Black Cats?

[bowtech36]

Do you know where this photo was taken and for what cause? I've seen it on a lot of different websites doing my own research.

[treetalkingjp]

There all around my area. You can hear them down the mountain screaming they sound like girls . Every now and then they will slip up and cross the road in front of you. Or your dogs run one. Every since we got deer in are area more and more is been around

[treetalkingjp]

Is it a cat ?

[treetalkingjp]

....

[outlaw13]

Just a thought but wouldn't a big black cat like that if it is in your area more than likely be the product of a rich butthole who bought the thing then didn't want to deal with it anymore so he just let it go. Seems like the more likely story to me.

[Big N' Blue]

You nailed it Clint!! not indigenous to the U.S. Unless a melonistic jaguar crosses the border.

There used to be a guy in Houston that raised black leopards and black jaguars. Not my humble opinion! Fact! LOL

[treetalkingjp]

As a matter of fact a guy had 3 in a pin in my town but they have been here way before that guy came to town. Some game wardens will say they are not here and others will tell you they are . Our deer is coming back and along with the deer we are getting these black cats and a few reddish ones around . My whole county is pretty much a rock cliff. Hopefully I can put on up in a tree ill keep you posted if I do . Ill see If I can get the hide from my neighbor , he ran over one below my house .

[catdog360]

The up close photo is either a black leopard or black jaguar. You can see his spots.

[leifalweapon]

Great thread, I never get tired of this subject!!!


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[BrickCur]

I'm bringing it back. My dad grew up in Dolores Colorado and when he was young he he saw several black cats. Like several other people on here though he knew they weren't mountain lions. A circus train derailed in the area several years before he spotted these cats. He assumes either it was the cats themselves from the train derailment or perhaps they had bred with the local cats to make these black cats. Something to think about.

[FullCryHounds]

Cat on the right is a black lion I did years ago. Didn't know I had a picture of it.

[ALEX]

Dean, what background can you give on that rug and the full size mount on page 1? Has anyone in the biological field seen these cats if they're the real deal (no disrespect intended) ?

I didn't think much of black lions being out there until recently. Back in February 2014, I was checking a coon trap in the middle of the afternoon on some private land close to home that I hunt. I happened to glance up and caught sight of a good sized, bulky black feline walking about 100-130 yards away quartering toward me headed for a small pond that was nearby. At the time, I recall having an eerie feeling come over me and the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Just something I felt in my gut that was different about what I was seeing. This cat was walking along a barbed wire fence and was definitely not a domestic cat based on its build/size at that distance and the way it moved. This was a bigger cat, without a shadow of doubt in my mind. Despite this, I didn't think a whole lot of the sighting, but I now kick myself for not putting a stalk on it to get a closer look after I bumped into a deer hunter on the same property last fall who told me he had found lion tracks in the area recently and his other friend who hunts the same property for deer had been still hunting in some timber and happened to turn around at one point to see what he swears was a black lion watching him from less than 50 yards. This guy I bumped into brought up the subject on his own and his friend's sighting as a "warning" for me to "be careful". I hadn't told anyone what I had seen, but when he told me about what someone else saw on the same property a year after my sighting, I obviously put two and two together and only then did I realize I may have been looking at a black lion. This property is in lowland farm country in the central valley of California with riparian habitat surrounding a river whose head waters are in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

[dwalton]

Years ago a well know bounty hunter for lion here in Oregon{ Joe Jackson] I asked if he had ever seen a black cougar, his answer was I killed one On June mountain years ago and sold the hide for $100. I regretted it every since but need the money he said. I am not sure of the time frame but think it was in the 1930s or '40s. Joe was a man that told it like it was in the '70s when coon hides were $40 to $50 out here he showed up with 100 hides only 1 was treed at night the rest were trailed up and treed in the day time. I hunted and trapped them and was lucky to come up with 50 hides a year. He hunted with one dog. The best bobcat dog I have ever owned was a pup out of that male. I listen to a lot of Joe's stories on hunting lion on foot in some of the roughest mountains in Oregon being gone for days sleeping in the snow, staying on a track until he treed it. Most of the younger hunters today don't have a clue as to what the old bounty hunters did back in the 1930's to the 1950's to catch a cougar. In 1930's one bounty was a month wages. We need to go back to the good old days. Good hunting Dewey

[Mike Leonard]

Dewey,

Sounds like Joe was the real deal! I was lucky enough to get some early education from several old time bounty hunters and trappers like this and it still serves me today.

Back to revisit our black lion questions. As I said in earlier posts I have spoke with several reputable hunters who claimed they have seen them and I know they truly believed they did.

I have been hunting an area the past couple of years that has numerous stories of black lions and it comes from enough different unrelated folks that I can't help but think there is something to it. One guy said they had one bayed on a bluff and were about 100 yards across a canyon watching the dogs and they tried to get around to get in with them and the cat bailed and although they were in snow and stayed after it crossed onto an Indian Reservation and they had to pull the dogs off it. He told me it was not a big cat maybe 100 pounds but he said another had been spotted close to there and from what was described and the size of the track it had to be a mature tom. I asked him if it was just a sooty dark color phase lion? He said no it was black as black can be. So who knows but it was enough to make me step lively every time I hear my dogs tree, I guess I am thinking one of these days I am going to walk up there and see one.

I did see a photo of a pure white lion that was caught in Wyoming some years back and boy would I like to see one of them in the wild. I have caught albino coons, and saw a coyote near Farson, Wyoming one time that was as white as an artic fox in winter.

[ALEX]

There's a book called "History of American Lion Hunting" authored by the late Wiley Carroll that has a photo in it showing a deceased white mt.lion with a small dog curled up next to it sleeping. The caption read that the cat was taken in California in the very early 20th century. Per Mike L's comment, and a news headlining film clip of what was agreed to be a white lion taken in the southern U.S last year, suggests that white lions could very well be out there.

If one applies some logic to the question of black phased lions, it is entirely possible and reasonable, sightings aside. If they can be white, and if bobcats, leopards, and jaguars can be melanistic (black) why not mountain lions?