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Panther In Georgia?
Compelling trail-camera images from Muscogee County.
Daryl Kirby | August 22, 2024
It’s rare for a week to go by without GON being contacted about a Georgia cougar or panther sighting. Even more rare is an ounce of credibility to any of those reports.
Although not definitive, two recent trail-camera pictures from rural Muscogee County east of Columbus are certainly compelling—to say the least. The images above were captured about an hour apart in the early morning hours of Aug. 12. The landowner, Bud Passmore, has a 180-acre tract along Highway 80 in a sparsely-populated part of Muscogee County east of Columbus. Jimmy Harper, a GON Hunt Advisor, turkey hunts on the property with Bud. Jimmy also files GON hunting reports for Harris County. A testament for how connected Jimmy is to the area’s hunting community, it was Jimmy who first shared the famous 2008 trail-camera image of a Harris County panther that was killed a week later in Troup County by a deer hunter.
“After having shared with GON the trail-camera picture of a young cougar/Florida panther passing through my Harris County hunting lease back in 2008, I know what this ‘big cat’ looks like to me,” Jimmy said of the Muscogee County images. “The long tail obvious on the feline in one of the pictures, combined with the well-defined, muscular physique on the same cat in the other picture, indicates to me this could very possibly be another juvenile male Florida panther passing through west-central Georgia,” Jimmy said.
This picture was captured by Jon Pierce’s trail camera on Nov. 2, 2008 on the Flatrock Hunting Club in Harris County. Two weeks later, a cat later identified as a juvenile male Florida panther was killed by a deer hunter about 20 miles away in Troup County along West Point Lake.
Like young male bears, young male cougars apparently might go for long walkabouts. They’re looking for new territory that has a female but no adult male that would rather kill it than share its patch of woods.
Standard for GON when looking into any trail-camera images someone might think is a cougar is to compare other images of deer from the same camera setup for size comparisons. That was done with the Muscogee County camera setup.
GON talked to DNR and personnel from the Fort Moore Natural Resources Management Branch about possible big-cat sightings in the area. Interestingly, during the same time frame that the Muscogee County trail-camera images were captured last month, WRD got a call from someone reporting a large animal that looked like a cougar crossing Highway 80 in Muscogee County.
Meanwhile, Tommy Hutcherson, a Forest Technician with Fort Moore (formerly Fort Benning), said they’re running 180 trail cameras across its 180,000 acres. In more than 300,000 trail-cam images from this year, not one picture of anything that remotely looks like a cougar. Tons of hogs, quite a few armadillos, no cougar pictures.
Opinion-Editorial: September 2024
Few calls to GON generate a more pronounced roll of the eyes as the cougar sighting. Brad Gill and I have been at this for a very long time—35 years for me and 26 for Brad. We’ve easily looked into more than a thousand reports of a cougar in Georgia. We even ran a year-long Georgia Cougar Quest contest, with a $1,000 prize for the best evidence of a wild cougar in Georgia. Far from the best evidence, we got no evidence.
Yet the reports continue—and when photos show up, we see what objectively are pictures of bobcats, house cats, labrador retrievers… anything but a cougar. Report after report, picture after picture, it’s just never evidence of a big cat.
Until it is…
In 2008, I was sent the now famous Harris County trail-camera picture included above. It came from the hunting club of one of our GON Hunting Advisors, Jimmy Harper. The Harris County picture looked like a big cat, but… surely not. Georgia just doesn’t have cougars. Right?
It must be human nature to jump to the extraordinary—that would help explain why Brad and I look through so many house cat and bobcat photos and have to delicately offer our opinion that we’re just not seeing a cougar. It would help explain how Bigfoot hunters on TV hear a Sasquatch marking its territory every time a limbs falls in the forest.
Rather than jump to the extraordinary, I prefer the Occam’s razor approach. Occam’s razor is a problem-solving principle that boils down to explaining something by starting with what is most likely. The simplest explanation is usually the best one, rather than jumping to the most unlikely explanation, which seems to be human nature.
That trail-cam picture of a cat with a bob tail? Most likely a bobcat, rather than a cougar with no tail.
It’s just very unlikely to be a cougar or a panther… until it is.
And let’s clarify the term. The subspecies of cougar found in south Florida is known as a Florida panther. The Eastern cougar that once called Georgia home is officially extinct. The Western cougar has expanded its home range eastward to the Midwest, and young males have been spotted as far east as Tennessee and Mississippi. Yet there is no evidence of a breeding population of cougars living in Georgia.
The 2008 Harris County trail camera image was all but confirmed to be a cougar—or panther—when two weeks later a deer hunter 20 miles away on Corps property at West Point Lake shot and killed a male cat that weighed 140 pounds. He later got hit with serious charges and fines when DNA testing confirmed it was an endangered Florida panther.
Let that be a lesson—if you see a big cat, don’t shoot!
So could it be a cougar in the Muscogee County images? In my opinion, yes, it could be. Most likely a young male Florida panther that has wandered far from its south Florida home, or even a young male from the Western cougar subspecies whose range seems to be expanding ever eastward.
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So why has nobody pointed out that the temperature in the photos is in the 50’s. August in Columbus, GA is a bit warmer than that. Weather Underground (https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/ga/mauk/KCSG/date/2024-8-12) reports that the low for August 12, 2024 in Columbus, GA was 73 degrees.
Either the thermometer in the camera was wrong or the picture wasn’t taken in southwest Georgia.
How does one apply Occam’s razor to this? Is it the thermometer or the location that is more likely to be right?
A similar photo from a trail cam in Troup County was shared last week on FB. The post stated that the photo was taken on Robert Taylor Road in Lagrange, GA.
Congrats on a well- written piece about a topic that generates more than its share of sensationalism.
Small nit to pick; the author states that, “The Western cougar has expanded its home range eastward to the Midwest, and young males have been spotted as far east as Tennessee and Mississippi.” In reality, at least one made it all the way to the eastern seaboard before it was struck and killed by a vehicle in the Merrit Parkway (CT) in 2016. That cat was traced via DNA to a population in S. Dakota. Other subsequent sightings in the state have been deemed credible by state wildlife officials.
The following is just me editorializing.
I find the whole concept of subspecies fairly dubious. It pre-dates genetic analysis, was mostly based on morphology when first conceived, and is falling out of favor in some fields of biology, such as herpetology, with some herpetologists no longer recognizing the distinction. They are exceptions where isolated subspecies are diverging genetically from their origins and are on their way to becoming distinct species.
Distinct subspecies can and do regularly mate and produce viable offspring. More importantly, from an ecological and wildlife management perspective, different subspecies typically occupy the same ecological niches, and serve the same role in their respective environments.
By validating the concept of a distinct eastern subspecies of cougar, then declaring them officially extinct, officials have removed any protections from cats migrating in to eastern states, whose forests are in desperate need of apex predator restoration, might otherwise enjoy. Such colonization efforts should be supported by policy.
Additionally, efforts to preserve various subspecies can actually drain very limited conservation resources away from less charismatic but more biologically far flung species, resulting in a net negative for biodiversity preservation. In other words, assuring continued survival of various species and genera should trump saving every subspecies of a species, at least in terms of the biggest biodiversity bang for the conservation buck.
Finally, USFW should be adhering to the spirit of the ESA and actively work to restore mountain lions in the abundant habitat available throughout states east of the Mississippi. Breeding populations of mountain lions in Western states persist in close proximity to urban centers like LA and SF with very little human conflict. There’s no reason why similar populations shouldn’t exist throughout the Smokies, Appalachians, Adirondack, etc. Deer numbers are such that eastern forests are failing to recruit the next generation of trees. The biome is in great need of a deer specialist like pumas.
He is just passing through, they won’t stay long , just let him be and he will be on his way
We have just over 650 acres just a little south of that area and to the northeast of Piedmont Canyon, we have been there for just over 24 years this year and have come across large cat prints a few times during the years , even had a black bear on camera several years back, several people in our area claim to have seen the one killed back in 2008 and others , but nobody has ever been able to produce concrete evidence of a Cougar on this side of the river , So I remain skeptical , My Uncle who hunts in Northwest Alabama and about 7 years ago they did produced a picture of a Cougar , which i have no doubt ,was in fact a Cougar , But nothing in Georgia , Yet !
Just fyi, Georgia’s iconic Eastern Indigo snakes are on the rebound, thanks to a public/private partnership spearheaded by The Orianne Society. By restoring longleaf pine habitat (over 90% of which has been lost to development and logging), and captive breeding and release of both the snakes and gopher tortoises, this magnificent reptile may one day return to the southwestern corner of your state, and resume its important role in the Georgia ecosystem, which includes consuming other snakes, including vipers like native Eastern Diamondbacks and copperheads.
My wife’s co-worker’s husband has camera’s behind their house which is 3 miles as the crow flies from my house in NE Troup County west of Hogansville. The only thing between my house and theirs is a 4000 acre tract of woods. She told my wife they have pics of a FAMILY of cougars(cubs) and that a timber harvester guy was ‘chased’ back to his logging truck by one on a neighboring property. Belief is it was being territorial due to the cubs. I now take a bat with me when I roll my trash can down my 250ft driveway on Thursday nights. lol
Congrats on a well- written piece about a topic that generates more than its share of sensationalism.
Small nit to pick; the author states that, “The Western cougar has expanded its home range eastward to the Midwest, and young males have been spotted as far east as Tennessee and Mississippi.” In reality, at least one made it all the way to the eastern seaboard before it was struck and killed by a vehicle in the Merrit Parkway (CT) in 2016. That cat was traced via DNA to a population in S. Dakota. Other subsequent sightings in the state have been deemed credible by state wildlife officials.
The following is just me editorializing.
I find the whole concept of subspecies fairly dubious. It pre-dates genetic analysis, was mostly based on morphology when first conceived, and is falling out of favor in some fields of biology, such as herpetology, with some herpetologists no longer recognizing the distinction. They are exceptions where isolated subspecies are diverging genetically from their origins and are on their way to becoming distinct species.
Distinct subspecies can and do regularly mate and produce viable offspring. More importantly, from an ecological and wildlife management perspective, different subspecies typically occupy the same ecological niches, and serve the same role in their respective environments.
By validating the concept of a distinct eastern subspecies of cougar, then declaring them officially extinct, officials have removed any protections from cats migrating in to eastern states, whose forests are in desperate need of apex predator restoration, might otherwise enjoy. Such colonization efforts should be supported by policy.
Additionally, efforts to preserve various subspecies can actually drain very limited conservation resources away from less charismatic but more biologically far flung species, resulting in a net negative for biodiversity preservation. In other words, assuring continued survival of various species and genera should trump saving every subspecies of a species, at least in terms of the biggest biodiversity bang for the conservation buck.
Finally, USFW should be adhering to the spirit of the ESA and actively work to restore mountain lions in the abundant habitat available throughout states east of the Mississippi. Breeding populations of mountain lions in Western states persist in close proximity to urban centers like LA and SF with very little human conflict. There’s no reason why similar populations shouldn’t exist throughout the Smokies, Appalachians, Adirondack, etc. Deer numbers are such that eastern forests are failing to recruit the next generation of trees. The biome is in great need of a deer specialist like pumas.
Sorry Banana, didn’t mean to be replying to you, just wanted to post a general comment.
I probably can’t be trusted around technology.
Go to ecos.fws.gov Florida panther reintro feasibility study. They released and tracked a few back in early to mid 90’s. I was hunting w my grandad near chatt. River in early co.When we met up after sit he looked like he saw a ghost. Said he saw a BIG panther colored like golden lab.Said he didn’t shoot him no clear shot.I’m glad he didn’t lol They tracked a 6 yr old male through Early co.about that same time. Believe it was around 1995 or so. Most of them ole timers were salt of the earth people.If they said it that’s what they meant. Least that’s how my Gdad was.
North Carolina DNR denies that any mountain lions are in NC but my family has been seeing them in the mountains for western NC for decades. Typically they’ve been passing through from one wilderness area to another but I know of at least two cats who have taken up residence in the areas south and west of Asheville. But I guess the DNR doesn’t want to scare off the tourists.
We use to hunt a piece of property south of Route 80, east of Talbotton and south of Carsonville back in 2017, the owners told us that a panther had been spotting on cams back then, never really believed them, but kept a weary eye when going to our stands in the early morning.