Magazine seeks evidence of cougars

This summer, the Georgia Outdoor News announced a $1,000 reward for irrefutable proof that mountain lions — also called panthers, pumas or cougars — still roam the state. The magazine, based in Madison County, set a May 1 deadline for readers to submit “the best physical evidence they can legally gather” that panthers are on the prowl in Georgia.

Editor Nick Carter, who offered the reward, is still waiting for that evidence. A photo of a big cat, or perhaps an image of a paw print, would be great. Since panthers are a protected species in Georgia, killing one to bring in proof is illegal. Anyone with an image has to convince the magazine that it was taken in Georgia, too.

“We’re just looking for the best evidence,” said Carter. “We’ll let the people decide for themselves.”

State Department of Natural Resources biologists are skeptical that Georgia is still home to big cats, despite the well-publicized shooting two years ago of a large feline in southwestern edge of the state.

In 2008, a deer hunter in Troup County shot and killed a young cougar. Last year, scientists determined that the 140-pound male was a Florida panther. He traveled river corridors from South Florida to Georgia in search of a habitat he didn’t have to share with other males, they think.

The kill, publicized in the magazine, prompted e-mails and telephone calls from readers convinced they’d seen big cats. Carter, a lifelong hunter and fisherman, was intrigued — inspired, too. He knew a marketing opportunity when he saw it. In June, he offered the reward.

“The fact that there was one killed [in Georgia] means that they are at least moving through here,” said Carter. “We put out the call [for proof] and people started coming out of the woodwork.”

But no one has come out with anything to make Carter a believer. Hunters who have set up cameras on hunting paths, to determine feeding patterns and migratory habits of deer and other prey, have submitted grainy photos “but nothing definitive.” And big-dog prints, he noted, look a lot like cougar prints.

DNR officials are accustomed to getting comparable calls. During the past fiscal year, the state agency fielded 246 calls about big cats, according to records. They ranged from alleged sightings to inquiries as to whether they still live in the state.

Well, do they?

DNR biologist Don McGowan chose his words carefully. “It’s possible,” he said. “You never rule it out.”

Peter Schoen used to be a skeptic until three years ago. That was when Schoen, who lives in Atlanta’s Inman Park neighborhood, became a believer, in the mountains of Union County.

He and a friend were near Blairsville, looking for mistletoe. They carried .22-caliber rifles, small-bore weapons the right size for shooting a strand of greenery off the bough of a hardwood. The men walked along an old road, eyeing a stand of tall oaks. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows on the ground.

Then ...

“There this critter was,” said Schoen. “It wasn’t a deer, and it wasn’t a dog.”

The creature, tan and muscular, looked at the two men, who stood as if they’d been turned to stone. They stared back, committing the image to memory — the long tail, the sleek body, the biggest cat they’d ever seen. Then, said Schoen, the animal lost interest. “It just walked away.”

Until that day, he said, “I had always accepted [the belief] that they weren’t around anymore.”

Toombs County resident Jerry Pittman has never doubted that Georgia is home to cougars. Growing up near the Altamaha River in southeastern Georgia, he heard the stories: the big cat that carried off a pig; the cougar following deer tracks; the scream of a panther in the dark. Now grown, he has a few cat stories of his own, too.

Pittman said his wife saw a panther hunting deer. His brother stumbled across one while repairing a fence near a creek bottom. “They scared each other,” he recalled.

And, a few years ago, he saw one on the side of a road. “I can tell you this,” said Pittman, 55. “It had black fur and white teeth.”“They’re here,” said Pittman, a third-generation grower. “They’ve always been here.”But what about the suburbs? Maxine Yancy recalled an encounter close to an apartment complex in Morrow, 20 miles south of Atlanta. It was 3 p.m. on a spring weekday four years ago. She’d just entered the woods to feed some feral cats living near the apartments.

“There was a mountain cat of some type lying on a boulder,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The cat was about 5 feet long, with grayish/brownish body.” She remembered the creature’s tail, which ended in a tuft.

“I stopped dead in my tracks and uttered, ‘Hi, baby,’” she recalled. “Have no idea why that came out of my mouth.  The mountain cat slid off the boulder in a flash and disappeared into the foliage.”

Reports of strange creatures are nothing new, said McGowan, the DNR biologist. Some of his peers have even investigated sightings of South Georgia’s own Sasquatch, smelling bad and stomping around in swamps.

He’s answered his share of odd reports, too — turtles the size of washtubs, birds that could be confused with Cessnas. And, yes, cats the size of, well, cats — big cats, that is. He’s yet to see one in the ’burbs or Georgia countryside.Still, McGowan’s not ruling out the possibility that someone might step forward with a photo confirming the rumors. After all, panthers haven’t read reports about their demise in Georgia; maybe they are out there.Meantime, Carter’s offer stands: A stack of cash for proof of a big cat.

Please, no grainy photos.