British Black Leopard Seen In Hertfordshire

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
So that is what, 4 times, 5??, this has been spotted? I started to believe on the second! Now with you having first second hand accounts... I think a foot print will show up first. Then a blurd photo. Then a huge debate. And some poor sap will hit one with his auto and everybody will get mad at the bloke!

This one, probably, read the link I posted in my first reply on here, to the Dundee Evening Telegraph, there's 19 Police Reports on these in my area, which is in Scotland, so a bit away from the case in the OP, but these things are seen UK wide.

I have no doubt some of the reports are people misidentifying domestic black cats, imagining them to be bigger than they really are but the tail is the first giveaway when looking at pics.

a reply to: Kester
Damn .. I wasn't expecting that reply sorry to hear that mate. My foul mood hasn't got me thinking like that. I just felt that I had to apologise to you as my reply, after I read it, seemed like it was aimed in your direction

So it goes here in Georgia in the states with the black panther . Folks supposedly in the know state it doesnt exist. Eyewitnesses (including me) , pictures , film doesnt matter. Why ? I have no clue why it is denied with the amazing amount of proof. If Bigfoot had as much evidence , it would be considered a known fact.

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: Kester

Sweet! Black Leppard are back together??!! I miss 80's rock!

LOL

So that is what, 4 times, 5??, this has been spotted? I started to believe on the second! Now with you having first second hand accounts... I think a foot print will show up first. Then a blurd photo. Then a huge debate. And some poor sap will hit one with his auto and everybody will get mad at the bloke!

I think you meant Def Leppard.....

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

Having looked at your threads I see you're serious about your outdoor adventures.

Big cats in Britain pose almost no threat to humans. The time I got scared I saw it from 28 yards in the dark, then I chased it. Yes I agree it was extraordinarily stupid of me, I don't think I'll do that again.

Allegedly there have been some fatalities over the years that have been covered up. Cows kill far more people.

I've seen photographs of an injury caused when a woman who'd been baiting it with dead chickens walked into it in long grass. The injury was deep scratches on her belly. Just scratches.

A woman in Scotland got bitten on the thigh. Just puncture wounds that didn't prevent her from driving herself to hospital.

Most aggresive encounters are a quick snarl then a retreat.

A young man I knew had one bound over the hedge and land behind him. Four in the morning on a canal path. He took off running at high speed and it didn't follow.

The partner of a friend had one scream at her from a branch just above her head in a quiet part of North Wales. She hurt herself running through the brambles, it didn't follow. The local farmers said "We've seen them, our fathers have seen them, our grandfathers have seen them". They had no stories of aggression.

Most likely if you see one you'll be awed rather than scared.

I've seen photographs of a dog killed by being bitten through the nose and suffocated. Dogs are at more risk than humans.

Excuse the source, this is from the Daily Fail but it gives you an idea of the scale of what we're talking about here (as you can tell this is a subject of interest for me).

Here are a sample of some of the pics taken of the sightings around the UK, the first two from England, the last, Scotland...

a reply to: Kester i wouldn't say I'm serious but I have a big passion for escaping the daily grind of a 9-5 job and being surrounded by nothing but bricks and concrete.

That being said the topic does interest me as I do often think what happened to the big cats that people use to own before the laws were changed. I'd assume some of them just let them out into the wild so to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if there were some big cats out in the UK countryside.

When I go to Scotland over Easter I'll be in the wild for 4 days with a friend and will have the littlest if any human contact throughout them 4 days. All of our rations and equipment will be on our backs. I'm taking my camera with a 300mm lens so if I see anything I'll have some pics but I doubt I will see much.

I was with my friend once out in the Lake District, we went to set up camp near a water source. Before deciding of what location we were going to set up in we too a brief walk along the small river just to be nosey when we came across a sheep carcass. There were no obvious signs of it being attacked as it had decomposed quite badly but it did make me and my friend wonder what had happened to it. We assumed it died of natural causes, it hadn't fallen from anywhere as we were on a open plain. We did entertain ourselves with the thought of a wild cat had been at it but we wanted to sleep peacefully that night so we rubbished them ideas off

One thing that did make us decide on though with the dead sheep was that we weren't going to camp there as the sheep was actually decomposing in our water source we ended up moving a big higher up and finding fresh water coming from a small waterfall

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

There was a period of time after the '76 act before it became illegal to release them. Some owners released them and some people took money to 'find the cats a good home', then released them. Black leopards were rarer and retained their value. They were less likely to be released. Two black leopards were released in West Wales by the eccentric scrapman who owned them. Many of the commoner cats were released because all the zoos and collections were full so the alternative was to have them killed.

There were also many escapes and releases going far back into history. Some experts believe the lynx was never fully exterminated, the cleversest survived and bred a race of very elusive native lynx.

Here are a couple of my more far-fetched cat threads.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: Kester
Thanks I'll be sure to check them out. If you come across any stories (I'll search myself as well) about wild cats in the Cairngorm national park of Scotland send them my way as that's where my 4 days over Easter will be spent.

Edit: just done a quick search myself while I had a spare 5 mins. The Cairngorms have had sightings of wild cats but they were sightings of real wild cats not your big game predator cats. I'll be keeping an eye out for any tracks we may come across

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker
a reply to: Kester
Thanks I'll be sure to check them out. If you come across any stories (I'll search myself as well) about wild cats in the Cairngorm national park of Scotland send them my way as that's where my 4 days over Easter will be spent.

Here's one link just some climbers asking questions about what's there.

Depending on which part of the park you're at you may be just over the hills from me...

a reply to: djz3ro

Good point here from your link.

The thing is, I had gone for a pee just before I turned in, about 20 yards from the tent, and then in the morning the tracks led up to this spot and it seemed as though whatever it was scampered away pretty sharpish. In future I'll be marking my territory out very diligently!

www.ukclimbing.com...

When camping mark your territory.

Thanks for that guys but I had just read that one when I done a quick search as it was the first result that came up

Djz3ro I've only been around the Ben Macdui area (west side of Cairngorms?), Loch Avon (not sure if that's the correct spelling) areas and the actual cairngorm summits itself. We always start off in the aviemore area which we are doing again but this time round we are walking from aviemore to bremar (spelling?) and then from Bremar to Aviemore but covering the east side of the Cairngorms where it's a bit more rocky and bleak. Neither me or my friend have ventured into that area, it's going to involve a lot of low walks through valleys. I'll get back to you on the proper locations when i can. I'm out at the minute so can't really check

a reply to: Kester

This came up at work a few weeks ago. I was surprised when a colleague said he'd seen a 'big black cat' in Staffordshire. His family were on a day out (him, wife, adult kids and grandparents) and gone back to the car park. By the sounds of it, it was one of those parks like you get at big tourist places like Stonehenge or National Trust stately homes - full of coaches as well as cars.

He said he and his mum saw a big black cat walk past the gap between two parked coaches. It was bigger than a labrador with a long tail. Length of coaches tends to be around 15 metres and that's not a great distance. Certainly not so far away for a domestic cat to be mistaken for one 3-4 times larger. It's hard to imagine how a large black dog could be taken for a large cat either although more plausible.

He wasn't hoaxing and sincerely believes he saw what he says they saw. Who knows?

originally posted by: djz3ro
Excuse the source, this is from the Daily Fail but it gives you an idea of the scale of what we're talking about here (as you can tell this is a subject of interest for me).

Here are a sample of some of the pics taken of the sightings around the UK, the first two from England, the last, Scotland...

hard to say with the first pic, but the second, that looks like a domestic cat, the solar light in the foreground is pretty small in actuality.


The last pic, the railway one, also a moggy. In the UK the gap between each rail is four feet and six inches. Nose to bum that cat looks around two feet. Big, but no Jaguar.

This will be the first time i've said this online.

In my old town UpHall Scotland around 1998-99 i saw a huge black cat (to large to be domestic) on a grassy hill not far from my house,, now i was thinking did some wild cat or leopard escape Edinburgh zoo (turned out no) but since theirs hundreds or thousands of acres of farm land/trees to hide under/water and plenty of live stock to eat, fought it's a perfect place for a large animal to live.

I only saw it once and was at a distance so couldn't grantee exactly what i had seen.. UpHall is a weird but fascinating place to explore and live.

Since I was a kid people talked about a puma stalking the woods and fields around Croxley, Northwood and Moor park. Some people claimed to see it, others claimed to know people who did. I spent many summers as a teenager doing naughty things in those fields and woods but never saw anything.

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker
Thanks for that guys but I had just read that one when I done a quick search as it was the first result that came up

Djz3ro I've only been around the Ben Macdui area (west side of Cairngorms?), Loch Avon (not sure if that's the correct spelling) areas and the actual cairngorm summits itself. We always start off in the aviemore area which we are doing again but this time round we are walking from aviemore to bremar (spelling?) and then from Bremar to Aviemore but covering the east side of the Cairngorms where it's a bit more rocky and bleak. Neither me or my friend have ventured into that area, it's going to involve a lot of low walks through valleys. I'll get back to you on the proper locations when i can. I'm out at the minute so can't really check

If you're starting Aviemore you;re thoe oppisite side from me, I'm closest to the bottom of it, the closest area in the Park to me is Clova, I've not lived in this area long, I didn't realise how close I actually am to the park 'til now. Looks like I'll be hiking up there myself more often now.

originally posted by: [post=22036973]SprocketUK[/post
hard to say with the first pic, but the second, that looks like a domestic cat, the solar light in the foreground is pretty small in actuality.


The last pic, the railway one, also a moggy. In the UK the gap between each rail is four feet and six inches. Nose to bum that cat looks around two feet. Big, but no Jaguar.

I agree on all counts. The second one is claimed to be a panther by the woman who took it and saw it on her property (though that doesn't explain the name on the bottom of the pic. The first is one taken by an eccentric landowner who has seen a big cat on his property a lot, allegedly.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Sometimes they're so elusive and other times they don't seem to care how close to humans they are. One of the oddest sightings I heard of was a black leopard curled up on the bonnet of a car in Bideford police station car park.

When it comes to misjudging scale, why black cats? If it's so often a simple misjudgment of size why not squirrels, birds etc?

a reply to: DarkvsLight29

Here's a little laugh for you regarding Edinburgh Zoo. www.abovetopsecret.com...