Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Black Panther in the U.S. Sightings

will have to go back and look but i believe it was Capt. John Brandt when he was first stationed in Southeast Asia he got some leave and went hunting leopards and got pissed cause he kept running into black ones....having never hunted leopard before he thought of the spotted variety as what a real leopard should look like so passed up a dozen black ones before finally coming across a normal colored one and it wasnt till after he left he realized just what an opportunity he passed up not getting a black one.....but apparently in the area he was in the black variety far out numbered the spotted....IIRC Mount Kenya is another spot where black leopards are real common but like parts of Southeast Asia it is very densely forested....

" I never would have seen it; if I hadn't of believed it" I love this topic Barry, glad you dredged it up. Ive been in the south now for two years after living in the southeastern desert of Arizona for 58 years,and hanging around the local gun shops here is fascinating.
Im always picking brains on anything guns and hunting with the locals, and hear more windys in a day than I would hear in a month in local Az shops. Was talking with one guy the other day about black bear sightings, which they do have black bear here...just not many. He claimed he has lived here his whole life and has never once seen a black bear , BUT ....he has seen two black panthers, which, do not exist here...go figure.
That 6% melanistic population of jaguars which RockinB made mention of exists, but it is located in a small population way deep in central america. The jaguar by nature is an aquatic cat, they want to be around water. When one shows up in Arizona, it is generally a male which has been pushed out of its territory deep in Mexico, they are literally a fish out of water in southern Arizona.
When one does accidently wander into Arizona it invariablly makes a lot of hay for the Center for Biological diversity, which has a goal of shutting down a large portion of southernn Arizona and labeling it "critical habitat", essentially shutting down a large area of southern Arizona from hunting etc, so every 20 years a run off jaguar from northern Mexico can have free range?

Looks like a saber toothed otter to me.

If you research black mountain lions, you'll find that the biologists say mountain lions such as we have in the West are never black because they do not have the gene for melanism. There has never been one.

Just sayin' ... so if that's true the big black cats people see are something else -- not a black phase of a mountain lion. Funny how about half the reports of "black panthers" (the feline kind) are reports of something that doesn't exist. Ken Howell's explanation certain helps.

Steve.

I'm waiting for a Yetti to be caught on a game cam, don't care about the black panthers (feline or human kind).

All I can think of reading this thread is another member on the forum, who lived in the south, say the only reason he could justify having a 375 H&H was if the animals in the zoo got out. Case and point this is why everyone should have one

I lived in southeast Prentiss County, Mississippi (about 30 miles northeast of Tupelo) from 1998 to 2002, and cougars were fairly common there. I and many neighbors saw two there that weren't the usual tawny color but weren't all the way black either. They had a dark blackish brown (dark sable) line down the middle of their backs, dark black/brown heads, and the color on their legs and tails got darker towards the extremities, with their paws and ends of their tails dark black/brown.

We know there were at least two individuals marked like this because about a dozen of us saw two of them together in a field just east of Hobo Station, early one morning. We were able to look at them closely through binoculars and a spotting scope, and they were only about 120yds away. Definitely NOT bobcats or otters or overgrown housecats.

Yes, back in 2002 in Fannin County (along the Red River in N. Texas) right before deer rifle season. It was solid black and it crossed a one-lane dirt road <75 yds after my truck eased by the spot where it was hiding. Made the hair stand up on my arms even though I was in the cab.

Local U.S. Forest Service ranger said he saw a tri-color phase mountain lion near his house a few times and said the black ones were just a color-phase of mountain lions.

apparently mississippi is overrun with them like east tennessee is.

everybody here (but me) has seen several. "big cat" and "black panther" sightings are more common than buck deer or bear sightings from what i can tell.

i guess i need to get out more, so i can see one...:-)

"fairly common"? really? ya'll better be careful.

I posted the link to Jaguar, because that's what a black panther is a melanistic (black) Jaguar. I won't swear to it, but have read there are no confirmed cases of a black cougar, mountain lion, puma or Florida panther. The black phase happens in Jaguars and none were supposed to live here.

I say all this because I saw two black animals from my treestand when I first moved to S. Illinois and have had a hard time accepting what I saw every since.

I had just moved up here and was sitting out front one day about 3 in the afternoon when a truck pulled up right in front of me with a man and woman inside. They were real excited and said.."We just saw a mountain lion! He walked right across the hwy right over there, came from behind your house." Then they took off and stopped at the hwy staring out into a pasture where they had pointed. I didn't ask what color it was..or anything else, but surely it wasn't black..since they called it a mountain lion.

That same week, I was in a ladder stand back behind where I live and about 45 mins. before dark I see a patch of black moving through the trees about 70yds behind me. Then another black patch. My first thought was hogs since I'd just moved from Fl. but immediately knew they weren't any hogs around here. I then though it must be deer just looks black this time of day. Then I saw the whole animal and it was jet black and I immediately said it must be a lab, then another one just like it walked up to the other.

They were about 70yds standing under a big white oak and just standing not moving around, sniffing around..just standing looking around and at each other. I looked them over the best I could and their tails looked like no long hair on it and they were long and they didn't wag. They moved like a cat's tail with the S movement, undulating. They were not house cats, but not grown looking either..kinda looked like maybe 6 month old..probably 60lbs or so, they were lean and long legged, but not real tall, more long and lean.

It bothered me enough that I got my ass down right then before it got pitch dark (had my bow) and as I was walking down the ladder I was talking real loud to them saying "You better get the hell out of here", like they were dogs, but I didn't look to see if they ran or what..I don't think I wanted to know for sure if they came towards me..I just high stepped it on out of there talking to them as I went...figured I wasn't going to sneak out of there anyway and my best shot was to just let them know I was there and hope they did the normal thing and went the other way.

Since I don't or never have really believed in black panthers..only in melanistic phase Jaguars, I just can't get what I saw to square with what I believe, but I know what I saw and have never in 4 yrs or so seen a dog of any color back there or anywhere in this area except my white one. No more big cats either and hope I don't.

We'll get a "black panther" sighting around here once in a while. I think mostly it's fisher seen by someone with a somewhat distorted perspective regarding the size of the animal.

A couple of years ago I saw a LONG LEGGED bobcat crossing the road , IF it had had a tail it would have been a "panther".

Mike

I think that's what a lot of the reports of a "black panther" are.

Steve.

there has never been a documented case of a black cougar, unlike leopards and jaguars.

just like my buddy thinking the the black house cat he saw was a panther,others are just mistaking something for one or their eyes are playing tricks on them because of lighting or what not..

That's right!! Although, it only turned out to be Godwin in a black T-shirt!

It happened in Ohio about a year ago. Some guy went nuts and let all his exotic animals out, wolves, tigers, bears, ect. They found him dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound near a pile of food so that his animals would eat his remains? Imagine waking up and seeing a lion in your front yard?

Maybe,just maybe this is what we are seeing!!!!!!
http://cryptid.hubpages.com/hub/Alien-Big-Cats-Phantom-Cats-Around-the-World

I thought this could be a melanistic eastern cougar. But several here have posted there's never been a documented melanistic cougar.
So IF this story is true, I would come down to having to believe someone had an "exotic pet" that got loose and perhaps never reported it. Not sure it would be legal to own a black jaguar.

Ironically, the week I received this photo, the local television news station ran a story about recent mountain lion sightings although they did not mention any sightings of black ones.

Of course like I said, it could all be a hoax.

I guided elk hunters for many years in Hell's Canyon of Snake River. We had a jet black cougar that used the area for many years. The Basque sheep herders hated the lion because he took more sheep than any they'd ever seen.

His range was from Saddle Creek to Rush Creek and from 2,000 feet above sea level to 4,000 feet.

I saw him several times, always at long range, but was never able to close the deal. I always wanted to kill that lion.

I'm not calling you or anyone a liar or even wrong. But I swear I've seen that pic years ago and the cropped part was revealed to show the edges of fencing with part of a sign showing. Like from a zoo.