1. “Gray” is a really generic color. I wouldn’t dismiss something because the witness just said, gray. Color perception comes into this, big time, and natural cougar coloration is not so far from gray that no one would report it that way.

2. Long curly tail says cougar to me.

3. I think the Eastern cougar population could easily have reached a point beyond which hunters weren’t regularly encountering them anymore. When you don’t encounter them: you stop looking; you stop getting and training dogs to hunt them; you stop bothering. And when the deer get down there too, you just aren’t going where they go (or you quit hunting and move to town); and the “reliable” sightings dry up. And everything else just gets labeled “outlier, and thereby not likely”.

4. The only way to deal with this that isn’t utter nonsense on the part of wildlife managers is: manage as if they are there.

Common sense.

BUT I also feel certain that the eastern puma was never completely extirpated from the Appalachian mountains. They were systematically exterminated, and their habitat was all but destroyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but I have no doubt that cougars have persisted all along in the laurel canyons and the more remote parts of the hills. There are parts of the Appalachians that are virtually inaccessible to humans, and with the past few decades the deer population has rebounded to the point that there are more deer than ever before.

Almost certainly there are pumas also dispersing eastward from the western cougar population, and also some former captive cats are breeding with wild pumas. But the wild ones have been there all along – not very many of them, but their numbers are increasing. There is certainly enough prey and cover here in eastern Kentucky, and the mountains of western North Carolina are every bit as rugged and suitable for cougars. This whole region of the south-central Appalachians is perfect cougar habitat.

Deep down, I think authorities know “black panthers” and cougars exist in that area but don’t want to come out and say it. For a variety of reasons. One of them being the self-appointed “animal guardians” that would come out of nowhere to “protect” the beasts form the “evil, malevolent” hunters who might want to kill them. Also just general curiosity-seekers who might want to go out into the woods to catch a glimpse of these “rarities.” Nobody wants conflict in the area.

Basically, I guess they feel it’s best to leave theese creatures well enough alone for a time and let them fully establish a population in the area.

I contacted the NC Wildlife Bureau about the story, and they never contacted me back. So, to hear them chime in with the old song-and-dance of “there’s no more cougars in North Carolina” doesn’t surprise me. It’s complete and utter bull, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Further research into the matter revealed that in December, two people in Chapel Hill reported a sighting. August of 2007 a woman reported seeing a cougar near Jordan Lake eating a deer carcass. So, there is precedent. If they’ve moved this far east, and are hanging out this close to the Triangle, it would not shock me that they would be in Iredell County.