# Black Panther Sightings??



## triggerpull (Dec 3, 2013)

Hi guys, I just joined after lurking a bit and noticed that some of you have posted sightings of what were called black panthers.

Two days ago I was ground hunting Zahnd; I had stalked about 3/4 of the way up the mountain and set up a ground conceal among some small pines that offered a good position above a terrace path/gully that I thought would be an ideal deer path. I also had set out a couple of doe estrus scent wicks. The gully at the bottom was rocky with boulders.

At about 4:00 I see movement at about 175 yds down in the gully--a fairly large black form which at first I assumed was a black bear. It meandered in a diagonal course up the slope, as it got closer I could see it was clearly not a bear, it's body was elongated, fairly close to the ground and had a pointy head and long tail with concentric greyish rings on the tail. Other than that the body appeared to me to be entirely black with no distinctive markings anywhere else. One of the first thoughts I had was this must be what other guys saw on this forum. The animal appeared to be foraging in the leaves, it's shuffling behavior reminded me of a possum or raccoon--but this thing was big; much bigger than my biggest dog which weighs 35 lbs. The tail also was long and consistent in girth.

I went home (oh, and I never saw or heard any deer) and did some net searching and couldn't find anything that resembled what I saw--the nearest match being something called a coati; but this was not of the size or range to be a possibility.


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## triggerpull (Dec 3, 2013)

Talked to a state biologist--he says he couldn't place the animal I saw according to my description of what I think I saw. He suggested that sometimes what we think we see and what we actually see could be misinterpreted. Hmmmm...possible. He suggested I may have seen a coyote, feral housecat or a raccoon. I don't really think it was any of these--but obviously not having a camera in this situation is a huge disadvantage.


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## triggerpull (Dec 3, 2013)

OK guys--my sincere apologies for a major "duh moment"--I should have thought about this before--but I'm now 90% sure what I saw was a hog--though the ringed tail part still throws me. I just happened to stumble across a pic of a wild black in the distance and it looks almost exactly like what saw.


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## Joe r (Dec 4, 2013)

no im almost sure what you saw was a Black Panther them thing,s are all over the place


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## blood on the ground (Dec 4, 2013)

Only black panther I ever seen was standing in front of the school where I go to vote .... I didn't mess with it because that sucker looked mean!


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