat near Banbury are 100% trustworthy. Not only that, they saw it crouched by the side of the road as clear as daylight. The farmer had also seen one across his fields. There are plenty of places these animals can hide and I would say their existence is total fact. Also, confirmed footprints, or pug marks as they are known, have to be taken as very strong evidence too.
 
Anthony Pearson said:
I had a spine-tingling experience a few years ago on the Nidd. I was in full camouflage gear sitting in the undergrowth waiting for the rod tip to twitch. I probably hadn't moved for about an hour when I saw a large black head of what I would still argue today was a 'big cat' of some description, rise above the balsam on the opposite bank and dip back down straight away. It didn't make a sound and unlike Alex's experience, no vegetation was disturbed. Whatever it was, was very stealth-like in its approach. It was all over in a split second, but even if I'd had my camera handy, I wouldn't have got a shot as I literally froze on the spot! Scary stuff!
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That is so creepy! I don't think the creature I heard was a cat Anthony, far too noisy. I would almost rather have seen a panther or something, than nothing at all though!
 
Before we all become paranoid about night fishing, to the best of my knowledge there has never been a photo taken, carcass found, spoor sighted or confirmed print of a large cat ie Panther, leopard or puma. There are people who hunt these as a hobby with no success, the Royal Marines have even tried and the Welsh Assembly had a big cat sightings unit. What there is are feral cats which tend to be bigger than the domestic moggie...they tend I think to be tawny but some may be black. The only wild cats as already noted have escaped from zoos, circuses and are quite easy to catch as we saw recently. Most big cat sightings reported are of black cats so they can only be panthers; these are rare anyway.... An interesting read is Mystery big cats... Given all this I quite like the idea of re-introducing the Lynx in parts of the UK :D
 
Paul Dowgill said:
Before we all become paranoid about night fishing, to the best of my knowledge there has never been a photo taken, carcass found, spoor sighted or confirmed print of a large cat ie Panther, leopard or puma. There are people who hunt these as a hobby with no success, the Royal Marines have even tried and the Welsh Assembly had a big cat sightings unit. What there is are feral cats which tend to be bigger than the domestic moggie...they tend I think to be tawny but some may be black. The only wild cats as already noted have escaped from zoos, circuses and are quite easy to catch as we saw recently. Most big cat sightings reported are of black cats so they can only be panthers; these are rare anyway.... An interesting read is Mystery big cats... Given all this I quite like the idea of re-introducing the Lynx in parts of the UK :D
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You can get black jaguars as well I believe

Edit; just had a look and panther covers leopards, jaguars and mountain lions. Learn something new everyday
 
Four inches? I'm currently trying to locate the images of the prints I found on my river and went looking for puma prints on the web and found this rather relevant article:

Puma!
 
Here we go. Now I'm not a dog owner, but when I emailed this to a 'big cat hunter' site, they said ...big dog. However, I thought that dogs couldn't retract their claws? These prints were on the Nidd at the bottom of a field (not a right of way of any description) which had been flooded and was drying out. There were egret prints, otter prints (on another photo) and these:



They were about the width of my foot and....on the same side of the river from where I viewed my 'big cat' which was on the opposite bank at the time!

N.B. There's a partial print of my wellington boot on the left of the photo. Coincidentally, these were photographed at roughly the same time as the ones in the article in the link in my previous post (taken on 9/3/2014).
 
Some of my angling colleagues are already scared of the dark, tempted to send a link to this thread, I'm enjoying reading it!
 
Anthony Pearson said:
Here we go. Now I'm not a dog owner, but when I emailed this to a 'big cat hunter' site, they said ...big dog. However, I thought that dogs couldn't retract their claws? These prints were on the Nidd at the bottom of a field (not a right of way of any description) which had been flooded and was drying out. There were egret prints, otter prints (on another photo) and these:



They were about the width of my foot and....on the same side of the river from where I viewed my 'big cat' which was on the opposite bank at the time!

N.B. There's a partial print of my wellington boot on the left of the photo. Coincidentally, these were photographed at roughly the same time as the ones in the article in the link in my previous post (taken on 9/3/2014).
Click to expand...
Dog prints :) Or canine, could be fox, Two prints overlaid make it look bigger, nice try :p
 
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