What do you photo experts think about these?

http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=999678

The link points to a thread currently at 6 pages.
Which photo? The Fisher Cat or the Leopard?
There are also many other links to many other things.

Which photo are you asking about?

The trail cam pics posted near the bottom on the first page, they were posted by the thread starter.

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Here ya go.....

Here's a view with the "cat" inserted, for perspective, to show the size of the "cat". It's a black panther type, from what I see.

Click to view attachment

I was doing some measurements earlier trying to guesstimate the size of the cat. You'll notice the back of the cat still appears below the deer's stomach. The cat is in front of the tree, while the deer is behind it. The cat will appear normally larger simply because it's closer to the camera, while the deer, behind the tree will appear smaller since it's further from the camera. We can't tell whether the deer is right up against the tree or five feet behind it or even more. From their current positions the cat from the bottom of his right rear paw to the top of his back is 99 pixels. The deer is 120 pixels. If this is a normal size deer at the bottom of the "Normal Height" to shoulder of 32 inches the cat would be 25.6 inches at it's shoulder which is just a tad shorter than a normal adult cougar of 27-31 inches at the shoulder. And of course they are not standing the same distance from the camera so that would not be accurate. However the cat is also not standing on the ground, it's on the log in front of the tree. The log appears to be 24 pixels from top to ground. So if the log is 3 inches high, measured just behind it's left rear paw, the cat is only 12 inches to the top of it's shoulder. Common house cats average 8-10 inches at the shoulder, so 12 inches would be a tad on the big size but with some cats hitting over 16 inches it's not a record.

The tail is shaped more like a common house cat tail. It's curved and hangs considerably above the ground and if extended to the ground looks barely longer than the back legs. Below is the picture of a cougar tail and seems quite a bit longer and heavier in structure than the black cat in the game cam pic.

Click to view attachment

My vote goes to a big old black alley cat.

The cat just looks wrong to me.
I do not doubt the possibility of black cougars. Hell if there are jaguars now hunting in AZ there can certainly be a puma wandering about.


It's too dark and the outline is too crisp.

There would be some sort of lightening on the top and there isnt. It could be a real picture but does not seem like one.

Also the cat is moving from left to right? He said it was set to 3 seconds per pic. Why is there not multiple pictures. The cat is obviously not running.

Looks like it was Photoshop'd to me.

looks like a black lab cross with tail down and nose to the ground looking for the deer to me

If it is a genuine photo of a black house cat, then we have discovered a new species of tiny deer on the other photo.

Me too. The coloration looks way too evenly black. I know it's in shadow, but it's not a very dark shadow. Check out the contrast between the hind foot and the log.

First time I've really taken a look at these photos. Unfortunately, the gallery software that they were hosted on (and apparently saved from) rewrites the image header so the providence of the photos isn't clear.

Just zooming in and adjusting the light/contrast reveals some interesting details in the otherwise all black cat.

he's been reported. Let's hope a mod steps in soon.

Hi

Thank you Red ~


Peace
Tim

Thank you!

Huh?



Rather than make a new post i'll jump in yours ~ Norcal ~ We are talking about a Spammer that Redwolf gave me a heads up on ~ ( Red Rat Snake )

Ya I didnt get it either Norcal. Not sure what someone did.

Definitely a cut n paste job; the left hind foot is the kicker! However, is it even a panther or is it a housecat?

I vote on a:

"Rogue" black cat .....

Photo shopped house cat. The tail and the pointed ears are the tells.

Anyone convinced of a Photoshop job care to comment on what convinces you, specifically? I think it looks P'shopped, but I don't have the technical eye to describe why I really think that. Also, assertions of a black tabby don't seem to jive with Bitter Monk's illustration that the cat looks to be dappled.

Even if it was, it's pretty small compared to the deer's size. It would have to be a very young panther...

Yep, that's my question too. The fact that the image shown is a highly compressed copy IMO makes it a stretch to say for sure. A lot of detail is lost in the compression process. Sometimes by inverting an image you can bring out subtle detail. Notice the ear on the left indeed appears to be pointed but this could be a result of compressing the image to post on the web. It really would be nice to have the original image so it could be examined pixel by pixel.

Cougars have pointed ears and that distinctive sausage-shaped, long, big tail. It doesn't at all look like a house cat, it does look like a black phase cougar.

I take it back. Cougars have higher haunches. It could be a jaguar though, some of them have fairly pointed ears. Too bad there isn't anything to scale it.

Just read this this morning!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1255548582...l?mod=yhoofront


There's Nothing So Rare as a Cougar in Missouri
Still, Many Sightings Reported; Mistaking Tabby for a Mountain Lion
By JUSTIN SCHECK
When Jeff Beringer got a Sunday-night call from a deer hunter who said he had shot an aggressive mountain lion last fall, he whipped the Missouri Mountain Lion Response Team into action.

Mr. Beringer, a state biologist and the team's leader, rushed to the scene to investigate the hunter's claim and see the bloody arrow that fell from the beast as it fled. It was one of 150 or so mountain-lion reports that Mr. Beringer's team probes each year.

In 2004, David Rodgers snapped photos of a cougar at his Lander, Wyo., home. The photos have been passed around in at least five other states as "proof" of local cougars there.
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.The team's verdict: Like every other report since 2006, it was a false alarm. Missouri's Mountain Lion Response Team has eight members. What Missouri doesn't have, says Mr. Beringer, is a single permanent-resident mountain lion. None of the big cats -- also known as cougars, pumas and catamounts -- are known to breed in Missouri, Mr. Beringer says. Occasional wanderers step across the state line from the west for a day or two and then go home, he says, but that is unusual.

Missouri needs an eight-member cougar team because it, like other nearly cougarless states, has a bad case of "cougar hysteria," as Mr. Beringer puts it. Of the 765 cougar reports Missouri has received since 2005, only two have been verified.

There is no shortage of cougars in the U.S. More than 30,000 live west of the Rocky Mountains, according to estimates. And there is evidence they are starting to move eastward. But deforestation and heavy hunting cleared the Midwest of cougars by about 1910. They remain scarce and are confined, wildlife officials say, to a few vagrants in the most remote areas of the Midwest.

Apocryphal big cats, on the other hand, are infesting the heartland faster than ever, thanks to a combination of mistaken sightings and deliberate hoaxes -- and the tendency of the Internet to magnify assertions. Residents of Minnesota and Wisconsin have recently reported false cougars in their midst, sometimes using photos of house cats. In Michigan, academics have published dueling papers based on tests of certain feline feces: One argues they are cougar feces; the other holds that most of them could belong to the neighbor's cat.

In several states, conspiracy theories have spread on the Web accusing state officials of cougar coverups. A lawyer formed Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition to push the state to admit there are mountain lions there.

In Illinois, "It is absolutely not true that the Illinois Department of Natural Resources is releasing cougars anywhere in the state," said Sam Flood, a former Illinois wildlife official, last year. He was responding to a furor over emailed photos of a cougar that were purportedly taken there. Cougars don't live in Illinois, Mr. Flood said, though they occasionally pass through. An itinerant cougar was shot last year in Chicago.

The photos Mr. Flood was alluding to -- of a black-eyed cougar baring its teeth outside a house window -- were taken in 2004 in the backyard of optometrist Dave Rodgers in Lander, Wyo. There are lots of cougars in Wyoming. "It's just a bummer that they're kind of getting stolen by other people," Mr. Rodgers says. The same pictures have circulated in at least five other states and one Canadian province as "proof" of local cougars.

Such incidents baffle most biologists. "Maybe we really want to believe there are cougars," said Eric Anderson, a University of Wisconsin naturalist who gives monthly talks explaining that there are few, if any, cougars in Wisconsin. He uses a PowerPoint presentation to debunk sightings of purported catamounts, including the "Brillion cougar" (actually a tabby), the "Stanley cougar" (a house cat), and the "Ettick lion" (a bobcat).

He also shows that photos of the "Franklin cougar" were digitally altered, and pictures of the snarling "Conover cougar" were the same set from Wyoming. Mr. Beringer has discussed his findings at the Cougar Field Workshop, a three-day convention in New Mexico. Two sessions were dedicated to training biologists from states without resident cougars to deal with cougar figments.

Such training hasn't quieted the controversy in Michigan, a state with vast wilderness but, according to state officials, just two confirmed cougar encounters in the past 100 years. "As far as we can tell, these were passing through," says Chris Hoving, a state biologist.

That assertion frustrates biologist Patrick Rusz, who says, "I'm 100% sure, no question, absolutely, we have cougars in Michigan." In 2003, he began a three-year effort to prove his point by having volunteers collect feces from Michigan woodlands. In 2006, he published a paper that said DNA tests on the excrement proved the presence of eight Michigan mountain lions.

But in a rebuttal the following year, other scientists said Dr. Rusz used DNA-testing methods that couldn't distinguish cougar droppings from house-cat or lynx excrement -- and that only one of his stools was likely from a cougar. The rebuttal was led by Allen Kurta, a bat expert who was recruited to do the study because he hadn't previously been involved in the cougar spat. "With the controversy, they wanted to bring in someone who wasn't that set one way or the other," he says.

Dr. Rusz calls the rebuttal study "a politically inspired off-the-cuff attack" that "didn't take into account the physical nature of our scat," which was up to an inch-and-a-half in diameter. He says state biologists are in denial because they don't want to deal with the expense of managing an endangered species.

Dr. Rusz has support from the Michigan Citizens for Cougar Recognition, founded by attorney Denise Noble after she heard a Department of Natural Resources official say a few years ago that Michigan is cougar-free. "They said, 'Ma'am, we have no cougars.' And I said, 'That's ridiculous,'" she says.

Ms. Noble was on alert this past summer after a trio of Michigan cougar reports. The first two were quickly debunked as fraudulent. But on Labor Day, Jerome Wiater, a Beverly Hills, Mich., orthopedic surgeon, saw a large cat skulk past his country house. "It was like our eyes were locked on each other," he says.

Dr. Wiater took a photo when he recognized the animal as a cougar. Dr. Rusz drove to Dr. Wiater's home, took photographs and measurements, and determined that a cougar had been there. "He said it was one of the best photos that they have of a wild cougar in Michigan," Dr. Wiater says.

Mr. Hoving, the state biologist, says the sighting remains unverified. Dr. Wiater says state officials told him the photo looks like that of a house cat. Mark Dowling, director of the Cougar Network, a nonprofit research group, says scientists with the group decided, "It's an obvious house cat."

The Missouri team often tells people the same thing. "You would be astounded by how many videos we receive of house cats walking through fields," says Bill Heatherly, a team biologist.

Last year, team members investigated a reported horse mauling. (They concluded the horse's scrapes were from barbed wire.) They questioned a 12-year-old, who recanted his account of a cougar attack after tests on his bloody coat turned up evidence of DNA from chicken and cow blood, but none from a cougar.

In the bowhunter case, Mr. Beringer says, he and his colleague investigated the scene until "we found a dead bobcat" with a puncture wound. "But the hunter was pretty convinced that wasn't what he shot," Mr. Beringer says, and insisted he hit a mountain lion. DNA tests on his arrow matched the blood of the bobcat carcass.

Write to Justin Scheck at justin.scheck@wsj.com