Big Cats and Foxes

From MS

This has been an interesting subject and the views of many seem to show most don’t believe large cats to exist in Australia.
I myself don’t need to have one of these cats bight me on the ass before I believe there is a good chance they actually do exist ,just the same as I don’t need to find gold first time out in an area for myself before I believe it’s actually there.
It’s called research and taking on board others findings and reports and looking and balancing up the probability and facts.
Remember the early days in Australia when the first finders of gold were persecuted and called lyres as they were trying to report gold finds and even the government of the day was no better and even kept this quiet for a period of time.
There is a similar situation in Tasmania now with the fox yet many are not game to speak up for fear of persecution when dead foxes and scats have been found and proven by government laboratories.
One thing with pretretery cats and foxes is they are efficient hunters with senses hundreds of times greater than humans and are rarely seen except when food is scarce and are forced to move into view.
I can give one example of a fox that entered Warrawong which is a Sanctuary of around 40 ht and has an electrified feral proof fence.
Animals were being killed and the general behaviour of tammar wallabies, bandicutes etc had altered and one member of the public reported seeing a fox inside the boundary.
Many people including the gov feral control officer got involved with nothing found and all accepted that an eagle or natural deaths were occurring and the eastern quolls were tearing up the dead carcases.
I became involved and found one fox scat and a few partial foot prints, and knew from that there was indeed a fox involved.
I was given a hard time especially by the gov officer and made to look a fool, so the lines were drawn and this now became a personal issue.
To cut a long story short I never saw that fox once and spent 3 months looking and spent many a night out and in the end used spotlights, fox traps, food drops and even infrared night vision viewer with no result.
In the end I set an up a pheromone sent marker and set up a night vision video camera and recorded proof it was indeed a fox.
I staked out this position and never saw a thing even covered myself with sent blocking agents and the fox would never appear till after I left.
This fox outsmarted me every time and I have been hunting them successfully for many years.
I built a trap 5 m long across a proven path this fox was moving through with both ends open and the fox refused to enter, I was watching this on video and in the end I wired the doors open and allowed other animals to pass through and the fox realised it must be safe and started to enter, I then armed the trap and the fox entered and when it got to the middle of the trap it triggered the electrical solenoids which caused both trap doors to close and lock.
I got that fox it cost me about 200 hrs, $2500-00 in fuel and equipment and nearly my relationship with my partner and children.
This was all in a relatively small controlled area with lots of available cover and food and I fully appreciate the intelligence and ability of a predator to avoid humans and I have a comprehensive video record of this one animal and a skin to prove it.
mark

I admire your pigheadedness Mark Women unfortunately will never understand these things. I have a mate in Tamworth who spends his days off in the bush with a video camera. He is hunting a 'yowie'. (He has been doing this since 2003)

One day he will have the last laugh on all the knockers, or he will die trying.

i just happened to read the first couple of lines about do big cats exist and i can tell you i saw one in wa,beleive it or not.
that was four years ago coming back down from weebo and we were pulling back into a spot we had success at the year before.
wasn,t far from laverton ,probably 80 kms north near one of the larger mines. we took the usual track heading in the direction of the mine and i decided to turn towards the mine in a clearing hoping to get a good look at the area before we settled back to where we had previously found a couple of small patches and as i turned in to this clearing some thing caught my attention on my right . i couldn,t beleive my eyes,i sped up and headed toward the edge of the bluff as quick as i could because i wanted a better look at this thing.
it just casually kept the same pace all the way to the bluff and jumped the edge, at the first sighting it would have been about twenty metres from the bluff running parrallel to my cruiser and for that short time i had a really good look at it. imagine a year and ahalf or two year old black panther not fully grown and there you have it. the thing that stood out to me the most at the time was the front shoulder
just like you see the big cats running on tv. any way i slammed the brakes on and skidded to a holt , raced out the car and ran ten metres to where it leapt over the bluff , stood there in awe. the only thing i could see were boulders the size of a football and smaller fore at least
two or three hundred metres , no trees no hiding spots that i could see. then it hit me how dumb that could have been, what was i going to do if it was really close and decided to attack. by that time the other two vehicles had pulled up and said what the hell are you doing.
all i could do is say , did you see it ,did you see it. right behind me and they missed it, must have been looking at the ground for gold.
it definately was a highlight for me on that trip. and yea i beleive......
tom.....

t'was about 3 weeks ago, on the Binda Rd about 20 km north of Crookwell, NSW, i passed what looked like a wolf. I have seen a few foxes, and i never seen one like this, so if it was a fox it was a cross bred thing or something.
It was walking towards me on the left handside of the road while i was driving in pitch black with the high beams on, didnt see it till i was very close, so i didnt really see its body- just its face.

Most likely a fox, but crikey was it big and bushy and it wasn't really getting cold yet.... i really thought it was a wolf because of the large face and size and extreme bushiness and it wasnt worried by the car either, as far as i know a fox will run when hearing a car, this thing kept strolling along like i wasnt there....

Once while i was out hunting rabbits in the earlier morning in the Mogumber area something broke cover from the bush and it was a cat...
it was the size of a German Sheppard....ginger in colour and moving fast...it ran thru the crop and i could see the tops of
the wheat moving from direction it was going...that day will stay with me forever...asked the farmer if had seen it before....
all i got was ...."what big cat"