in such places, much to a panther’s
preference.
Kit Taylor, Charles Wells and
Tripp Pippin, all veteran deer and
bear hunters, report seeing a large
cat on the edge of the Angola while
checking roads during a winter ice
storm.
“It was late in the deer season,
and we were checking downed trees
that may have blocked our access
roads,” Taylor says. “Suddenly, this
big cat with a long tail leaped out
of the forest into the middle of the
road, stretched out, and in one leap,
crossed the road and into the adja-cent
forest wall. All three of us yelled
‘cougar’ at the same time. Cougars
may well be living undisturbed in
the Angola, where deer, their favorite
quarry are plentiful. It’s such a secretive, secluded place that most hunters and woodsmen
may never see a cougar … but we did! We’ve seen bears, bobcats and coyotes there for
many years, and we don’t mistake them for a cougar. What we saw was a cougar, plain and
simple, probably 100 pounds, tawny brown with a long tail.”
Russ Lane, another native North Carolinian, veteran woodsman and hunter, tells of seeing
a cougar while deer hunting in the Goshen Swamp in Duplin County.
“I was hunting from a deer stand in the Goshen, and a panther came out at 125 yards
and stayed in my scope for several minutes, hunting with its nose on the ground,” he says.
“It was brown, maybe four feet long, and looked to weigh at least 125 pounds. I clearly saw
a dark tip on its tail. Later that day I talked to members of a hunt club in the area who use
hounds to flush game from impassable swamp areas. They said they have seen panthers
both in the Goshen and the Angola. You can believe it or not, but they’re here with us.”
Well suited for swamp life, the cougar is an excellent hunter in all weather conditions.
An expert swimmer and skilled climber, it has agility, perseverance, a rather grim set of
fangs fore and aft, and they can sprint up to 50 mph! Cougars hunt by sight and scent and
prefer deer, but will eat mice, game birds, fish, slugs, grasshoppers, skunks, raccoons, foxes,
goats and horses. Interspersed with deep guttural growls and sharp hisses, they emit a
terrifying scream much like the shriek of our native barn owl.
Do the regularity of sightings, the documented pugmarks, and the personal encoun-ters
confirm the cougar’s return to Eastern North Carolina? Biologists say the panther is
gone for good, but a growing group of convincing locals say otherwise, and so the debate
continues.
With all the evidence, it’s easy to believe the cougar has once again come to call in our
Southern haunts. After all, it seems the big cats are quite literally at home in the deep
forests, bays and swamps of our coastal plain, which contain all of their necessities and so
few of man’s.
So next time you’ve escaped to a lovely rural area for a bit of peaceful relaxation, and
from the nearby woods you happen to hear the chilling scream of a barn owl, relax. It’s
probably just a panther.
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com 37
WBM
At 6:20 am this morn-ing,
I was stopped in
the road to adjust my
camera setting on my
iPhone, when I glanced
up, so astonished
to see a pale golden
cougar, long tail curled
at the end, slink low
and quickly cross the
road in front of me,
vanishing into the
tall marsh grass land-scape.
I live on Cape
Hatteras Island and
this was in the National
Park in Buxton. I sat
a long while hoping to
see some sign of it but
it was gone, no tracks
could I find. Obviously
I didn’t get a photo, it
happened so quickly!”
Submitted to ncpedia.org
on 06/09/2021.