BIG CAT: dangerous hunter stalking our country hedgerows

IT is not too difficult to imagine pumas or panthers living unseen in our countryside today, patrolling the shadows and killing at will.

These creatures would obviously not be native species but the offspring of exotic pets released into the wild when laws on keeping dangerous animals changed.

So many incidents have been recorded that circumstantial evidence of the existence of large feline predators is almost overwhelming.

I myself even noted something which has only fuelled my own interest. No-one can deny that glimpses of big cats, real or imagined, are being reported with increasing regularity.

A number occurred in the same week recently, one involving a panther-like animal seen stalking game birds on an estate in Norfolk.

Days later, police in Wiltshire began a hunt for their own big cat after a pet dog was savaged, sustaining deep bite wounds to a shoulder.

In Essex, over the same period, a farmer blamed a huge puma-type animal for leaving bite marks and scratches on his car.

One of his pet cats was slaughtered and another vanished in the drama. Elsewhere, in Devon, an animal also believed to be a puma leapt a 5ft high hedge with ease after being spotted by a motorist as he drove along the A396 close to Tiverton.

Meanwhile, during that same week, Scottish police issued an alert after a Grampian farmer found the remains of a sheep meticulously stripped off its flesh.

Experts later confirmed the work as that of a voracious cat.

All of which brings me to my own, modest experience early one morning following a heavy snowfall.

On this day, my neck had started to ache as a result of peering up at trees, looking for birds.

So I began to amuse myself by following the tracks of deer and scavenging foxes - easy to do in the virgin snow.

After a while I noticed something next to a patch of snow-covered brambles - a large, fresh paw print.

It was scuffed at one edge and I suppose it could have belonged to a dog. But for some reason its size and shape electrified me.

It seemed far more feline than normal dog prints and there were no accompanying human tracks at all.

Other prints lay among the brambles but these were less clear and could have belonged to any number of creatures.

I was just contemplating my next step in the six-inch deep snow when a sudden commotion behind made me jump.

I spun round to see two tiny muntjac deer.

They were uncharacteristically breaking cover in panic, darting 30 metres into another tangle of bushes.

Could they, I pondered, be fleeing the mystery big cat said to stalk local woods ?

I tip-toed around for a while but failed to pinpoint any lurking predator.

I even managed to spoil the original paw print.

But the experience left me wondering if there really could be something dangerous hunting local game.