Not that kind of cougars you pervs.



A game camera set up in Obion County captured what appears to be a cougar.  TWRA is investigating.




I've heard big cat stories from Obion County for years, some from people who I consider to be very reputable.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find that the TWRA has been surreptitiously reintroducing them in the area.  TWRA was quick to point out that it's illegal to kill a cougar in TN.


UPDATE:


I was walking out to my deer blind yesterday (Christmas Eve) when I found this:



I hunt in Obion County in the Hornbeak/Samburg area which is several miles from the game camera sighting.

I went back and got a good plaster cast for someone else to ID positively, but I'm 100% certain that it's not a coyote or dog.  The cast turned out great.  There are four distinct toes in a shallow arc above a wide but short foot pad. The fourth toe doesn't show up particularly well in the photo.  For reference, the knife is 3 5/8" end to end.

It looks like I'm sharing the top spot on the food chain where I hunt.  Between this and the warm weather I'm not surprised that I haven't seen squat for deer in a couple of weeks.

Two black ones too, you can see their eyes.

I'm not surprised, My brother and I saw big cat tracks west of Ripley a decade ago. There were rumors then of a big cat roaming west TN.

I still want to find one of the Shelby County alligators.

We've got them in the woods surrounding Nashville, despite what the TWRA says.

I was squirrel hunting in Fayette County in the late 90s and saw one. Fastest animal I'd ever seen at the time. About '08 I saw one running across interstate 40 outside of Dickson, that damn cat was quick

All over eastern Cannon county around Short Mtn. I have photos of tracks and hair samples. TWRA talked to me like I had seen Bigfoot.

Funny...the pic is from my friend's sister's backyard.  Her son found a deer ripped in half and put up some cameras on the property.  I've seen other pics and it one big kitty.  Beautiful cat but I wouldn't want one in my backyard.

Discussions of the issue in the past, have included claims that the state does not want to deal with what the feds would dump in their laps, if they admitted there were Cougars in TN.

OK now that makes a lot of sense. Fuck the fed.gov! Cats??? What cats???? I'll play along.

Coworker has pics of one in her backyard before sunset.

She lives out off 840 past mt. Juliet.

TWRA didn't want to see pics as they said they're not in the state.

The Lady off 840 likely saw a Jaguarundi (google it). This is a smaller (40-50 lb) cat native to Mexico, Central America that is often black with darker black spots. Why do I say this? Because I saw one off Central Pike near 840, years ago. Knew what it was because I am a field biologist with a specialty in mammals and have worked all over the country. Talked to several locals that had seen them/it but didn't know what it was.

Ten years later I was working at the Metro Airport due to a spill in a creek, talking to a worker and he asked if I new about the black wild cats around Gladeville.  Same area and there may be a breeding population there. IF there is then they are likely pets that escaped/released.  I also had a cougar run past my 4 wheeler in upstate NY.  Conservation officers told me I saw a large house cat. Eighty pounds is a large house cat. Had a State Trooper that lived in the area ask if I had seen the cat without knowing I had already seen it. Many other locals asked or told me about the cat. They are out there.

Don
Sharps 4070 (formally TN Longhunter)

That would be waaaaay larger than any ever known. Generally more like 20 lbs tops Heck, Maine Coons are generally larger than jaguarundis.

- OS

There was another pic taken in Hornbeak supposedly. That's close to my AO, and I really don't care to run up on something like that in the woods. I'll be packing.

So if they aren't here, they can't possibly be shot can they?

My dad saw one in the early 2000's on a little 40 acre deer lease we had  just in side fayette county north of 64hwy the property backed up to I-40.  I think that was the last time he went muzzleloading.

I think I saw that one yesterday.  The picture that is.  there's no mistaking that it's a BIG cat.


There were reports of one in the Latham bottoms 20 years ago.

This thing is much larger than 50lbs.

I've seen Cougars at the zoo and the pics show something extremely similar in size and pattern.

So where is it?

- OS

I've seen the second cougar pic posted somewhere but I don't know where to find a copy to post here.  

I've got some land in the Hornbeak/Samburg area.  I usually only carry a pistol there unless I'm hunting or shooting.  I may have to start packing a long gun now.  I would never kill a big cat just for the hell of it, but I'd have no qualms about dispatching one if it showed any aggression.

I've got a longish story about the TWRA and species reintroduction that I'll share later today if I get time to type it all out.

The tl;dr is: it's a conspiracy

Anything like the scruffy looking guy in a green pickup and wearing something that looked like it may have been a TWRA uniform, stopping at a gas station/market/bait shop in rural west TN, then getting extremely unsociable when somebody asked him why he had coyotes in cages in the back of the pickup?  This happened a few years before people started talking about seeing coyotes in TN.  My parents had some land near there and would stop there for gas.  The owner told them about it and said they couldn't figure out if the guy was TWRA or not.

They've been denying that large cats existed for years in these parts.

I've been told that if they acknowledge them, they'll be required to spend a bunch cash to develop plans, hire more personnel, etc.

Typical government entity.  They'll end up spending twice as much paying out for lawsuits for denying this. Not to mention the witch hunt for who was responsible for not doing anything.  Shoot one and they'll probably throw you in a federal pound you in the ass prison.

I had a friend who passed away a few years back who worked for the Forestry Department.  Around here there have always been occasional problems with beavers flooding valuable timberlands.  The beaver dams were blasted out with explosives if they were harming timber that was to be harvested.  Several years ago the problem went from being an occasional nuisance to a real problem.  The forestry guys called TWRA for some advice on controlling the beaver population, or at least confining it to where it wouldn't harm productive timberland.  The TWRA wouldn't return their calls.

One day my buddy and his boss wind up in Nashville on business and get done with whatever they were doing when my buddy suggests that they just drop in unannounced to talk to the TWRA person they're trying to reach in person.  They show up, and suddenly this guy is in meetings.  Not wanting to let the opportunity to slip by, they decide to wait him out.  They hang out in his office for a very long time, and quite naturally get bored.  My buddy, who was always a curious sort, starts to thumb through files in this guy's office.  Lo and behold, he finds a report detailing the reintroduction of beaver in West TN.

The TWRA dude probably figures that he's not going to be able to wait out the Forestry guys and returns to his office, where he gets ambushed.  My buddy's boss launched into him with something to the effect of "YOU SONOFABITCH! We're trying to get rid of all the beaver in our area that are destroying timber AND YOU"RE BRINGING THEM IN FASTER THAN WE CAN BLAST THEM OUT!"

Now my buddy was as honest as the day is long, so when he relayed the story to me, I'm more inclined to believe it than if a preacher had told it to me whilst swearing on a stack of bibles.

Now fast forward a few years.

Another buddy of mine, who is big in Boy Scouts, was at LBL and sees what he is sure is a wolf pop out of the woods.  He grew up in W TN and knows what coyotes look like, and how they move.  He is adamant that this was no coyote, and it damn sure wasn't an escaped husky or similar.  He finds a ranger-type person and asks about wolves in the area.  He is told that the only wolves in that part of the world are the red wolves which are kept in captivity at the nature center.  They are part of a breeding program, and are being reintroduced into the wild in either North or South Carolina, but none had escaped or had been released locally.

My wife was working home health at the time and covered a significant portion of W TN.  One day she's treating a patient, looks out into the back yard, and sees kennels.  She asks if the woman raises wolf-dog hybrids.  The woman says, "Oh no ma'am.  They're purebred wolves.  I breed them for agencies like the TWRA, but I'm not allowed to mention which agencies specifically." My wife pressed the issue a bit, and the lady was very clear on the "like the TWRA" part, leading her to believe that it wasn't necessarily the TWRA, but might be a similar agency from another state, or a federal agency.

So I have three bits of circumstantial evidence which support my theory that wildlife agencies are reintroducing species on the down-low.  The TWRA is open about its successes in reintroducing deer, turkey, and elk.  It stands to reason that they would also want to reintroduce predatory species to maintain healthy populations in game animals.  Coyotes were once scarce, but are quite common now, some would say to the point of being a nuisance.  The increase in the number of deer on an existing small population might account for that alone, but I think they had help, and there are stories which I have not heard first hand suggesting that they were, in fact, brought in.  Now that the coyote population is so large, some competition in the form of big cats could be seen as healthy.  I can also see how the NIMBY culture would cause this sort of clandestine approach.

Anyway, that's my conspiracy theory for the day.  I'm not opposed to the idea of reintroducing indigenous animals to the area, but if they're doing it, I'd like to know so I can learn what to look for and be prepared.  After all, the last elk in TN was killed in Obion County.  1865 I think.  I wouldn't mind having the opportunity to hunt them in my own backyard during my lifetime, and they sure aren't going to walk here on their own.

Makes sense; the TWRA has been trying for years now to slow the deer herd in TN by using hunters in unit L, maybe they've given up on the hunters and are trying something else!  things that make you go hmmmm...

Update in OP

My family has lived in this area you are talking about for almost 200 years, it'll be a Bicentennial farm next year. My grandfather who passed last year at age 82, has sworn to me all of my life he saw a black panther two separate times about 40 years ago. Described what you are talking about almost to a T. The one he described was a little bit bigger. He said he was on the tractor cutting hay and it was laying up in a tree stretched out on a limb just watching him. Said it got up, stretched and laid back down. He always said at night coon hunting sometimes they would hear a sound like a woman screaming and they always said it was those cats. Neat to hear someone else talking about it.

Weird critters pop up. We've got a few gators in Shelby County. Hell there was that freaking manatee that swam up and died a few years back.

Where are the gators in Shelby County?

 
Last year's winter probably killed them off.  The biologists figure that it takes a few back to back warm winters for gators to make it up this far.  A super cold winter kills them off and then it takes a few more years again.

Saw one coming home from work in 09. Was only 25 yards off the road. Looked at me for about 15 seconds. It was stalking a deer. I stopped and blew my horn and scared it away. Told a TWRA guy and he said it was probably someone's pet that was turned loose and more than likely did not have any claws. He said there were none in TN. This was just half a mile off of 45 N 5 miles from Henderson on Wilson School Rd. I know what I saw was a big cat just like in the post of the picture. They ARE HERE.

I keep wanting to go find one.

4 confirmed sightings

Since September of 2015, there have been a few confirmed sightings of cougars in Tennessee. These are listed below and are represented in the map “TN Cougar Sightings”. When more confirmed sightings occur, they will be added accordingly.

9/20/2015   Obion   Trail camera photo submitted by a landowner
9/26/2015   Carroll   Hair sample was submitted by a hunter; DNA analysis indicated a female with genetics similar to cougars in South Dakota
11/11/2015   Humphreys    Trail camera photo submitted by a landowner
11/24/2015   Humphreys    Trail camera video and photos submitted by a landowner



Pretty cool, but not sure I want to see one in the woods...

The gators in Memphis probably aren't actually gators.  Many years ago there were some small crocodile type critters in the Hatchie river near Bolivar.  I forget what their name is, but they can live in colder climates.

Caymans???

Yes Thank you

Thanks for the link.  It's new and I hadn't seen it before.

An interesting distribution of confirmed sightings.  This doesn't appear to be a single animal on walkabout.

I've told by a couple of different sources mckelker lake, eagle lake and sightings in Moscow on the wolf / ghost river.

Heard they've had them up at Shelby Forrest as well.

Had what I thought was one come up behind and scream at me while camping back in '97 a few miles north of Knoxville.  I went up to the top of a ridge line a few days later and heard him walking around, big footsteps, but I never saw him.  That's how I figured it was a cat.

LoL I live in the city and just saw a grey fox running down the middle of the road like he was chasing a car.      

I've never seen a wild fox in my life, and this is the second one I've seen in a week.  Just happened to look outside and there he trots down the street.

Not a cougar, however last week, I bought a new green weapon light for my AR and was out back checking it out. Then I hear a bobcat. It was damn close. First time I've heard one that close to the house. I live in rural Fayette county several miles east of Memphis on 3.6 acres that back up to several hundred acres of mostly wooded land.

I heard a bobcat in the wild for the first time earlier this year.  Found its tracks after the sun came up that morning, too.  It's a sound that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  Never seen one, though.

Out 64 or Macon Rd?

Has TWRA made any sort of official statement on this large wolfy-looking coyotes wandering out of LBL and Kentucky? While one or two big cats we can roll the dice on finding, we have coyotes all over the damn place up here on the Montgomery/Stewart border now.