Big Black Cats!

[Timless Timber]

There was a news article thingo on Ch 7 tonight - about the Black Panther like animals in Australia (again).

So while it's not timber work related - seemingly a LOT of people who work in the timber industry and are required to go into the forest a fair bit - seem to be in a statistical position at least, to have maybe seen one?.

So - I figured what the heck... Lets have a thread about it!

1. Who's seen one (and where)?

2. Who's mate of a mate twice removed from their second cousins niece.... has seen one. (And where).

I suggest that really speaking we SHOULD have a separate thread for those who have seen Thylacine (and now apparently foxes) in Tasmania (Purely coz it's likely to come up) for our Taswegian brothers.

Of course there have been books written about it.

Here in West Oz, "Savage Shadow" springs to mind. Savage Shadow: The Search for the Australian Cougar: David O'Reilly, Michael Williams, Rebecca Lang: 9780646553139: Amazon.com: Books



No doubt other such books exist - feel free to link them in.

I'll add my 2 bobs worth in due course - but I'm not going to be the first conspiracy theory nutter who publicly confesses here to having seen one!.

It would be neat if we could have an up-dateable Oz map (Google Earth?) - and red dots say get added as each sighting in this thread is "Mapped" across the nation. (Anyone tech savvy enough to add that feature?).

Maybe it can be a "work in progress" thread .

Have at it. (Or Mods delete it now if its not allowed / gonna degenerate into a shambles).

[rustynail]

I am one of those nutters. Saw one stalking fallow deer in a paddock at Freemans Reach NSW. It got to about twenty metres away when it saw me and took off down the valley. I had been watching it for about five minutes before it realized I was there. When I reported it, I was told that another local had reported a sighting a week or so earlier. His description matched mine. The most notable fact being a bent end to the tail, like it had been broken.

[Boringgeoff]

Timless,
When I hadn't been here long from NZ and was working out in the eastern wheatbelt, we had a lot of sheep agisted down at Scott river during the 69- 70 drought.
Mondays I would load the truck with sheep tucker and head south through Bridgetown over the hill to Nannup and so to Scott R. Real Tiger country. If I got away late I would have to camp the night in the truck usually in the middle of the forest. The nocturnal animal noises were bloodcurdling to a wet behind the ears kiwi and I was pretty concerned about having my throat torn out by the notorious "Nannup Tiger".
Heaps of people,at that time, had "seen" the Nannup Tiger but I was told by a workmate a few years ago that at least one of those sightings was a freshly shorn sheep with black painted stripes.
Scary stuff.
Geoff.

[tea lady]

Timless,
When I hadn't been here long from NZ and was working out in the eastern wheatbelt, we had a lot of sheep agisted down at Scott river during the 69- 70 drought.
Mondays I would load the truck with sheep tucker and head south through Bridgetown over the hill to Nannup and so to Scott R. Real Tiger country. If I got away late I would have to camp the night in the truck usually in the middle of the forest. The nocturnal animal noises were bloodcurdling to a wet behind the ears kiwi and I was pretty concerned about having my throat torn out by the notorious "Nannup Tiger".
Heaps of people,at that time, had "seen" the Nannup Tiger but I was told by a workmate a few years ago that at least one of those sightings was a freshly shorn sheep with black painted stripes.
Scary stuff.
Geoff.

Koalas in the night can sound pretty blood curdling.

I saw some bloody enourmouse foxes in the hills up here. As big as Alsations they were. But someone recently told me that there are dingos around here too.

But no big cats.

[stuffy]

I saw one between Darkan and Collie. It crossed the road in front of me while I was driving early in the morning.

My Uncle had a farm near Walpole and he lost a few sheep to one. He saw it and heard it at night but couldn't get close enough to shoot if.

[Black Ned]

As an addition to these Big Cat experiences - please add a date so as to analyse if these a old or recent sightings!
regards Ned

[nrb]

I saw one of those big cats.
On the way to wonthaggi going south just past the 2nd turn off to koowerup there are three bridges,just past the last bridge on a Feb morning 2001 at around 6.15 am one ran across all lanes of the highway from my left to right.
It wasn't in too much of a hurry,i slowed but lost sight of it in the grass.
If I had a camera it would have been a great shot as the morning was clear.
Many years ago a mate had family that lived down that way, they talked often of the big cats in the area,I thought it just a story but now I believe.
Not long after this SWMBO and I went to a talk about these critters,the guy that gave the presentation said that there had been several seen over manby years,he had a map which he marked all the places they had been seen.
What was good was that he made no comment or prompt while we told of what we had seen.

[Timless Timber]

In the 8 years I worked in Forestry with CALM (Now DEC / PAW) at Nannup - (from 1987 - 1995) I was their Wildlife Officer (among a few other roles).

I recieved on average about 8 reports a year (i.e about 64 in total) official i.e "written" reports of Thylacine and Black Panther/Cougar like Animals split about 50/50 between thylacine and big cat.

Interestingly (For Geoff), ONE report early on - say ~ 1992, was from a tourist from British Columbia... who came in at the Office counter, to report seeing a big Black Cougar Panther like Cat, down Scott River way on Jacks Track that runs along the northern edge of the private property's and the forest. He didn't know we had Cougar Panthers wild in our country & wanted to know if they were native etc.

We seemed to get the bigger majority of the reports when we had drought and water dried up in a lot of springs etc in the high country of the escarpment and animals had to come closer to settlement (stock dams etc) for a drink.

We did have a rash one time of reports filtering in from down Manjimup District way of CALM officers (Foresters) who had close encounters with big Black cats up on top of the escarpment between Nannup & Manjimup, while working in the deep forest. So the Departments own forest officers were seeing the things.

One morning in spring - a couple of our foresters were well behind on tree marking for Bunnings Fallers up on top of The escarpment around Ellis Creek Block...(i.e. up top just east of that Bridgetown Hill section east of Nannup). If you don't tree mark the fallers coups (i.e select the habitat trees and seed trees and paint a ring around them with spray paint) ahead of the fallers to identify the trees to be left behind in the selective logging method - they just fall everything (clear fall) which is NOT the best way to harvest in Jarrah Marri forests (While it is in Karri Marri Forests) - because the fallers get paid by how much tonnage they put on the ground.

So muggins here gets "volunteered" to go help them out, starting in the dark before sunnup coz the Bunnings fallers will be getting there not long after to start work.

I grab a spray can and we fan out along "Number 2" road and marked a few hectares between the 4 of us.

We met up back at the road, a few hundred meters down the road from where we started.

Now the 4wd work ute is back behind us... so "Wrighty" walks back to get it and move it up ahead by a few hundred meters of us so when we do the next patch - we will come out near the ute and can just get in it and go back to the office.

He has his faithful hound "Cecil" with him (coz its state forest not national park and a lot of the officers and workers took their dogs to work with them in those days - heck Cecil the dog would come to work on the days Wrighty took off even!) (We used to joke he had more sick leave left than Wrighty).

So anyway Wrighty gets into the ute and Cecil as is his habit jumps up in the back & "Wrighty" moves it about from 2-300 yards behind us - up to 2-300 yards in front of us!

In doing so, as he's just idling along, past us i was watching him and his ute and Cecil the dog while the other 2 officers are chatting and i heard the first Bunnings fallers chainsaw start up, back behind us on top of the hill where he's about to finnish off the last of his coup from yesterday - before moving into the coup we had just marked for them.

Looking in that direction up the hill across all the fallen crowns and stumps... I saw the big black cat high Tailing it OUT of the area the chainsaw noise is coming from and its headed down the hill - flowing over boulders, stumps and crown branches - sop smoothly, the ONLY way to describe it is "like water in a stream over a rock" and its coming down the hill towards us, well it ran across the track (number 2 logging road) right in front of Wrighty while hes idling along in his ute! I saw him jam on the brakes from his tail lights, and Old Cecil the dog momentarily lost his footing in the back of the ute at the unexpected stop...

I know how much Cecil the dog loves to chase things especially cats, so I am thinking to myself - this will be interesting of he goes after that Panther - coz likely it will rip him to shreds and we might even have to rescue him if / when it gets ugly - which could be bad for us!.

But NO... Cecil didn't even see the big damn thing even tho the ute almost ran it over. BUT Wrighty DID see it.

The 2 guys standing with me chatting? Had their backs to what was going on and saw NOTHING! It was allover - it crossed the Gravel track and headed into a swamp and just vanished.

Wrighty parked his ute and walked back all wide eyed...

He's asking - did you guys see that? I am like YEp sure did and the other 2 are saying "No, see what?"...

He and I are looking at each other to see who's going to be this weeks office laughing stock....and admit first to having seen the black panther.

We each KNOW what we have seen but neither want to be the first to say it... so there's this awkward silence ans we look at each other mouths open and only silence coming out - and the other 2 are saying :"what, what?"...

So I said- we will each say it together....and Wrighty nods....

So together we blurt out "Big Black Cat / Panther"... and NOW the other 2 are all interested.

So - we got Cecil the dog to accompany us along the track a bit, to where the big black Cat crossed over... and I managed to find a pug mark (paw print) in soft clay near a puddle on the edge of the gravel track, that the Cat had made...

Now the other 2 officers, seeing the pawprint, realize we haven't been sniffing the paint cans all morning, and we got Cecil the dog to sniff the paw print to see if he'd get cat scent and chase after it into the swamp and maybe run it up a tree for us.

No way could we get the dog to show ANY interest in the print. He would chase a cat given even half a chance - heck he would chase cats if you sewulled (seuelled sp?) him onto them....BUT - not this one he wasn't....he sorta looked at us with this look like, "what do you think i am - stupid?" type of look!

So that was it - my one and only Big Black Cat sighting - we went back to tree marking the rest of the loggers coup for another hour and a half - then back to the office coz it was time I started work (my work).

Wrighty & I, both completed official CALM sighting reports for the departmental office file, on such sightings!



Wrighty went on to great things with CALM DEC Paw etc and still works for them best i know...for a long time he was in charge of their Wildlife trapping / survey program... and above s a pic of the only Western Quoll (Chuditch) we ever caught during our fauna surveys.



We even caught a black cat eventually...
We both got to work briefly with Harry Butler on some fauna survey programs even.

I was tasked with doing some "research" even into the circus accident/ big cat escape in 1959/60 between Nannup & Bridgetown that seemed to be the source of the original release of these big cats in the area.

I do recall tho - 2 wildflower pickers (As wild life officer I got to manage all the commercial wildflower harvesting operators) who came in and reported a yellow brown "Cougar" they spotted in a creek bed between Nannup and Busselton.

It seems like we must have both cougar and panther species present OR of they are cougar them a melanistic (black) form maybe.

The original reports just described them as Panther...

You see back in the 60's - unless you were a biologist you didn't differentiate such animals to species level... they were all just panthers if back and cougars of brown/yellow, when there are in fact a few different forms...of Cats, all closely related in some ways.

Leopard Panther Cougar Jaguar for e.g.

Who nows what exact species the circus had that escaped at least 3 animals just described as Panthers and Cougars, so in fact even tho authorities KNOW they have large cats extant in our forests they don't know exactly what we do have - whether it's a hybrid of some kind or separate species or how they got here even.

Yes I know some will suggest that if they are different species they can't interbreed and produce fertile offspring, and mopstly youd be right except there are some well known "exceptions" where hybrids of different species produce fertile offspring...

Canadian Elk - bred with Scottish Red Deer (2 distinct separate species - from 2 separate continents) in New Zealand produce fertile offspring (called locally wapiti) (or in the deer industry "Relks" - they are now often cross bred for hybrid vigor - yet they are entirely fertile.

Its all in the definition of same species...(must be able to meet in the wild, mate, and produce fertile offspring to be considered same species) well Elk (North American continent) and Scottish Red Deer (England / european continent) aren't the same species coz they don't meet the criteria must be able to meet in the wild.

But put them together in New Zealand...and they do mate and produce fertile offspring

And this is the problem for the Australian big cats phenomenon.

Because his isn't their native territory - we don't know for 100% sure - which species we have started out with being introduced here!.

There are reported melanistic (Black) forms of Cougar from North America.

There is reported melanistic (Black) form of Jaguar from Sth American Continent

There is a Melanistic Black form of Panther from the Indian sub Continent.

There's even suggestion of melanistic Leopards from Africa.

The sightinsg data all points to both Black and Cougar coloured animals (Parryville Panther was black for e.g.) most of the sightings around Bridgetown Cougar Yellow, between Nannup and Busselton Cougar yellow... But between Nannup - Manjimup = black. Scott River = Black.

There's the conundrum... we don't even know for 100% certain what species they are.

In nature, melanistic variety's are most common in forests where their coloration favors them most for predation / camouflage while the styraw yellow cougar variety are better suited to open woodland heath country (Cordering / Bridgetown / Busselton) etc.

Or forests are described by their canopy cover.

Near Manjimup Pemberton Nannup you have the temperate rainforest (Karri Country) where its 3 tier forst canopy excludes 90% of the sunlight from reaching the forest floor. This dark environment favors melanistic predators & predictably enough most of the sightings of bug cats from this area are black.

In the Jarrah Marri forests - you have a wet sclerphil forest where the 2 tier canopy only excludes about 70% of the light from reaching the forest floor.
In these areas sightings seem to be mixed roughly equally between yellow and black cats.

And in open woodland and heath (Busselton Bridgetown Cordering) predictably most sightings have been straw yellow cougar type sightings.
The actual sightings patter does match what one might expect given the relative environment types.
All fascinating stuff.
And it seems many other areas of Oz all have their own sightings history....
Tales of ships mascots being released here during visits here by visiting US ships in WW11, etc

Who really knows?

I would say the advent of remote infrared trail cameras type technology will likely increase our knowledge exponentially given time & the effort!

Cheers

[Scott]

Hehe, great thread. I reckon they're a bit like god, lots of stories but no one's ever seen him/her I must say, my daughters are terrified of drop bears

[rustynail]

Hehe, great thread. I reckon they're a bit like god, lots of stories but no one's ever seen him/her I must say, my daughters are terrified of drop bears

We know what we have seen.

[nrb]

I know what i saw

[Scott]

I know what i saw

We know what we have seen.

Hehe, great thread. I reckon they're a bit like god, lots of stories but no one's ever seen him/her I must say, my daughters are terrified of drop bears

Oops, let me clarify. Lots of stories but no concrete evidence that they exist.

[DSEL74]

Tawt I Tore a Paddy Tat! A F-N Big One!

Great thread, especially the contribution from Timless Timber.


I was in Africa at the end of 2010 and sent some time trying to get a decent photo of the big cats. I was out with a guide and could hear a pair of Cheetahs calling to each other and we spotted one go up a tree some distance away and as it happened we turned out to be right in the middle of their trying to meet up or they weren't calling to locate each other but discussing us for dinner. At one point we were sitting taking water and I looked up straight into a set of yellow eyes peeking over the rocks directly in front of me and only meters away. I was mesmerised and torn between trying to get the camera up for a shot, spoking it away, or provoking it to attack, the guide picked up his rifle and unknowingly scared it back into the long grass.

I did have a very close encounter with a pride of lions and if you think you can run up a tree to evade lions think again the happily climb trees and sleep in them. Two male lions ran right along the side of my car and my girlfriend was going nuts at me to wind the window up which I happened to be leaing out trying to get a decent photo. All I can say is the paws were as big as my head and could have easily removed it from my possession.

I don't think I really would like to be on the wrong side of any of these beautiful creatures. Unfortunately no local encounters.


My sister lives in the outer East of Vic and claims to have seen Tassie tigers and told us that their is a small colony of them out there that is being kept secret and protected in the wild in the hopes that they will breed. If word got out there would be too much interest from gawkers and possibly hunters and reduce the success of the efforts to reestablish the species. Me I think they are extinct.