Big cats?

During the lockdown, I have walked through woodland adjacent to my home on a regular basis. Since the beginning of April, I have found the remains of two muntjac. They were only recently dead and the remaining shards of meat were fresh. With the exception of the heads, both had been reduced to backbones and broken ribs. There was no sign of legs on one and only the hind leg bones on the other. There have been reports of big cats seen in my area. Are there any signs that would point to them being the cause?

Like the Loch Ness monster, the big cat question pops up from time to time. The sceptics generally outnumber the convinced.

I have also come across the freshly stripped remains of deer. Normally, these have been in woodland or pasture close to it. The most dramatic was a medal-class fallow buck whose antlers were stuck in a livestock fence. In that case, badgers had stripped the carcass in 12 hours, the buck having been wounded but not recovered at last light the evening before.

If you have badgers in the locality I would look to them first. Occasionally dogs living feral, or lost, have been implicated, as have other scavengers, including winged ones.

For all the many reports of big cats there has been little evidence produced of their existence. While it might be worth putting camera traps in the area, I would look for a more likely explanation if I were you. IW

There is little evidence of the existence of big cats, despite stripped carcasses