TexasCHLforum.com

Archery1 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 3:26 pm Yes, such was the Texas black panther, once. My dad was a state park volunteer in Brazos where he and a few others over the years swore they saw what looked like a black panther. Many sightings were reported across the state saying same. TPW said folks were seeing some other animal. Years later, they find there really is a large, dark, bobcat sized cat that is not a domestic cat.

Could have been one of these, but they are only about twice the size of a domestic (house) cat. There's always the possibility your dad saw a melanistic puma. We have had two black deer killed on our deer leasein the last 20 years, which is a very rare occurrence for even one . We have black squirrels and a black fox as well. We kid that it's in the water.

DocV wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 2:53 pm Image find found this
https://news.mongabay.com/2016/06/myste ... -research/
which shows this image:

That's the same photo that was sent to my wife, so obviously the guy that said he took the pic is less than truthful. Fool me once!

A friend of my wife's sent her a photo her neighbor took of a cat. They back up to a large undeveloped track in Pasadena, TX. There are two other photos; one of the cat in a crouching posture but they are very dark (I think these were copied from her neighbor's Facebook.) You could see that it was very muscular, though. I've seen thousands of domestic cats working at my father's vet clinic and quite a few wild ones, but never one with a conformation such as this. When I first viewed it I thought of an otter, because of it's head and ears.
Interesting.