I can tell you this much - Sanderson Texas (hells half acre ) has Big Cats..long as a Toyota pick up,Fredericksburg has them and so does Coleman - all 3 of those places I deer hunted and all 3 had Kittys..The local game warden in Fredericksburg told us -no way- and we kept telling him - B/S -we saw him.Then a guy turns around and snares one on a fence line..So much for that.Game Warden didnt have anything to say after that.I will try and find the picture of the Mt Lion .As for Panthers- yep -they are here too..
I would love to see the pic RodNGun... I have an old polaroid snapshot around here (somewhere in the back of a desk drawer) of a smaller sized black panther looking cat that an old buddy of mine shot. The fellow that shot it raised fighting game chickens and had them tethered out in those little A-frame looking shelters. He said this black cat would regularly get about two a week of the tethered roosters and he finally got the cat cornered inside of a conventional styled hen house when he shot him. This was at least 20 years ago and it was pretty big news around here at that time. The Sherman Texas newspaper even ran a little story on it with a picture. I'll scan that picture and post it if I can find it. The game warden stated that the species of the cat was a lynx but I don't think so. This one weighed around 35 pounds or so and had a tail longer than it's body. It's fur wasn't solid black but had a sort of mottled pattern to it that was so dark it all looked pretty much solid black from a distance.
back in the 80's a man in kerville that had a cafe had one as a pet keep him in a sectioned off part of the cafe, had to get rid of him after he was a year old couldn't afford to feed him. we also used to hunt just south of uvalde near the white rock mines and there were plenty of big cat's there, hell we have them here in east texas, one of the local taxidermist killed two in one weekend on the angelina river bottom has them full body mounted at his shop.