![]() Fish and Wildlife biologist Mark McCulloch concluded in 2011 that there are no longer any reproducing populations of panthers in the east outside of Florida. ![]() After an extensive review of available studies and eyewitness accounts, U.S. Thirty years ago, there were many biologists who believed that the eastern cougar still roamed the deep mountain fastnesses of the east, primarily because they believed that there was enough wild space in the southern Appalachians to support a reproducing population, but recent searches conducted by federal and state wildlife agencies, as well as numerous advocacy groups, have turned up empty. Yet, the biologists with whom I spoke were decidedly more skeptical. Nearly everyone claimed to at least know someone who had encountered a panther. ![]() My friends around Murphy and Hayesville, North Carolina, some of whom claimed similar experiences as mine, were convinced that there were “painters” in the mountains. I could not even determine if they existed at all in the eastern U.S. But the more I looked into the possibility of me hearing the big cat, the more I began to wonder. It was certainly a cat-like ‘scream,’ and it sounded too big, too hair-raising to come from a bobcat. We never caught a glimpse of the animal, but we heard something move fast away from us up the mountain side, and after a few moments of stunned silence, we cautiously resumed our stroll.įor many months I was convinced that we had heard a panther. I froze and turned to my brother, whose look of disbelief, terror, and curiosity conveyed my emotions exactly. ![]() There was a loud, hissing roar that quickly turned into a snarling growl. It sounded like a cat’s scream, like a Bengal tiger’s scream straight from a David Attenborough nature special. I remember well the noise that I heard that summer day in 2003 as I hiked down the Jacks River trail in north-central Georgia. ![]()
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