Comments on: Illinois’ Phantom Panther Invasion: Location Updates

By: mintfang

mintfang — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:20:04 +0000

@Goodfoot: Yeah! I’ve been seeing some flying saucers by my house, but when I take my camera I don’t see ‘em. I agree, it is a jinx!

By: Goodfoot

Goodfoot — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:16:02 +0000

Probably haven’t seen it BECAUSE you have the camera! Just joking, but a camera DOES seem to be a jinx, doesn’t it?

By: kentuckycowboy2

kentuckycowboy2 — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:27:14 +0000

Here in eastern KY my wife & I have saw one twice in the same location back in the Summer . Both times it or I assume it was the same animal ran across the small country road we travel on . I’ve not seen it anymore since but have been keeping a camera in the Jeep in case .

A neighbor who’s passed now told us years ago that he had seen cougars while hunting in the hills here as well .

By: Goodfoot

Goodfoot — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 19:04:35 +0000

DWA: I couldn’t agree more. As for the motives to habitual lying… well, that’s a bit more obscure. I was hearing stories of cougar sightings in Roanoke County, VA, thirty or more years ago. The mantra from the wildlife “experts” was the same as always: there AIN’T none. Must be the moonshine talkin’.

The REAL experts are the folks who are out in the wild areas regularly: hunters, woodchucks, even fishermen. They regularly have the “boots on the ground”, as opposed to office-bound, party-line spewers. But I always wonder where, exactly, those marching orders come from. I suppose the most frequent reason is DEECEE.

By: DWA

DWA — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 22:41:47 +0000

The things state officialdom says “no way” to are the things to bet on.

By: Goodfoot

Goodfoot — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 17:41:26 +0000

Yeah… it SHOULD have freaked him out! Those those things will stalk you, and when you’re finally aware of it, it’s WAY too late. Silent as feathers, them mountain lions. I remember several years back, wildlife control “cornered” a young one up a tree near the NM State Penitentiary in Santa Fe. It was a cub, more or less. The supervisor was out of state at a meeting/convention and he couldn’t be reached. If they had, he pretty clearly would have told them to tranquilize it and relocate. Instead, these underlings shot the cub dead as a doornail. Couldn’t have weighed more than 70 pounds; there was no population to speak of nearby (since they wisely locate prisons away from human habitation). What a shame.

By: uscitizenveteran

uscitizenveteran — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 14:48:16 +0000

Yep, that’s a cougar all right. Seen a few of them while hunting when I lived in Montana back in middle 60′s. Actually saw one tracking behind a hunting partner from a distance. Luckily he made it back to the truck before the cat made it to him. It freaked him out when I told him about it.

By: Goodfoot

Goodfoot — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 18:33:29 +0000

The ones who won’t show up at a given location are the ones with no legs. These things either have made an amazing comeback, or we’re wrong about what really is amazing.

By: jayman

jayman — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:10:13 +0000

I grew up in Quincy, in west central Illinois, and I remember – it was around the late 1950s or early ’60s – there was a rash of cougar sightings near the small town of Liberty, a few miles east of Quincy. The reports were on TV and in the Quincy paper, but whenever anything to do with wildlife came up, they would trot out a local guy they called a “naturalist” – I have no idea what training he had – to give his opinion. He of course pontificated that cougars had been extinct in Illinois for more than a century, implying that people were seeing things, and that was that. BTW Liberty is in Adams county which I think borders Pike county. So they may have been there all along.

By: finfin

finfin — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 14:27:05 +0000

Several years ago… maybe 10 years. a friend came over to visit us here in Southern Illinois. She sat in her truck and honked the horn we came out to see what was wrong and she got out and went inside. She said a big cat had jumped over the hood of her truck and she was afraid to get out.

About 7 years ago someone I know wrote an article about a big, tawny, panther outside their farm house. She said that it jumped up in the pickup bed and sniffed around. She lived around Keensburg, Illinois. I sent a message to her and asked about her story, but I have not received a reply.

My daughter asked me where they came from and I told her my theory is that they have always been here.