Later, Pierson “saw the animal come out of a ditch about a quarter mile away.” He was “sitting in his pickup and was able to snap a few photos,” saying, “It was probably 30 inches long or maybe longer and it probably stood up a foot or so.” (2) I didn’t go towards it I just stayed where was.” - Dennis Pierson (rural Maryville, Missouri), SJ Post, St. Then, probably about a week ago I saw it a long ways off in the distance and I was in the tractor and when it saw me it just squatted down and tried to hide. “Here about a month ago my son and I were checking cows… and we saw something black down on the pond and I said ‘ook at that it looks bigger then a cat’ We got fairly close but we still weren’t really sure. The subject of black panthers in Missouri surfaced again on February 8, 2017. Almost all reported tracks have been those of bobcats or large dogs.” (1) Animals reported as mountain lions include house cats, bobcats, red foxes, coyotes, black and yellow Labrador retrievers, great Danes and white-tailed deer. “The MLRT has investigated hundreds of mountain lion reports. Throughout its range, no melanistic (black) mountain lion has ever been documented by science….In 1996 MDC established a Mountain Lion Response Team (MLRT) with specially trained staff to investigate reports and evidence of mountain lions. “Black panthers” are not native to North America, but they do exist as melanistic (black color) phases of the leopard (Panthera pardus ) found in Africa and Asia and the jaguar (Panthera onca ) of Mexico and Central and South America. Officially the MDC has this to say about black panthers in Missouri: Today, if a resident spots a black panther, his biggest critic will be the Missouri Department of Conservation. Convincing one’s peers of a black panther sighting isn’t nearly as difficult as it was when Uncle Phil was in high school. With today’s new technology, citizens are no longer dependent on the “gate keepers” of old media.
A brief internet search on the topic of black panther sightings in Missouri will turn up the occasional news story, blog post or photo of the elusive cat. Back then his biggest skeptics were his peers. Uncle Phil’s panther sighting took place in Stoddard County, Missouri, in the 1960s. “Your uncle once saw a black panther on your great-grandfather’s farm but nobody believed him,” explained my father when I asked him. Thumbing through the pages, I found my uncle’s senior photo with the usual details of titles, predictions and nicknames. Years ago at my grandmother’s house, I discovered an old high school yearbook. It is a myth like Bigfoot.” - Michael Flaten “There are no black panthers in Missouri.
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