Charles Wooten’s 2009 photograph of a mystery cat.
May 17, 2009
Charles Wooten’s 2009 photograph of a mystery cat.
Charlie Wooten [of Isle of Wight, Virginia] has been a hunter since 1976 and has seen more than his fair share of wild animals.
His four trail cameras usually catch the occasional black bear roaming around between May and September, but when one of his cameras snapped a photo of an apparent cougar on his property in the Isle of Wight Courthouse area, he wasn’t sure what he saw.
“I’m no expert,” he said, “but it doesn’t look like a bobcat to me.”
Wooten, who primarily hunts white-tailed deer and turkeys, showed the photo to 20 fellow hunters, and “19 of them said it wasn’t a bobcat,” he said.
Wooten’s big cat photo awaits confirmation, but similar sightings in South Hampton Roads aren’t without precedent.
Aaron Proctor, a district wildlife biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said the department is working to verify Wooten’s reported cougar sighting. Proctor said the department gets about six to 12 big cat sightings on the Southside a year.
The department allowed big cats to be pets 15 to 20 years ago, Proctor said, but has since no longer does.
Eric Gillard, Daily Press, May 14, 2009.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Alien Big Cats, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Mystery Cats, Photos