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‘My encounter with a wild big cat’

Sarah Alderton 25 March 2012
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A recent Farmers Weekly poll revealed 58% of readers think big cats are roaming wild in the UK countryside. In the first of a two-part feature, Sarah Trickett collates some real-life encounters


It was a May bank holiday Monday and I set about my jobs as usual.


As I ventured outside, I could see that less than 100 yards from the house on the other side of the garden gate was one of my Lleyn ewes on her side. The flesh on the ewe’s hips had been gnawed down to the bone. However, her eyes were still intact. I had no idea what could have caused her death, but with the eyes still there, I knew the kill was fresh as the birds hadn’t got to her.


We live three miles from the nearest village and backing on to 100 acres of woodland. It had been so warm we’d been to bed with all the windows open, so I was surprised we hadn’t heard anything and that the dogs hadn’t been disturbed.


We tidied up the carcass. A big cat certainly never entered my thoughts.


Then four days later, I was riding in one of the fields neighbouring the garden when the horse reared up. When I looked down, there laid the remains of another carcass – this time with the head and vitals gone. The whole rear leg had been taken off and again flesh gnawed down to the bone. There was no fly strike, so again it was relatively fresh. This was only 20 yards between the hedge line and the garden gate where the dead ewe was found on the Monday.


Worry


At this point, with a young family, I was a little worried. So I got some local lads to cut the fields so the cover was reduced and the livestock were more visible. My eldest son did find the head of the sheep – the bottom left hand side of the jaw had been crushed and there was a fresh puncture wound between and just above the eyes. Whatever had done this was clearly big enough to carry a sheep’s head. I knew it wasn’t dogs, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was.


When I think back to it now, we also lost a couple of lambs at the time, but didn’t put it down to anything suspicious.


In the same month, I was walking with my two dogs up near an old disused quarry on the farm, doing a final count of the sheep that afternoon – something I had become more rigorous about doing since the first two attacks. I noticed one of my two Lleyn tups was missing and, as I began walking across the field, my German Pointer chased something in to the gully. It was then I came across the missing tup. It was still alive at this point. But it had four symmetrical puncture wounds at the throat and point lacerations at the neck of skull. I phoned the vet, but sadly the sheep died.


The tup had been pulled into the same spot by the hedge that the second sheep was found some weeks before. And on all occasions every ounce of blood was gone. We had clearly disturbed something that afternoon having a go at the tup.


Watch Farmers Weekly’s own hunt for a big cat





The next case came in the autumn the following year when we lost a Hebridian ewe – again, every ounce of blood gone. In the space of two years we probably lost 12 animals, but it came in bursts – with many months and sometimes up to a year in between.


The day that I finally lay eyes on the creature came in mid November three years ago. Just days before my encounter, I had been stood outside the house and had heard screaming – screaming that I now know was a female mountain lion calling for a mate.


Shining eyes


On the night in question, my wife was heavily pregnant with our fourth child and she wanted to go for a walk to get some fresh air. We gathered our three children and went for an evening walk up to the quarry. It was pitch black and we had to push through brambles and were on relatively steep ground leading down to a stream. As we began to turn back to the house I shone the lamp into some unmanaged hazel and there, 70 yards away, beamed a pair of bright, neon yellow green eyes, shining back at me.


I put the lamp down and collected myself. My heart was racing. I told my wife and children to stay put. Picking up the lamp again, I crept up to within 15 yards of the fence where the creature was sitting in a fallen hazel tree. The eyes were still staring back. It was a big animal, I could tell that as its eyes were four inches apart, double the distance of a normal farm cat. As I edged closer, the animal turned away and dropped silently in to the back of the bramble.


That was the only sighting we had of it. That was back in 2009. However, a year after the sighting we lost two Hebridian 45kg tups a week apart, peeled inside-out in the snow, no blood visible and bones licked clean.


I don’t believe the cat is a dangerous thing – it’s just doing what it does naturally, it takes what it wants and then moves on.


Just recently I was talking to a neighbour who was woken up at 1:30am one morning to the sound of a distressed cow. When he went outside to check, the cow had given birth to a calf, but there was no calf in sight.


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