Puma sighted in the Mitta Mitta

[duncan61]

So how does one determine that a roo carcass 40 feet up a tree smells of urine?

The area around the tree smelt not the roo carcass.I am surprised you have not seen a few big ferals.

[animalpest]

Yeah I have got a couple of thousand feral cats. They can grow big but never even close to panther size. About 8kg tops. All have been weighed on scales.

[wanneroo]

I had a house cat that got up to 17-18 pounds and he enjoyed his pizza and french fries. Lived long to 17 years.

It's funny how many house cats get mistaken for pumas or cougars.

[Blr243]

A Black panther is nearly four times smaller than a lion. So when an Australian panther Believer sees a big black cat he’s not for something as big as a lion .....Seeing a bigger than normal feral cat , coupled with the fact that panthers are much smaller than lions , add in the poor perception of size at a distance, and then add in the fact that some people see what they want to see, and bingo , you have panthers running around everywhere

[animalpest]

That, Blr243 covers 90% plus of the sightings. The rest are weed, meth and mischief

[ZaineB]

That, Blr243 covers 90% plus of the sightings. The rest are weed, meth and mischief

except for the plaster cast my dads uncle has from the murchison and that the local indigenous fellas wouldnt go there for that exact reason.

[womble]

A Black panther is nearly four times smaller than a lion. So when an Australian panther Believer sees a big black cat he’s not for something as big as a lion .....Seeing a bigger than normal feral cat , coupled with the fact that panthers are much smaller than lions , add in the poor perception of size at a distance, and then add in the fact that some people see what they want to see, and bingo , you have panthers running around everywhere

A black panther can be either a leopard or a jaguar. Melanin feature like in people, skin pigment, eyes hair etc.
There’s no black cougars/ pumas/ mountain lions, apart from legends, or i don’t think any other of the big cats.
Leopards are generally smaller, average dog size. That’s candidate number one. And preferable.

Now a jaguar is just f*cking frightening. I don’t think we want to go there. We’d be finding cows and horses high up in the trees.

Anyway i think it’s important we know the difference here. If you see a black leopard. I mean be sensible, but they’re relatively shy of people, take some happy snaps if you can and get back to us.

If you see a black jaguar stay in the car.

[womble]

That, Blr243 covers 90% plus of the sightings. The rest are weed, meth and mischief

I sent you a pm mr skeptic

[ZaineB]

A Black panther is nearly four times smaller than a lion. So when an Australian panther Believer sees a big black cat he’s not for something as big as a lion .....Seeing a bigger than normal feral cat , coupled with the fact that panthers are much smaller than lions , add in the poor perception of size at a distance, and then add in the fact that some people see what they want to see, and bingo , you have panthers running around everywhere

A black panther can be either a leopard or a jaguar. Melanin feature like in people, skin pigment, eyes hair etc.
There’s no black cougars/ pumas/ mountain lions, apart from legends, or i don’t think any other of the big cats.
Leopards are generally smaller, average dog size. That’s candidate number one. And preferable.

Now a jaguar is just f*cking frightening. I don’t think we want to go there. We’d be finding cows and horses high up in the trees.

Anyway i think it’s important we know the difference here. If you see a black leopard. I mean be sensible, but they’re relatively shy of people, take some happy snaps if you can and get back to us.

If you see a black jaguar stay in the car.

drove past an entire yard filled with jaguars the other day, didnt seem so dangerous to me.

[duncan61]

That, Blr243 covers 90% plus of the sightings. The rest are weed, meth and mischief.
I have had a good think about this comment and feel the need to share some more information.The property where I have seen this large black feral cat is leased by Tony Gelati from spud shed fame.It is on the south side of the Harvey drain and west of the old coast rd after the turn off to Binningup.The onion patchs were a good spot as they are to the right of the track so as you drive into the property heading north you turn left and start panning the light and all these brown heads pop up only near by.I could normally get a few before they took off then an hour later they would all be back in there.the patches were seperated by rows of trees and from memory there were 4 seperate patches.It is all thick bush to the left and you can drive to the end of the patches then come back up the other side.It was in the first patch were I saw this black cat and It was the size of a medium dog.40-50kg.after shooting there for awhile Tony asked me to do his property which is massive and on the north side of the Harvey drain.It was in the trees at the coastal side of this place that we used to hunt on foot.This is where we found the carcass way up in the tree.I have seen plenty of nature docos where leopards of a similar size drag a full size antelope that is larger than them backwards up a tree to avoid dogs and hyenas.My best friend who was with me explained cats have no growth hormone and can get big over generations.All wild cats mark out their territory with urine.I have been a roo shooter in the Gascoyne at Mt Augustus and Dooly downs then later at Wooramel where I shot 3 cats and one dog in 2 years.I joined the Aust Army May 31 1983 and at that time there was a zero tolerance policy on any drug use of any kind.If you wish to get out just smoke a joint then tell your sergeant and you will be discharged instantly.I saw it happen.I have never seen Meth or anyone use it and would not know what it looked like.I see you are from the West so I assume you know the area I am describing.This all happened some time ago before Spud shed was around and yes he has a big bright purple ford fairlane from 1966 complete with fluffy dice and garters on the mirror.I have never seen a big cat anywhere else in the state

[animalpest]

They are interesting observations Duncan61. Unfortunately some correction are needed.

Firstly, medium dog's are not 40-50kg. That is very large. A medium dog such as a kelpie or Border Collie is about 20-25 kg. If the suggestion is that a feral cat at 40-50kg then that would be enormous indeed.

Yes, I am from WA but it's a big State.

Whether cats have growth hormones or not is a moot point. Successive generations do not grow bigger as a result of that. If that was the case then domestic cats would also do the same. They generally change because of natural selection or genetic mutations or Galati is planting greens with radiated fertilizer (a joke).

Not suggesting that you were on meth. But people do.

[ZaineB]

They are interesting observations Duncan61. Unfortunately some correction are needed.

Firstly, medium dog's are not 40-50kg. That is very large. A medium dog such as a kelpie or Border Collie is about 20-25 kg. If the suggestion is that a feral cat at 40-50kg then that would be enormous indeed.

Yes, I am from WA but it's a big State.

Whether cats have growth hormones or not is a moot point. Successive generations do not grow bigger as a result of that. If that was the case then domestic cats would also do the same. They generally change because of natural selection or genetic mutations or Galati is planting greens with radiated fertilizer (a joke).

Not suggesting that you were on meth. But people do.

I have family members that have seen huge fk off cats before, as mentioned before, both parents, older brother, my grandfather and 5 of my fathers friends, and my great uncle, as well as a ww2 veteran US Marine who was visiting with my family and on a hunting trip with my father.

the first sighting was at the murchison area on mt view station in 1991, there is a large thicket there that used to have a lot of pigs in it, the thicket is gone now, but that area always had mountains of pigs on it, after shooting and hanging a number of these pigs the blokes sat down to have a yarn and cook dinner, it had just gone on dark before one of my dads best mates Ian (god rest his soul), said hey is that headlights? as they looked up they saw what looked like faint headlights on the track to the camp, that was until it started moving, they shone the spotty on it and it sure as heck was a very large gold/tan coloured cat. it hung there in the light for a few seconds until it sauntered off past a shrub, the shrub was measured the next day and was over 2' tall and the cat was taller than it. present at that sighting was my dad, uncle, brother, grandfather, laurance wilcox (us marine and seasoned safari hunter), dads late mate Ian, his other mates Joop and his brother, and mates steve s. The station owner also shot one in a crop but was not going into the long canola to see if he killed it. Laurance made comment of it often and was used to hunting cougars/mountain lions in the USA and knew what he was looking at.

Second sighting was my mother (who was always calling bs on my dads sighting years before), travelling south from Carnarvon with my dad as they approached a floodway north of Northampton what was standing in the middle of the road seemingly balked by them approaching (likely a few kmh over the limit as is the done thing), but the exact same kind of big cat my dad had seen back in 1991.

people can call bs and carry on all they like, but I have seen the plaster casts, and even in my own time bowhunting pigs on mt view I have seen big footprints with no claw mark (telltale cat paw) here and there and have had the hairs on my neck stand up for seemingly no reason a lot of times. I believe them, none of them did it for monetary gain and none of them used it as a puffed up piss drinking story, it was something none of them wanted to have happen again, none of them slept well that night. also some of their quarry was gone the next morning.

cheers.

[animalpest]

Don't doubt you ZaineB. There is a lot of bush out there

[Oldbloke]

I struggle with the idea there are pumas or jaguars here. Some biggish cats, yet I'm sure there are.

Why, well with the 1000s of trail camera's out there and everyone having a camera in their mobiles, where are the quality pics? Or a dead body.

[ZaineB]

I struggle with the idea there are pumas or jaguars here. Some biggish cats, yet I'm sure there are.

Why, well with the 1000s of trail camera's out there and everyone having a camera in their mobiles, where are the quality pics? Or a dead body.

I asked the same of old Lorry (laurance) before he passed away, and his comment to me was, that even when on the trail of a big cat in the woods in the USA, often they wouldn't find it or see it, unless the dogs got it bayed up at tree or in a cave or some other obstacle, the whole time you are looking for them they are looking at you and are far better at moving around quietly. He swore black and blue that unless baiting up and waiting, dogs were the only way to get onto a mountain lion.

cheers.

[animalpest]

Yep but he was already on the trail. But today we have more people in the bush. We have trail cameras. We have doggers and others whose job it is to find animals and their sign.

So why is their not more sightings?

So ZaneB, why does your family see them but I don't?

[Larry]

The common explanation was that an American army unit bought their mascot to Australia and it escaped. However that does not explian how the sightings are spread from North to south and from East to the West.

[animalpest]

Yes and why they have lived for 75 years.
That old story has as much credibility as the crashed circus truck.

[ZaineB]

Yep but he was already on the trail. But today we have more people in the bush. We have trail cameras. We have doggers and others whose job it is to find animals and their sign.

So why is their not more sightings?

So ZaneB, why does your family see them but I don't?

without knowing how much time you've spent in the bush, I might suggest that some members of my family have spent substantially more time in the bush than yourself, those mentioned likely being older than you also, and given all except my dad have only seen one once in their life, its not so surprising that you have not seen one, like I say I have seen sign, footprints, but that's all, I know what dog tracks look like and fox and cat and so on. these were definitely big cat tracks, same area however had big dog tracks also, but definitely not the same.

time and place at the end of the day, there was a pigmy hippo shot in the kimberly, yet no one I know has ever seen one in the wild up there, the fact that you or your peers havent seen something doesnt detract from others having done so.

[Oldbloke]

Yep but he was already on the trail. But today we have more people in the bush. We have trail cameras. We have doggers and others whose job it is to find animals and their sign.

So why is their not more sightings?

So ZaneB, why does your family see them but I don't?

without knowing how much time you've spent in the bush, I might suggest that some members of my family have spent substantially more time in the bush than yourself, those mentioned likely being older than you also, and given all except my dad have only seen one once in their life, its not so surprising that you have not seen one, like I say I have seen sign, footprints, but that's all, I know what dog tracks look like and fox and cat and so on. these were definitely big cat tracks, same area however had big dog tracks also, but definitely not the same.

time and place at the end of the day, there was a pigmy hippo shot in the kimberly, yet no one I know has ever seen one in the wild up there, the fact that you or your peers havent seen something doesnt detract from others having done so.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-16/ ... ke/1145336

OK. Very surprising.

But are there private zoos about with big cats? Doubt it.

[ZaineB]

Yep but he was already on the trail. But today we have more people in the bush. We have trail cameras. We have doggers and others whose job it is to find animals and their sign.

So why is their not more sightings?

So ZaneB, why does your family see them but I don't?

without knowing how much time you've spent in the bush, I might suggest that some members of my family have spent substantially more time in the bush than yourself, those mentioned likely being older than you also, and given all except my dad have only seen one once in their life, its not so surprising that you have not seen one, like I say I have seen sign, footprints, but that's all, I know what dog tracks look like and fox and cat and so on. these were definitely big cat tracks, same area however had big dog tracks also, but definitely not the same.

time and place at the end of the day, there was a pigmy hippo shot in the kimberly, yet no one I know has ever seen one in the wild up there, the fact that you or your peers havent seen something doesnt detract from others having done so.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-16/ ... ke/1145336

OK. Very surprising.

But are there private zoos about with big cats? Doubt it.

There have indeed been, laws on importing such animals aren't that old, this is a young country, its not that long ago there was 0 laws in place regarding what could be brought here.

cheers.

[animalpest]

ZaneB I have spent my whole life in the bush. It's my job to find animals, hunt, trap, shoot and survey. And I have been doing that professionally for over 40 years. Heck I was born at a forestry settlement in the middle of the bush.

Actually the laws have been around for a century in WA.

I spent 8 years chasing the Cordering Cougar which was in the newspapers every week during the late 70's and 80's when in the government. Sightings, tracks, scats, stock and wildlife killings, marks on trees all reports were investigated.

And I always approached it with an open mind. My work is science based so I want evidence and will consider theories openly.

[InisBineest]

Never ceases to amaze me how fired up this topic can get people. You saw a big cat/pantha/lion/jaguar. Good for you. No really, whatever floats your boat. I get excited when i'm lucky enough to spot a deer (pro stalker/tracker I am not!).
But... if you trap a live one, or manage to shoot one and bring back the carcass for verification, then you'd have my attention

On a side note (yes sorry, here comes the rest of my skepticism), why is it that in a day an age where you can have a cheap 60mp camera in your pocket (looking at my Motorola) no one can get a decent photo of bigfoot! Always postage stamp sized blurry images, never a nice crisp image;)

[animalpest]

There was a $50,000 reward back when that money was 7 years government salary for me for a cougar/panther that was posted by the Sunday Times newspaper. No one claimed it. I don't know of anyone who even seriously tried.

Witness 101. 5 people see a tragic scene or major crime. Every witness will see a person with different description, different in every way. Police training even does that to recruits.

A former Jarhead has no more credibility than my grandma when it comes to what animal they saw in the bush ( with all due respect to those that served).

As far as previous posts , I offer a compromise, a deal. Make a kangaroo 40 feet up a tree 5 feet and the 40kg cat 5kg and I will agree with you.

Oh and buy the way, while I may be 1500km away in the bush at the moment, I have an intimate knowledge of the all the property's mentioned so far. And their neighbours.

Ooo for that photo on my cameras

[on_one_wheel]

There's supposedly been sightings of Tasmanian Tigers on the mainland, Australia, there was a Facebook page dedicated to those sightings.

My thoughts on the matter was, wouldn't it be great if it were true, .... and, Fu€#ing wacked out nut jobs... and, what if you actually shot one, surely extinction removes them from the endangered list ??

[ZaineB]

There was a $50,000 reward back when that money was 7 years government salary for me for a cougar/panther that was posted by the Sunday Times newspaper. No one claimed it. I don't know of anyone who even seriously tried.

Witness 101. 5 people see a tragic scene or major crime. Every witness will see a person with different description, different in every way. Police training even does that to recruits.

A former Jarhead has no more credibility than my grandma when it comes to what animal they saw in the bush ( with all due respect to those that served).

As far as previous posts , I offer a compromise, a deal. Make a kangaroo 40 feet up a tree 5 feet and the 40kg cat 5kg and I will agree with you.

Oh and buy the way, while I may be 1500km away in the bush at the moment, I have an intimate knowledge of the all the property's mentioned so far. And their neighbours.

Ooo for that photo on my cameras

a jarhead that has hunted big cats extensively is someone I will listen to before someone who hasnt hunted any.

[ZaineB]

Never ceases to amaze me how fired up this topic can get people. You saw a big cat/pantha/lion/jaguar. Good for you. No really, whatever floats your boat. I get excited when i'm lucky enough to spot a deer (pro stalker/tracker I am not!).
But... if you trap a live one, or manage to shoot one and bring back the carcass for verification, then you'd have my attention

On a side note (yes sorry, here comes the rest of my skepticism), why is it that in a day an age where you can have a cheap 60mp camera in your pocket (looking at my Motorola) no one can get a decent photo of bigfoot! Always postage stamp sized blurry images, never a nice crisp image;)

it doesnt bother me if anyone wants to act like a chode over it. I know the people involved more than anyone on here, and know what they are like, and what they are saying and its really of 0 consequence to me if no one cares.

[animalpest]

Nowhere here have I seen that Jarhead has hunted cats extensively. Tell me more.

So you are saying that I haven't? What brings you to that conclusion after me telling you a bit of what I have done?

Please tell me your Ex-jarhead hunted for a living or did he have another job 5 days a week? What was it?

[ZaineB]

Nowhere here have I seen that Jarhead has hunted cats extensively. Tell me more.

So you are saying that I haven't? What brings you to that conclusion after me telling you a bit of what I have done?

Please tell me your Ex-jarhead hunted for a living or did he have another job 5 days a week? What was it?

lets sum this up by stating that the bloke ran a hunting outfitters in the USA and also organized hunts in europe, asia and africa after his military service. does that suffice?

you also seem to be taking other peoples lived experiences pretty personally as if it has some bearing on you, seems odd to me, but its not uncommon.

[animalpest]

So a "pigmy hippo" was shot in the Kimberley. Any factual details or photos that can be verified?

I currently have 2 staff members there out on multiple stations so they can chase the details up.