Monsterquest, Search For Bigfoot, Etc

[Trav]

Dont you need a permit to stock birds? I am strictly a bird hunter these days and grew up chasing Iowa Pheasant. When my dad wanted to put a couple dozen on his property in Urbana he was told no.

[fox_76]

Dont you need a permit to stock birds? I am strictly a bird hunter these days and grew up chasing Iowa Pheasant. When my dad wanted to put a couple dozen on his property in Urbana he was told no.

I would say that if you were intentionally stocking the birds then you might need some sort of permit, Of course in some instances birds (pets) justmight happen to get away or out of their cages. In that case I would say that a 12 gauge would be the most effective way of gathering them so that the do not effect the natural population

[Trav]

Dad is a bird guy. He has a room full of ribbons and trophys from his show birds. He was told he couldnt even raise pheasant in captivity.

[fox_76]

Dad is a bird guy. He has a room full of ribbons and trophys from his show birds. He was told he couldnt even raise pheasant in captivity.

I've known several farmers that have pheasants that run right along with the chickens and guineas, I've even seen em here in bolivar at the salebarn being auctioned with the ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys, and I'm not saying that they are supposed to, nor that the "lodge" was supposed too either.

[Trav]

Dad sells show birds at bolivar.

I have a fully equipped chicken house myself. Just dont really like chickens. Thought of maybe peacocks but pheasant will be soooo much better.

[Al Agnew]

The whole black panther thing is what really intrigues me. I've heard dozens of people say they've seen black panthers in the Ozarks, ever since I was a kid. But what is the explanation for it? The only two species of big cats that "commonly" have a black phase are the African leopard and the South American jaguar. Cougars, the only big cat possibly native to the Ozarks, almost never have a black phase, maybe a one in a million chance that one would be melanistic. Given that there haven't been a million cougars in the Ozarks in the last 500 years, the chances of more than one being black are pretty much nil. It's a long way from the nearest place where jaguars are native, and even then the jaguars of Mexico and the American southwest were almost never black. For there to be enough black leopards around to have people seeing them for the last 100 years, they'd have to have a breeding population that came from escaped or intentionally released ones, and that ain't very likely, either.

So...is/was there a species of big black cat unknown to science? Is/was there a population of black cougars, unheard of anywhere else and never documented? Or...could the sightings be of rather dark-colored cougars in poor light? Not likely that all of them were. The skeptic would say that it's a psychological trick of the mind...we've always heard about black panthers, so when we see something we can't quite explain or we're not sure of, imagination makes it into a black panther. Maybe it was a big black dog. Maybe it was a small black cat that our minds made into a big one.

Or...you could take the REALLY far out explanation, which I've heard before. Maybe these animals are actually coming from another dimension, showing up in our dimension for a fleeting time and then disappearing. There's a whole "scientific" field of cryptozoology, which is the study of "unknown to science" animals, and that's one explanation of why they are seen.

[bclift65706]

you have to get a permit and not easy to get. you canot just turn birds into the wild we have a dog training permit that allows us to buy the birds and keep them leagally. If you want to raise birds that is a diffrent permit.I think you can buy chuckers without a permit because they are not native to Missouri. A good fly pen is the key to having good birds not mutch fun to put out birds to hunt and see them walking on the ground and have to chase them to get them to fly then they olny fly about 20ft. BUt anyway back to bigfoot anyone seen him around ?

[Trav]

Again Als rationall has me second guessing.

No, The cat I saw was a good 70 pounds so it wasnt a large house cat. I was a youth, hunting with 5 adults who all agree to what we saw.

Granted it was dark but we did have lanterns. It was definately a feline, and we all had pistols and if it wasnt for my Dad we would have shot it.

Wether it was a panther or a jag. Cougar/mountain Lion is what the stories we tell our friends and family. The fact that it was black never seemed to be an issue. We were just surprised to see such a big cat. My nieghbor used to have a pet cat that was black as the night sky and even bigger than the one we pinned on the cliff. The cat we came across that night while coon hunting had a greyer tint. To be honost, we were paying more attention to our dogs as to keep them from getting killed. But we all got a good look.

It was black.

In Panama we had black jags show up often. They liked to hunt the neighborhood dogs and cats. They were smaller than what we sighted that night here in the ozarks.

I am sure there must be some logical explanation but seeing is believing.

[Al Agnew]

Trav, I've talked to two other guys in the last few years that were just as sure as you are that they saw a big black cat. But what I said before is the reason that "scientific" people don't believe it. Personally, I have no idea what the explanation is but I do know that there are quite a few people who are pretty calm and reliable that claim to have seen them, so I ain't disbelieving!

[Trav]

Al

I was 12 years old. Haha

My family arent big on "wild tales", we basically say how it is.

Maybe it was a trick of the light, but there was no mistaking it was a cougar/Mt Lion. Black or not.

In fact, my dog got prety messed up. He was a walker hound. And since that incident he would go ape even on house cats. Wich he never did before.