Possible big cat kill?

Interesting that the DNA results have yet to bet released when they said they should be done by the end of last week. Guess we will just have to wait a little longer.

Who would not be surprised to see that when the results do get made public that the outcome will be along the lines of ......

.......Results have come back, but unfortunately are inconclusive as the swab samples taken from the carcass at the time have proved to be not fine enough to give an accurate DNA match up to any particular species.
 
If I am barking up the wrong tree but I was talking to my father tonight and he mentioned that there had been something on the news ref a big cat kill and a expert had been brought in and had said that the two deer (speices not stated) had been killed by a badger. Now my dad may be 83 years old, but he comes from nine generations of game keepers and is sound of mind and he stated to me that yes abadger would savenge on a carcass but take down a deer even a small one he would have doughts about.
 
I love the conclusion to this by the experts to say they only found Deer and Fox saliva on the carcass is a bit of a white wash so what are they trying to say that the deer died naturally and the foxes came along and only ate a small percentage of the deer or that the foxes attacked brought down the deer and only ate a small percentsge of the deer.
Could someone in the know please explain what they mean exactly was it killed by a fox or just eaten by a fox.
How long had the carcass been lying there if for more then 24 hours as suggested then why no other DNA found on the carcass or are thier only Deer and Foxes roaming in that area of the UK
EDIT - me thinks another cover up on the books and why not publish the finding into the public domain.
 
As with many of the more outlandish (in my opinion) cryptozoological claims we've now hit the wall with the classic, "you can't (conclusively) prove a negative" problem. The believers will always have an answer for whatever evidence is put foward including the classic "cover up" or "you're part of the conspiracy" explanations.
 
Until the so called experts publish any findings WITHOUT black covering marks over paragraph after paragraph then MOST people will think something is not quite right.

This is not a conspiracy theory just a question that needs to be answered, as I have said before thier are that many excuses coming from the experts that it is becoming a great Carry On movie but without pictures.

As people in general who live in or near the countryside would say there are NO big cats but there is something out there killing wildlife and unfortunatly the Dog and Fox are getting the blame because the experts don't know or won't say what is out there.

I still DONOT believe we have big cats but do think that we have something out there but if the findings keep being left on shelves so the general public cannot access them then what are they covering up do they think the real findings will scare the general public or is it simple they don't want us to know.


Maybe one day we will know the truth but until then hey it makes a great debate.
 
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As I have now done a bit of research with the help of a few friends on this subject I is now more confused than when I started.

A few questions if someone could put me right it may help me get a more general view of the matter

1 - What do we in Britain call a big cat because according to experts (in the media) it ranges from Tigers down to Jungle Cats?

2 - Out of 26 live captures of so called escaped cats (7 Puma and 19 lynx) from private or zoological collections why as no one ever been prosecuted which the law states that any escaped dangerous animals owner will be prosecuted with no exception or does this not include cats.

3 - If dogs and foxes are killing all these sheep and other farm/wild animals why is there not an outcry to have them shot on sight from the farmers whose lively hoods are being destroyed?

4 - Back to my earlier statement if the findings are so accurate and hold nothing but it was a dog or fox why they are not in the public domain without being censored.

5 - In the 1960’s and 1970’s so many people had Medium and Large cats as pets and yet according to experts only a few were given to Zoological or licensed collectors after the law changed what happened to the rest

6 - Why is it that so called experts say if you come in contact with a large or medium sized cat in the UK countryside then walk backwards slowly with no sudden movements surely if there are NO wild cats in the UK then they should not be giving this warning out.

7 - Why do the Media always call a cat sighting a Big Cat after reading some of the more creditable peoples sightings (police officer, solicitor, nurse, RAF Pilot, farmer, game warden) nearly all clearly state that the size of the cat was at best medium and nearly always brownish - light beige

8 - Do we have enough room and food supply to really sustain a group of wild cats without ever finding a body of a dead one or do our native wildlife eat the body before it can be found.

9 - Would you report a sighting to the authorities if you saw a Big Cat or would you keep it to yourself so as not to be ridiculed.

Any sensible answer would help as I have taken some of these questions from other sites with permission to try and find out what the general public think on a varied set of website forums plus it would help me greatly to understand I think.
 
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There is certainly room, as per my post on the previous page, Wales and Scotland have vast connected areas for these animals to survive. Hill farming and the acceptance that there is a yearly unaccounted for livestock loss anyway creates a very different environment to what you typically find in lowland country areas, with ample food for large predators. There is no outcry against predators in these upland areas because animal losses through falling/drowning/illness and rustling are usually a bigger problem. Large areas of dense native woodland flank the wilderness areas for cover.

I think the phrase 'big cat' is a generic term people are using for any cat larger than a house cat. Some reports hint at specific species, others are more vague. It must be remembered that often these sightings take place for only a split second, hence why all sorts of other animals can be misconstrued as 'big cats'.

I have not read much about the censorship of reports, perhaps someone could elaborate.

I would certainly report any animal that I believe is dangerous, I take frequent walks on the moors and I wouldn't wish anyone doing the same to encounter anything that can do them harm if it could have been prevented. The caveat is I would require some certainty of what I saw. I reported both large dogs that entered my property but never heard anything more. They left and presumably crossed the moor(10 miles in any direction - only way to get to/away from my property).

I think the key thing with this is that people who live in other less remote areas see how impractical it would be for these animals to exist in their own area and dismiss it out of hand. Spend a year in the isolated Welsh or Scottish mountains and you will see how easy it would be for a predator to both survive and exist undetected.
 
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adrian1963 said:
I still DONOT believe we have big cats but do think that we have something out there but if the findings keep being left on shelves so the general public cannot access them then what are they covering up do they think the real findings will scare the general public or is it simple they don't want us to know.
I'm a little confused as to what you're suggesting here. You don't believe there are big cats loose in the countryside but you do think there's something else out there big and scary enough to be killing deer etc that the government is at pains to keep a lid on? What do you think it is? Aliens? Time-travelling phorusrhacids? Bear Grylls?
 
Living in Bodmin, it was almost a regular local news event in the early 90's about "The Beast Of Bodmin",a so-called black panther on the moor.

...Indroducing some grainy photo or video of something black wandering along a hedgerow....
Its like technology never moved on from the Bigfoot film. :rolleyes:

What i would like to throw into the mix is that tourism went up in and around Bodmin at that point....Me being cynical?..well maybe. ;)
 
Chlidonias what I mean is I think there could be some sort of cat out there from a cross breed with our Feral Cats out in the countryside as many small cats were released in the late 70's and early 80's as people could not keep them under the new law on dangerous animals but only the Big Cats released ever got the Media attention then and still do today.

The Scottish Wildcat as bred with Feral Cats so why not some other non UK small cat that is the size of a fox or small dog.
 
Hadrada that is a good point all you have to do is look to scotland and the Lochness monster the money that as brought into the area over the years must be enormous.
 
Chlidonias for someone I respect to come back with a remark like What do you think it is? Aliens? Time-travelling phorusrhacids? Bear Grylls? or you should have said Foxes, Dogs, Badgers, Boar shall I go on. Your answers just show how seriously some people take the subject.
 
adrian1963 said:
Chlidonias for someone I respect to come back with a remark like What do you think it is? Aliens? Time-travelling phorusrhacids? Bear Grylls? or you should have said Foxes, Dogs, Badgers, Boar shall I go on. Your answers just show how seriously some people take the subject.
you didn't think Bear Grylls was funny though?

Really, you said you didn't believe there were big cats wild in the UK and that the government was covering up what was "really" out there. If I was being serious about it, why would I suggest foxes or dogs or badgers? The government's covering up that there are badgers in Britain? I don't think so.

That large numbers of cats were released into the wild after the passing of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act is not a fact, it is a hypothesis. The only proof is unconfirmed stories and supposition. It does provide a reasonable excuse as to how big cats could be loose in Britain but it is far from a proven reality.

As to where I stand on the matter, I don't think there are populations of big cats wild in the UK. Individuals have turned up dead and alive (eg a puma live-trapped and a lioness pulled dead froma reservoir) but that is all. I have never seen a photograph or film that looked enough like a big cat to convince me - they are always small cats, probably domestics or ferals - and the so-called "experts" that give their learned opinions on evidence are usually not even remotely what I would call experts. Small cats are another matter. Jungle cats are relatively frequently found road-killed and lynx are also relatively often caught or otherwise ("relatively" obviously being the important word there). There has even been suggestions of inter-breeding between wild-living jungle cats and domestics. [Domestic X jungle cat and serval and leopard cat are all well-known in cat fancier circles, so it is not unlikely]. When working on another project I once made a list of all the small cats that have been conclusively found wild in the UK and Ireland (that is, specimens photographed well, live-caught, shot, or found dead) and I think it was something like a quarter or a fifth of all species [I don't have the list to hand so can't remember the percentage properly]. The nicest example was the clouded leopard that escaped from Howlett's in the 70s and spent the next seven (?) months living wild in farmland, hiding out in hedgerows and feeding on lambs and rabbits, until shot by a farmer.
 
Chlidonias for someone I respect to come back with a remark like What do you think it is? Aliens? Time-travelling phorusrhacids? Bear Grylls? or you should have said Foxes, Dogs, Badgers, Boar shall I go on. Your answers just show how seriously some people take the subject.

Adrian the way you phrased your post about could be out there if it isn't cat really left it open to open any interpretation. I too was wondering what on earth you thought it could be.

Though childonis I think Ray Mears is much tougher than Bear Grylls, and could definitely bring down a deer with his bare hands! :eek:

In seriousness I actually find this topic fascinating. Like most unusual events in the world I'm sure that there is a perfectly logical explanation, but the fanciful side of me really wants there to be big cats out there.
 
mazfc said:
Though childonis I think Ray Mears is much tougher than Bear Grylls, and could definitely bring down a deer with his bare hands!
if Bear Grylls had his support team kill the deer first and then his film crew got some shots of him standing over it smearing blood on his chest, well, we'll see what Ray Mears would have to say then (as he was killing a badger with his toenail clippings)
 
Motion triggered trail cameras are now being used to effectively photograph extremely elusive felids in the wild (snow leopards, bay cats, etc). Perhaps someone should do a camera trap study in the area of the UK where these cats allegedly occur?
 
FBBird said:
Dead lioness in a reservoir? Any more details out there please?
sorry all my reference material is in boxes up in Wellington so I can't be more specific. The supposition was that it was a dead lioness dumped there, not a free-living animal that drowned. I think it would have been in the 1980s or late 70s. I can't even remember which publication I got the information from (it was a legitimate record though).
 
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