Sunday 22 January 2012

The way big cats hunt,catch,kill and eat deer in Sussex




The picture shows a fallow deer most likely hunted,caught and eaten by a big cat in the Ashdown forest in East Sussex.Note the fir tree on the left where evidence showed this was underneath where the big cat laid in wait for it,s victim.The leaves scuffed off the bank into the stream showed where the struggle was.It illustrates the ambush technique and the distances involved between where the big cat lied down and where the fallow would of been i.e.half way up or thereabouts of the stream bank......

Big cats target deer in Sussex primarily from july to middish febuary,mostly 1st year roe are taken,sometimes 1st year fallow calves,rarely 2nd year roe and fallow and never mature fallow bucks whose huge rack of antlers would present an unsurmountable obstacle to overcome i suppose added to their great size,they truly are magnificent beasts,too much even for the powerful big cats.Roe kids spend their first year with their dams and when travelling the does usually go first followed at sometimes a little distance by the kids,occasionally they feed seperately but more rarely travel seperately.Fallow are herd animals proper but are often split into various groups depending on age, sex and relations but again usually the elder ones and/or the parents go first when moving as opposed to feeding.I have never found or heard of a muntjac kid or adult being attributed to being the prey of a big cat here in Sussex,maybe their thick necks and tank-like gait negates this.They have greatly increased their range throughout the county in the past decade or 2 but are by no means common in all places,they are though the third most common deer in Sussex.Far less common are red deer and their are only small pockets of these huge animals about,mostly in the far north east of Sussex,they are well out of range for big cats.Not so big,in fact i would of thought that the hare-like and tiny Chinese water deer could be taken by big cats although there are even fewer of these around perhaps numbering less than a hundred,someone once mistook one at first glance for a wallaby in Mid-Sussex a while back and last but not least the red deer-like sika are apparently in East Sussex, i,ve never seen one but i,m told are in similar numbers as the water deer,i.e not many at all.As i,ve said already roe and fallow are the bread and butter for Sussex big cats.....

Big cats employ,to the best of my knowledge,3 main techniques to hunt deer that are ambush,stalking and coursing with the latter quite probably preceded by a "botched"stalk,it,is also highly likely that a big cat would actually come across a deer when it is pottering along the hedges and such like which is where the deer would be hiding up .The summer hunting consists of a degree of twilight stalking and i have several reports of big cats coursing deer at this time,very large big cats too which would suggest that it,s a tactic that has had a reasonable amount of success.So we have a big cat that is mooching in and out of cover gets wind of a deer or 2 either by scent,sight or sound then stalks then catches,if the stalk gets botched then it would give chase giving rise to witness reports of big cats coursing deer out of cover.Seeing as there are relatively fewer accounts of big cats stalking deer in these summer evenings it must be presumed that it most often goes on in the deep leaf laden cover of thick hedgerows or coppice type woods etc.Another reason why over manicured farms are not good for cats.Moonlit nights also offer good stalking oppurtunities and it,s thought that the finding one autumn a few years back near Lewes of a roe carcase in the middle of a stubble field was the result of an aborted stalk from the hedge with the roe fleeing into the field away from the cover that hid the cat and then followed a brief course with the cat catching it some 150 yards in the open,once into their stride though even a young roe should outstrip their feline pursuer,streamlined though they may be.There is no way that a big cat would spy it,s target in the distance and to then run it down cheetah-like,big cat versus deer courses have to be,in my mind,botched stalks or at the very least very close stalks then runs, a sort of cross between cheetah and leopard style.In other words the cat would of liked to of caught up with the deer easily to grab it,s throat but having been rumbled has decided to give chase knowing that this method has given it a degree of success in the past.I originally thought that accounts of big cats coursing deer through woods or whatever were young inexperienced cats trying their luck but evidence has shown in recent years that open ground chasing of deer has brought the cats that do this some success.....

Onto ambushing now as in winter the cover has all but gone from a lot of places which gave the cats the cover they needed to hide themselves which enabled the summer stalks and this is where most of the evidence comes from as to how big cats catch and feed,i,m not saying they don,t stalk in winter at all but when they do it,s mostly at night under cover of darkness.This technique is for obvious reasons practised also at night and in winter when the nights are longer as ambushing is very time hungry as far as the cats are concerned.Twilght is also shorter.The time of estimated death of ambushed deer has also been at night which completes this theory so far and also carcases have been found at dawn still wet and red.Anyway,we have a big cat emerging late into dusk in more often winter from it,s daytime lair such as dense scrub or woodland,anywhere undisturbed,it will then at some point perhaps in the early evening approach it,s ambush point which can be,like the picture, by a stream crossing,some cover by a deer path intersection in a wood,thick hedge bottom and will then lie in wait for it,s prey to show.Like i said virtually all carcases have been the younger ones so the cat would let the doe or elder one/s pass,likely sensing an animals size by hearing the difference between it,s hoof clatter perhaps then rushing up to the kid from it,s hiding place,attacking just to the side of the front,grabbing the underneath of the throat with it,s bottom jaw and so clamping the windpipe with it,s stronger,the lower one,jaw.This angle of attack occurs at just about every kill i,ve seen where i,ve been able to judge the,if any,ambush point,in other words 45degrees from the deers muzzle.As the deer came up the bank from the stream the big cat rushed out from under the fir tree at this angle to give it the optimum grip.Suffocation follows.Haemmoraging inside the neck merely points to the pressure involved, since bruising can only occur before death and wasn,t actually the cause of death.Simple lack of air was.The roe kid would scrape the ground with it,s hooves a bit but animals caught in this way are practically helpless and the big cat would only be straining against it,s weight a bit,this is shown by corresponding hoof and paw prints found at kill sites,personally i have never found evidence of momentous struggles between cat and deer .It would also appear by this evidence(the distance between cat print and front deer hooves(see evidence page on bigcatsinsussex.co.uk) that the cats keep themselves well away from the strangling deer unlike say leopards from documentarys who look very up close and personal,roe hooves are sharp and will cut quite badly .The same technique is carried out on fallow however with roe they are usually half carried around 15 yards away sometimes to more cover sometimes to seemingly nowhere in particular.Fallow,by their bigger size are just about always eaten where they were killed or at least within a yard or 2.

The now dead carcase is then opened up cleanly and precisely from the anus to the top of the rib cage,the colon,small and large intestines together with the paunch are taken out and often deposited a long distance away from the site,several 100 yards usually,as is the paunch.They could do this to put scavengers off the scent so they can eat without hassle.They will then presumably eat the offal first including the liver ,spleen,diaphram and heart is always gone as are the lungs,the ribs are eaten down nearly as far as the spine but usually not quite,the fillets are nibbled at and very occasionally shoulder meat is eaten as well as the muscle meat on the hind legs,strangely often the skin covering the belly is removed and carried off like the intestines but is sometimes eaten.The skeleton on a purely big cat consumed carcase should be whole and not separated.The overall appearance of the resulting leftover carcase is of a clean and slick operation as i,ve said many times before without the mess attributed to scavenger finds,it,s as if the body landed where it was found neatly butchered with barely no fur lying about,no blood,bile, nothing,at least this is what it,s like on fresh found bodys but as soon as foxes move in the chaos starts with roughly torn skin,jagged edges to bones,mess etc.etc.like the pic above.

In all about an estimated 15 to 20 lb of meat bone and offal is consumed,rarely 25lb and in one case of a fallow found in june 30+lb of flesh had gonebut it was thought in this case that a mother and cub were responsible.In the areas where a carcase is found in the presumed home range of the smaller big cats of around 22" at the shoulder(lab sized or bit bigger than a labrador)the lower end of sub 20lb is eaten but noticeably increases a bit in winter and where the massive 26" tall(alsation etc.sized cats)above 20 to 25lb is eaten.This is done by analysis of the estimated weight of the original complete deer carcase and digestive tracts minus the meat, bone etc. you get the picture.My previous estimation therefore of the mass the more commonly seen 22" tall big cats at around 50lb could well be a slight underestimate as a 50lb beast could not surely eat 20lb at one sitting,well my 45lb dogs can eat 15lb of meat if they get the chance to steal it and carnivores like wolves and big cats are used to eating one heck of a lot at a time then not for quite a while.Maybe the 22" cats weigh around 60lb.So,the 26"cats eating 25lb of flesh,ie.our fallow hunters should be weighing in excess of 80 lb but at 1/3 of it,s body weight in food maybe 90lb plus seems more accurate.Date compiled on wild tigers showed that they could eat 100lb of flesh at one sitting then fast for many days,at a rough estimation of their body weight say 500lb would give 1/5th of it,s body weight.If say 20lb of flesh had been consumed at 1/5th this would give the big cat in question a body weight of 100lb and this is at a height of 22" maybe 23" at best.This is massive by any degree and is not correlated by the more streamlined shape of British big cats as compared to their counterparts like African leopards.Of course,i have included each and every carcase and most have had less than 20lb eaten,Clearly,i have only scratched the surface here and more research needs to be done with accurate necropsy reports undertaken,preferably under recorded vetinarian supervision.I had always assummed that weight for weight British big cats are taller than leopards due to their visibly sleeker and lighter frames but their greater food consumption at one sitting may suggest other facts like they consume more at one sitting,this is a complex subject but i,m sure that once reasonably understood could give reasonable estimations of size of individual big cats guaged on how much they had consumed of a carcase,very interesting indeed i think.....

So much food from one kill is going to last a big cat quite a while and though it,s impossible to say that they haven,t snacked on smaller stuff in between ,in 2010 i found 2 carcases in neighbouring parishes(2 miles apart) with estimated times of death at being 5 to 6 days away from each other.The year before when snow was around kills were reported at the same place a week apart,week after week for many weeks which suggests that a major kill would last a cat from 5 to 7 days between meals.I know from experience that predators go on rolls,that is to say that they can exclusively target a certain prey item for extended periods using the same technique that has served them well,success breeds success so it,s by no means too much to theorise that a big cat would target deer week in week out until circumstances force it to change......


In writing this article i have compiled data from around a dozen most likely big cat deer kills found in Sussex that i have investigated over the years,i have ommited the info from plausible big cat kills from elsewhere in the country but realise that they may have slightly differing techniques to our Sussex cats.I have little 1st hand experience from elsewhere in the country....

Many thanks go to Andy at Westcountrydeerservices.co.uk for his estimations of flesh amounts eaten ......

Thursday 12 January 2012

Gloucestershire deer carcase swabbed for big cat DNA

When this story broke there was much excitement here in Sussex among my colleages in the big cat world,not because that there was a deer carcase found in Gloucestershire that was thought to of been likely killed by a big cat as it,s too far away for any of us to relate it to our own research on our counties cats nor the fact that there were actually 2 found within walking distance,less than a handful of miles from each other which is not unheard of either.It was that the National Trust in their infinite wisdom had called in a scientist to DNA swab the carcase in order to find big cat DNA.For a large organisation to take an interest is one thing and to actually ,presumably ,finance the operation is another.A fair few deer carcases have been found in recent years in Sussex with a reasonable number of them thought to of been killed by a big cat,i have published a selection of some of them on bigcatsinsussex.co.uk and yet none have even undergone vetinarian analysis let alone DNA swabbing/testing.The reasons are really down to cost as we are self financed but also an over reliance by myself of on the spot self analysis with photographic evidence taking as well as additional witness verification.Personally i am not out to prove the existance of big cats to anybody,everyone is entitled to their opinions.I do not seek to gain evidence therefore of big cats being in the wild but evidence of their behaviour which is what i am interested in.Of course i would like to know exactly whether we have a pure bred leopard killing a deer,a sub-species, a hybrid or whatever but have gone down the hair sample analysis route.Swabbing of a carcase,as i understand it,involves the gathering of saliva left by the animal consuming the body and this wet substance being what it is prone to rapid decomposition hence the quick deteriation of the DNA.When a plausibly big cat deer kill is found the whole area is analysed to guage how the deer was initually caught then consumed.Other death factors must be eliminated before a big cat kill can be supposed like traffic then scavenged,wounded(by gun or other hazard)then scavenged,dog attack even,believe it or not,hoaxed.After looking at quite a few deer carcases over the years first impressions are usually spot on as the kill scenes have related factors common to all.

Getting back to the West country deer kills i don,t want to shout down and spoil the party but the pictures i,ve seen through the media don,t point straight away as being big cat killed.The puncture wound for a start is something i just don,t come across,every big cat attributed deer kill has been aphyxiated not punctured by canine teeth(dogs can puncture necks though some do throttle too)there is a clear drag line from where presumably the deer was caught then consumed marked by bits of fur,foxes pull at a carcase to tear off flesh dragging it in the process.British big cats will lift up a deer by the neck once dead and effectively carry it a short way to consume it,usually to cover.A classic,uncontaminated big cat deer kill has the appearance of landing where it is having been neatly butchered.Lastly the whole carcase looks too messy,the bones edges are too jagged as is the fur line though the intestines are gone and a similar amount of flesh has gone the way a big cat would feed usually feed.Of course it could be a cat kill and foxes have moved in shortly afterwards i don,t know,it could be a feral dog kill,it could even be a young puma kill,all i have to go one are a couple of pictures and not even the 50 or so that i would of liked to look at.I haven,t examined the deer,others have like the esteemed big cat book author Rick minter and they thought it worthwhile to call in the scientific artillery and have it swabbed.It,s easy for me to sit here 150 miles away and say this and that when the only real way is to be there myself,put on the gloves and get messy,filming the whole process,taking pictures.


UPDATE;I have now seen pictures (kindly sent by Rick Minter)of when the carcase was far fresher and they do give the impression of being a big cat kill for the reasons as explained above ie.clean cut,no messy drag line etc.It is also quite clear that the deer carcase in question is that of a 1st year roe(kid) and most roe deer kills attributed to big cats are of kids.Unfortunately the ones available in the mainstream media were of a carcase several days old and scavengers had indeed got at it.....


The lab results should be publically available for view within a fortnight,half the country waits with baited breath.........


Big Cat May Be On The Loose In Gloucestershire After Mutilated Deer Discovery | UK News | Sky News http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16147397.html



http://uk.news.yahoo.com/deer-carcass-sparks-big-cat-inquiry-152424817.html

Sunday 1 January 2012

MOD & Police big cat body cover up/conspiracy theory

Rick Minters new big cat book "Big cats:facing Britains wild predators" has opened an old wound so to speak of a MOD cover up of important big cat evidence with mention of the big cat carcase seen taken into the RAF Fylingdales base in Yorkshire way back in 2004.I can,t remember which big cat researcher first broke the story then but i do remember the conspiracy theories that the story added weight to.Simply put,a carcase of a big cat was seen on the main road that goes past the base presumably hit by a car.The security guards at the gate called for a digger which took the body into the base and since then past employees have stated that the big cat carcase is being held there.This may or may not be true,i don,t know but i would of thought that if there was a carcase it would of been better for it scientifically to be transported to Porton Down in Wiltshire where the appropiate facilities would be available for any scientific analysis let alone proper (freezer)storage facilities.I realise that all major military bases have freezer capacity to store bodies in the case of say a terrorist strike or similar but it wouldn,t be the place to store the much sought after body of a big cat,in any case RAF Fylingdales is an extremely small base perched on the north Yorkshire moors engaging in space surveilance with a very small staff of highly specialised technical personal numbering around 80 backed up by a small civilian contingent such as cleaners,cooks etc and i don,t expect for one second that there is scope for animal research or any storage facilities there,the base used to be famous for the golfball shaped radar stations towering over the moor that are no longer there and the Google maps show a small research station coupled with the housing residences for staff,some from America as the satellite tracking info is shared with the USA.In a case such as this Porton Down or any of the murky private animal research labs would be Britains answer to Roswell not a small RAF base such as this.There are a multitude of private labs dotted around the country equipped to deal with any proposed big cat carcases but the many university research labs would ,i imagine be firmly kept out of the loop for they would be open to breaches of confidentiality quite easily.

In 2007 i teamed up briefly on a wildlife survey for a mammal study group with an extremely talented bio-chemist on board who had worked for some years at the research facilities at Porton Down,over a series of drinks one night which made him temporarily forget his signing of the Official Secrets Act,necessary for all government employees engaged in top secret activities and legally binding,he mentioned in some detail the fuss caused on the rare occasion when a big cat carcase was brought in to the department next to where he was working.His work capacity was to test the internal fluid contents such as blood,bile etc.The dates i was not told nor where the carcases came from apart from one which was called a Moor cat in his departement-speak,presumably being brought off one of the West country moors like Dartmoor.They were though variable enough in type and colour to be differentiated between each other.He backed up my ideas that the large cats seen all over the country were a sub-species of leopard and even went on to expand that there were 3 or 4 different types,whether or not i was being fed a pack of lies washed down with a lot of scotch is open to question however I might add to the broth that Porton Down has been involved in highly top secret affairs and is reputed to research into various diseases like rabies and anthrax having large and state of the art research facilities covering animal and bio-chemical study areas amongst others and is extremely secure with armed guards posted and no open media or public access whatsoever so impossible to verify any rumours of big cat bodies being kept there.The site is massive,consisting of as much underground as there is up top, at over 7000 acres is the size of a small town and so secretive that no single government department has complete knowledge of what goes on there,a lot of the multitude of various military and civil research departments are only interlinked with others in their immediate study areas.Porton Down being the prime candidate for holding any big cat carcases jumps to the top of the list when it is realised that in 1996 ufologist Tony Dodd speculated that alien bodies allegedly found at the site of a ufo crash in the Beryn mountains in Wales had been taken to Porton Down,the sheer impossibilty of access to the site to prove or disprove the theory only accelerated the conspiracy theories.If there ever was a big cat carcase that needed to be safely tucked away from prying eyes then there could be no safer place than this one,however in the past various big cats have been caught like Felicity the puma and a lynx in London,the latter of which ended up at the Natural History musuem i understand,these never were kept secret so why should one from Yorkshire be?As the majority of police forces recognise the existance of big cats in the wild any cover ups must be the result of knee jerk decisions taken at the time of events happening rather than overall national policy.The plot thickens.

Here in Sussex we have had our own cover-ups the most famous of which was when armed police were called to the sighting of a very large panther size black cat seen in bushes at the playing fields in Peacehaven just off the Tye.This was in the autumn of 2003 if i remember and the whole area was sealed off with the police helecopter hovering above,a team of armed to the teeth police officers scouring the area and another team as back up along the track in a van.Apparently the original witness had called the local police who on seeing the cat for themselves called for back up.On being questioned as to what the drama was about the police told they were after an escaped criminal!I have 3 witness statements that mention a large black cat being seen there as well as one from a council employee and was asked at the time to "keep quiet" to prevent public panic.To be honest i would of thought that an escaped criminal nutter would be more to be afraid of than a wild cat large as it may be.In fact there were and still are regular big cat sightings in the Telscombe and Peacehaven area but none since have caused such a government departemental panic.Actually,these days the police are more often seeking the help and intellectial input of big cat researchers such as myself and others up and down the country to clear up cases where damage to livestock or property for example may be the work of a big cat or some enterprising vandal or miscreant.The police sometimes receive calls from distressed members of the public who have seen a big cat for the first time and worry for the safety of themselves and children and so the police can be glad to put them in touch with someone who is used to dealing with the aftermath of a big cat sighting in all it,s forms.These days we as "big cat people" are treated as some kind of agency to be called upon at times of need and are usually glad to be of service in allaying peoples fears,this in turn frees up valuable police time to be spent on more pressing cases..

As for the conspiracy theory of bodies of big cats being swept up off the countries roads and whisked to shady government labs like Porton Down and others does sound a little far fetched at first,for a start the council employees charged with road kill picking up duties would have to be briefed and having worked at this capacity myself once i never heard of this being mentioned,i did once though hear of a very large cat being found squashed only to hear it had been unceremoniously put in a black plastic sack and sent off to the incinerator with the other bodies of wildlife and pets falling victim to traffic as contrary to often held opinion council workers can be hard pressed and over worked.However if any bodies of big cats were to be found reaching their way to say Porton Down by one way or another then it would normally be kept quiet as we,the British public,are undeniably kept as mushrooms by the state,in the dark and fed on s*@t,which is the principal reason why any conspiracy theory would materialise.We have the media to keep us informed on the goings on that might interest us and i use the term media in it,s loosest possible form to include as in this case book authors,bloggers,tweeters,big cat researchers etc......

Watch these spaces!





www.darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk/news/9444103.MoD_dismisses_big_cat_cover_up_claims


BIG CATS IN BRITAIN: MoD dismisses big cat cover up claims