CARL WRITES: Doncaster - 6/11/19

Doncaster Free Press

(Wed 6th November 2019)

The “huge five ft panther” allegedly spotted prowling fields near Doncaster’s Keepmoat Stadium by Mrs. Jessica Clark, is not the first time there have been panther sightings reported in and around Doncaster.

As recently as January 2017, Alan Tomlinson reported that he had observed a “panther” near to junction one of the M180, close to Doncaster services. And there have been other sightings in recent years.

Mrs. Clark was travelling along White Rose Way towards Doncaster from the M18 around 4.30pm on Sunday 3rd November.

The Warmsworth mum of two said:

“When I realised what I’d seen, I just started panicking. It was massive and very muscular and definitely a big cat. It was quite frightening to see something like that up close.”

“I first saw it as we approached in the car”

“As we got closer, I thought it was a dog or something. But when we were right at the side of it, I could clearly tell it was a big cat.”

“It looked about 5ft tall [?] and I could see it over the grass. You could see its tail, its face, its muscular legs, everything.”

“It was moving slowly, like it was stalking a rabbit or something like that.”

Also in 2017, trucker Graham Byram said he spotted a trio of highway maintenance workers struggling to lift a large dead cat-like animal onto the back of a lorry on the A1 near Harworth.

I expect Mrs. Clark’s sighting to be quite genuine, though a height of 5ft is obviously an overestimation. The simple fact that she slowly approached the animal and got to within a reasonable distance suggests her interpretation of the observation could potentially be accurate.

She described a highly “muscular” animal and therefore is very unlikely to have misidentified a fox or some other known British animal.

Describing a muscular appearance, as opposed to the now well known tail shape (a hooked tail) often reported in the media, is a far more reliable feature, which might imply a genuine encounter with a big cat. Mrs. Clark also appears to have not simply jumped to erroneous conclusions, in that she originally assumed the animal observed to be a dog or something, and only arrived at the conclusion of the animal being a Felid, when she approached within metres of it.

However, this is a reasonibly built up area and therefore I personally doubt whether this animal permanently resides in this locale, and, more likely, represents an extended territorial range, possibly even overlapping territories.

This might well be a genuine encounter!