My second black panther sighting was in either 1977 or 78. I was bow hunting just south of Abita Springs, La. walking on the railroad track where the St. Tammany trace is now located. As I rounded a bend, heading south maybe an hour after daybreak I saw a large black cat walking the tracks in the same direction I was heading, about 1/4 mile ahead of me. It evidently heard or smelled me, because it turned its head to look at me and then slowly walked off the tracks to the east into the woods. At that time I judged the length of the head and body (not counting the long tail) to be only slightly shorter than the distance between the train tracks.

No one lives on our property. I thought I would start asking some of the local folks about big cats in the area because mine and my brother’s kids like to roam free at the property on their dirt toys. I was thinking that the hogs and snakes were the major problem but found out that there are a lot of big cats that pass through the area in spring and fall. I have been told by a couple local feed stores owners that the cats come from Mexico and travel through to Tennessee and Kentucky. These cats migrate just like birds. We had someone shoot one of our animals that was located within the game fence portion of our property. When the Game Warden came to make a report I asked him about the cats and got the same answers. I personally have never seen even a small cat on our property. One guy that does logging in our area told me he saw a very big black cat about 5 years ago. He said that cat was so big it could have killed a guy really easy. He thought it was a panther. The print that I found the claws were sticking out because the mud was so slippery. The claws were about 1 1/2 inches long. A word of advice is that if you even go into the semi-wild of North America which you think is tame you should be prepared for the un-expected.

I can’t go on record as saying it was a black panther, however, I can say that it was the biggest black cat I have seen outside of a zoo!

I found this, the latest revision (that I could tell) of the Florida Panther Recovery Plan.:

Interestingly enough, the report does mention that certain areas in Louisiana and Arkansas are considered to be good locations to reintroduce the Florida Panther:

“Habitat assessment studies have been conducted to identify potential sites for reintroduction of the panther in the Southeast (Thatcher et al. 2003, Thatcher et al. in press). The purpose of these studies was to identify prospective sites for panther reintroduction within the historic range based on quantitative landscape assessments. Nine potential reintroduction sites of sufficient size to support a panther population have been found including: Ozark National Forest region, Ouachita National Forest region, southwest Arkansas, and Felsenthal NWR region in Arkansas; Kisatchie National Forest region in Louisiana; Homochitto National Forest region in Mississippi; southwest Alabama; Apalachicola National Forest region in Florida; and Okefenokee NWR region in Georgia (Thatcher et al. in press). Of the nine areas identified, the Okefenokee NWR, Ozark National Forest, and Felsenthal NWR regions ranked as the best prospective reintroduction sites based on the numerical combination of effective habitat area and expert model scores (Thatcher et al. in press).”

My father has told me for many years of a large black cat that he saw in the East Texas Big Thicket, in the 1960s, that apparently made a lasting impression on him. It was in Polk County, not too far from Livingston. My father said he saw the large black cat slowly cross the logging trail in front of him, followed by two kittens who apparently were the size of regular house cats. Pop remembered that the large cat’s tail “was just a-swishin’.”

Does anyone know of a link?