Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Cougars in Alabama

I've heard stories about big black cats in the panhandle of FL my whole life, and have one good friend who swears he saw one. Who knows?

You never know one could be sneaking up behind you everytime you are out in the woods and would never know it. T

Grew up and lived there a long time. Had a couple of guys I believe describe in detail seeing a cougar on their club land in Marengo County at different times. Have no reason to doubt either one. This was back in the late '80s. On back in the mid 60's had another reliable fellow telling about one that came by his deer blind in the Delta. They're there and have been probably forever. Just not a lot of them.

Lived here all my life and have never seen one. Friend of mine saw one a couple of years ago. I have heard them and seen their tracks a few times. I know people that say they see them quite often. They live around the forest in West Alabama

Mountain lions in Alabama I wouldn't know anything about. I don't believe in black mountain lions. Why you ask? Because there has NEVER been even ONE produced and documented after four hundred years of human exploration and settlement, food, market, and sport hunting, and complete thorough scientific exploration and documentation of this country. Our population grew from zero whites to over 300 million in this period and technology has advanced beyond anything the wildest imaginations could conjure even a few decades ago. Humans here wiped out entire species that numbered in the hundreds of millions, like the Passenger Pigeon and very nearly the American Bison. Human encroachment pushed species from their native lands and some of those faced near total oblivion. Here in Missouri as late as the 1930�s the whitetail herd numbered around four hundred animals statewide and the wild turkey was about in the same shape. Today the deer herd and the turkey flock numbers are near one million each. Our black bear population went from near zero animals to maybe as many as 500 - 700 bears here at present. Our mountain lion presence was a whopping zero until the last thirty years or less and biologist now acknowledge a documented mountain lion presence within the state that may be growing with nearly two dozen documented lions in the last decade. So there is a reversal afoot because of sportsmen monies and efforts and scientific wildlife management. Nation wide urban expansion into rural areas is a well known problem for wildlife and the great wild spaces are shrinking daily. Most of those homes have a video camera and there must be tens of thousands of game cameras in the field snapping pictures daily/nightly. Yet we have exactly ZERO scientific documented evidence of a black mountain lion ever being in existence.

I agree. I don't doubt the existence of Mtn Lions in the south and especially in the Southern AL/GA area since the Florida panther migrates north but a "black or melanistic" phase of the mtn lion, puma, cougar, panther doesn't exist. There are black jaguars and leopards but no mtn lions.

I have to agree with not believing in black panthers. There just hasn't been any evidence to support it.

And with the video in the original post I saw an episode if monster quest on history channel that took that video and scaled everything to find that the black cat in the video was only about 20 inches tall.

We aren't supposed to have them in Iowa, either. In fact, every time there is one reported, the nonresident experts are quick to dismiss us a yokels who can't tell a housecat from a cougar. A couple of years ago, when my hunting partner and I split up to go to two different areas of his property, I saw a set of huge cat tracks crossing the ridge. When we met back up later, the first thing that he said was, "You won't guess what kind of tracks I saw." I allowed that I probably could guess. A couple of days later, another deer hunter shot a cougar out of a tree about 15-20 miles from us. The experts were strangely silent on that as they always are when one of the big cats gets hit by a car.

There was one killed during 2009 in Troup County, Georgia which borders Alabama. Researchers from the UGA vet school linked it to the Flordia panthers.

http://www.ajc.com/news/mountain-lions-on-the-111249.html

5sdad

there is a picture of a cougar crossing a snow covered field taken just out of storm lake, ia

ran in the paper there maybe a few years ago.. The cat was seen a number of times in the area..

haven't been out in that area bird hunting the last two years so we lost track..

Your southern tier counties are perfect cat habitat..

my brother has big feet (among other things) sorry sob.

I think I saw that episode too. But what kind of long-tailed black cat stands 20" tall. I'd expect that's maybe 50-75lb animal.

50 - 75 lbs? Seriously doubt it, cats are very thin built. Chunky coyotes stand about 26" tall and seldom weigh much over 40 lbs. Bobcats may stand 24" at the shoulder and it takes a biggun' to top 35 pounds. For a 20" tall cat to weigh 50+ lbs it'd also be 20" wide - lol.

Yep, any cougar east of the Mississippi River is either a Florida panther on a walkabout, a Western cougar that got seriously lost, or a released pet. The game and fish departments (and hunters) that want to keep their deer seasons open don't have any interest in having an established, reproducing population of cougars that might be declared endangered by the feds.

Maybe my estimate of weight is off. Say a 20" shoulder height long-tailed black cat weighs 35 or 40 lbs. What was it?? It sure ain't a house cat. On the coyotes I weighed one at 42lbs and he sure wasn't 26" tall.

"What is it", thats what I want to know too. Its not a house cat and its not a panther?????

Let me retract my statement of the cat being only 20". I did some checking on the mosterquest site and the piece of footage in the op was not clear enough to get a size comparison from. There was another piece of video show in the MQ episode "Lions in the Backyard" that had a very large domestic cat on it.

I've seen a couple here (Florida Panthers).

MY BIL came face to face to one on his property in MS (SE MS) last year.

They are rare and reclusive.

FL G & F imported some Texas Cougars back several years ago to increase the diversity (breeding purposes). The problem they had was they were nomadic, and wouldn't stay in the range they wanted them to. I'm thinking they documented some went back to Texas.

shootem & bxroads,
The above quote is your answer... house/feral cat.