There is documented evidence of all that other stuff.

Yet these black panthers someone manage to completely avoid the 2 million game cameras and millions of miles of highway. If a black panther got hit by a car, sure the first person might not stop, but someone else would that drove by eventually.

And cameras might not cover that much area, but the odds of an animal that is nomadic like a big cat not eventually wandering past one, especially given that they tend to accompany feed areas where prey would congregate is close to zero.

The comparison to the buck is completely bunk, because while the hunter that shot him didn't have any pictures, someone else in the area likely did. Or even if that 1 animals somehow threaded the needle, you need to apply those slim odds to an entire population someone managing to do the same thing...

It's just not possible.

Washunting in a climbing stand at Davey Crockett NF about 5 yrs. ago,came out of the stand at about 10 am,began to walk down the fence row to another area when I passed by a winter wheat field and lookd across to see a tan cougar about 125 yds. out crossing the field from my left to right. It was headed into the adjacent pasture where someone had cattle and their house was right on the other side of that field. I raised my 30-30, and tried to stand still with the 30 lb. stand on my back,and fired a shot right under it's body. It made record time getting across the field and the families' dogs began to chase it back into the woods. I crossed over the fence and talked to the rancher,and he said he had seen it,but never when he had his rifle. So you might want to keep that in mind if you hunt Davey Crockett NF.

Agree to disagree. I think that the possibility of cats escaping captivity, pets being released, bobcats proven to be "black", other large cats being considered native to Texas and still on the endangered list, numerous sightings and questionable pictures, and other evidence shows that there is a possibility.

Didn't I just read on the other forum you were attacked by a ghost in your sleep???

No, google "sleep paralysis".

The thread was about scary encounters. If you ever encounter sleep paralysis, which is what I believe occurred to me, it will terrify you beyond belief.

txshntr - I agree that a very, very small number of them may have existed in this state for brief periods.

But a significant number of people believe they've seen black panthers. And they're wrong.

Using the buck/camera arguement isn't strong enough. I've got a buddy who has a deer breeding facility down in the hill country. The place is relatively small, maybe 1,500 acres high fenced. They have owned it for many years and have been in the deer breeding business for many years.

Every single year, they seen bucks that have never been on camera. For whatever reason, some bucks just manage to slip by. This despite having cameras on every single feeder and on many of the game trails.

I have no idea how many gamecameras are in Texas, but let's say there are 2 million or even 20 million. If there were 20 million cameras in Texas, covering what amounts to maybe 1/2 acre each in coverage, that would mean that game cameras cover roughly 10 million acres out of the 172 million total acres in Texas. Reality is, game cameras likely cover well less than 1 million acres in Texas. Then you start looking at how reliable many game cameras are (I've owned some awful ones) and I would bet that game cameras accurately cover well less than 1/100th of 1 percent of the state of Texas. That's just not much coverage.

The highway/roads arguement does make alot of sense and is pretty valid.

I haven't read every post on here, so I may be repeating what someone has already said, but I have heard of melanistic bobcats/lynx, jaguars, and leopards, but have never heard of a "black panther". I don't know how an animal the size of a jaguar could go unnoticed in most parts of Texas, and I don't know how a bobcat could be mistaken for a "panther", but DO have a buddy and his father that have described similar scenarios as above. A large, black cat with a long tail. Who knows? I think escaped exotics best explain this, though. If someone would buck up and kill one of these mystery creatures, all our questions may be answered. Good luck.

Ive seen three cougars in tx and never a black panther. But ive seen and shot bucks in light conditions where id sware there fur color was alot darker then it was when i got right up on them. And Ive seen people miss ID cats. I had a hunter call me one morning and sayhe was looking at a cougar 400 yds out. I told him to shoot it. He swore it was a cougar had lots of experience in the field.I told him Ill bet its a dog. Well it was a dog a big tan lab with a thick long tail. I had a cougar come to rattling horns and there was no mistaking what it was and I curse myself for not being quick enough to get the shot. And it was in parker county.

I saw a jaguarundi in Coleman County. It was only 25 yards from me, stopped in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day. It was clearly not a bobcat or a house cat (I've killed dozens of bobcats and feral house cats - I know the difference). Even though it was a lot smaller and lower to the ground than a mountain lion, I could see someone mistakenly thinking it was a black panther just based on its color and the length of its tail (also because when you see one, you know immediately it is like nothing you have ever seen before). My guess is that most sightings are the result of too much whiskey, the rest are jaguarundis.

There are some great men that have reported seeing BIG BLACK CATS. Hard to prove them wrong. A whole area near here is called Black Cat Thickett for the last hundred and forty years. Somebody saw something...

The name Panther comes from Panthera and Panthera is a genus of the family Felidae (the cats), which contains cougar (P. concolor), jaguar (P. onca), jaguarundi (P. jaguarundi), leopard (P. pardus), lion (P. leo), margay (P. tigrina), ocelot (P. pardalis), tiger (P. tigris), Siberian tiger (P. tigris altaica), snow leopard (P. uncia). The genus comprises about half of the Pantherinae subfamily, the big cats. One meaning of the word panther is to designate cats of this subfamily. When a big cat has a condition known as Melanism it can be considered a "Black Panther".

me and a buddy won a hunt up in aspermont last year... when we went to the owner's house he told us a story about a lady about 10 years ago there that had an exotic cat refuge at her place. her house got foreclosed on and they came to evict her from the property. When they got there she had gutted a tiger and left it on the cattle guard leading to her house. She had also left a note stating that all the other tigers had been let go on her 700 acre property. Word from the land owner was that they never found them, but there's been sightings over the years. I thought he was BS'ing me so i asked a girl working at the local convenience store about it, and she said she had heard the same story.

Anyone able to confirm this?

The black panthers are from Mexico are they not?

By W. T. Block

Apparently some people believe a big cat called a “black panther” has never existed. “Bow Hunter,” writing in the guest book of the Missouri Conservation website, noted: “Some of you are quick to point out that there is no such animal, and call us liars!” His critic, writing on the same website, responded: “Black panthers are not native to North America; nor has there ever been one killed by a car; or the carcass of one turned in; and no one has ever provided any verifiable proof!”

If actually there are no melanistic (mutation) or black panthers, there are certainly plenty of black leopards in Africa or black jaguars in Latin-America. However, there was once an animal in East Texas called locally a “Mexican lion,” which was actually a small jaguar although it had a very large head. The Amazon male jaguar might reach 250 pounds in weight, whereas the Mexican jaguar probably weighs about 150 pounds, or equal to a cougar. Of the 9 species of jaguars, three were native to Mexico and one to Texas, although the latter has not been seen for about a century and may be considered extinct in Texas. These species included “panthera arizonensis,” “panthera goldmani,” and “panthera hernadesi,” native to Mexico, and “panthera veraecrusis,” native to Texas.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website observes that: “The jaguar was once fairly common over Southern Texas, and nearly the whole of the eastern part of Louisiana, and north to the Red River. The last verified record of the jaguar in Texas was around the turn of the century (1900), and this beautiful cat is now extirpated from Texas...”

On the website “Big Cats On Line” by Andrew Garman,, the author writes: “The melanistic or black jaguars are common in certain parts of the range, and they are often confusingly labeled “black panthers...”

During the 1960s, 18,000 jaguars were being killed annually, either by pelt poachers, or as threats to livestock, principally in Central or South America. There are now only an estimated 15,000 jaguars left in the wild, making it a species threatened by extinction, and Belize in Central America now has a jaguar reserve with about 200 big cats in it.

During the 19th century, 3 incidents occurred in Texas and Louisiana, which appear to have been spotted jaguars, although insufficient proof survived. Galveston Weekly News of Feb. 18, 1892 observed: “...Quite a curiosity was filed under Jasper County’s Scalp Law recently, the head of an unusually large Mexican lion, which was killed in the lower section of the county by John Shepherd... The skull shows the head to be very nearly, if not equally, as large as an ordinary African lion’s head...”

The autobiography of Mrs. Otis McGaffey of Sabine Pass revealed that her husband had “killed a tiger cat” during their journey between Natchitoches, LA., and the Sabine River in 1841. During a court proceeding at Beaumont, TX, in 1876, William McFaddin swore that he had known Absolom Williams since 1834. He added that about 1840 Williams had been attacked at his log cabin in Hardin County by “a Bengal tiger that had escaped from circus,” and that Mrs. Williams had driven off the big cat with an ox yoke. However, no circus reached Houston prior to 1875 or in Beaumont prior to 1881, so what Williams had seen was actually a spotted jaguar.

Hence it becomes known that the “Mexican lion” of East Texas was actually a spotted jaguar, although none have been seen in Texas nor for about a century. Also cougars are arriving in East Texas in much greater numbers. Yet black panther stories continue to arrive in my guest book and email, many of them seemingly quite convincing, especially stories I have recently received from Warren and Silsbee, Texas. I hope the stories keep coming, but I would dread to know that a beautiful big black cat had been killed with a rifle, only to prove its existence.


Well it seems they may not be called panthers but there are black cats.

Last thing I'm saying on this matter. Are there large "black cats" of varying species? Sure. Is it possible one at some time or another escaped from where ever, or maybe survived the ice age? Yeah. Are any of these "cats" mountain lions? No. I think everyone has pretty much agreed on that one.

But let's just call these large black cats panthers and forget about what species they are. I've lived in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas, and my wife's from Oklahoma. I know poeple in every one of these states who either claim to have seen or know someone who's seen a black panther. That's a fact.

Now I think we can all agree on another fact. All of these states have mountiain lions and bears. Right? Want to guess how many of these same people claim to have seen a bear or mountian lion? That's right...none of them. So, how is it possible that no one ever sees the animals we know to be there, but everyone sees the one that no one can prove even exist? It's a mystery.

In fact, if I were to tell most people that I saw a bear or a mountian lion standing at the end of their property when I drove up, I'd bet even money that each of them would want to check my cooler. But, for whatever reason, if I told them I saw a black panther, or even talked to a guy who said he knew a guy who saw one there, they'd actually have to give it some thought and I may even have trouble convincing them that I was kidding. That's how entrenched this legend is in our lore. So, what the heck? Let it be.

Well stated Verne.

I grewup in Mississippi and have seen 2 Mt Lions there and 2 black bears. There was a mt lion seen by 3 people at the same time as it crossed the road shortly before sundown. The 2 that were east of the cat swore it was a Black Panther, the guy that was west of the cat said it looked like the standard Mt lions he had seen in New Mexico. As many have stated lighting can play tricks on what the brain says it saw.

I know, KNOW, that there is a black jaguar in Texas.

The Latin term for a mountain lion is femis concolor which means cat of one color so there aren't black mountaion lions. Google it

I have seen two mountain lion/cougars in texas in my life.I am 52 yrs old.The first was around Bandera as a young boy I was walking back to the truck with my uncle after a hunt and one crossed the road about fifty feet ahead of us.We did the look at each other described in many of these posts I've been reading as if to verify we had seen what we thought we did.We both ran up to the point in the road it had crossed and looked down the side of the "hill" and could see no sign of the cat.We could see for what seemed like miles of country and no cat.So this would go down as a maybe and maybe not.At this point in the times of the world we would have shot it if we could have.The second sighting was much later and just a few years ago.I was hunting in the San Augustine National Forrest just north of Lake Sam Rayburn.I had been hunting this area since meeting my wife while on a fishing trip there 15 years before.I had found a fresh Buckscrape just at the edge of a thicket at the side of a branch off the big creek.I was leaning against a tree on the opposite side of the branch watching the scrape that evening.I saw something comming along the edge of the thicket.I lifted my rifle to check it out and it was a couger.It was not full grown but was about the size of a hound dog so not far from it.I could have shot it with no problem but instead watched it as it passed the scrape and walked down the branch out of sight.At this point in my life I feel he had more business being there than I did.I didn't figure to see my buck after that but the Lord rewarded me with a beautifull 8pt buck that stepped out right before dark to work that scrape.It was no more than a fourty yard shot.I told my dad the story as he was helping me get the buck out after dark.Back at my father-in-laws I could tell he had his doubts about my tale.My father-in-law that is cause dad knew I wouldn't make up a story about a hunt.He has been taking me to the woods before I could even walk.About two years later my father-in-law called and said it was a couger I had seen.Apparently his brother-in-law had gone into the same area hunting and saw the lion.He said it was now full grown.I did not need this confirmation to know what I had witnessed as it was between me and the Lord.I always feel closer to God when I am in the woods more than any other time.Hope someone enjoys my rantings.

Rock

U didn't hear it from me, but I was playin hold'em with the caddo critter, the lake worth goat man, and the boggy creek monster last night. Boggy told me that the yeti was walking his black panther in the park last night and got busted for dope. I haven't seen the mug shots yet, but I will post them when I do. Oh wait............ I wasn't supposed to say anything........ Crap!!!

In the words of the great Arnold Swarzenagger in Predator, the reason they aren't seen much or photographed is because......."HE'S USING DA TWEES."

Now you've had it!!!

I have seen a black panther on my place in evant and I know what I saw. Never told anyone. But last year my neighboe said he saw a black panther there. And several years ago my uncle says he saw a black panthere there. So, I guess there is one there.

There are too many sightings from reputable people to dispute at least the possibility!!!

I know and I mean I KNOW I will never believe anyone here has seen a black panther. As many people claim they've seen a black one and nobody has ever shot one with a gun or camera. As many sightings as there Is claimed to be surely someone could have shot the unicorn of big cats.