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This photo was taken on a cell phone by Ellen Parks, who lives off Roundtop Road in southern Gilmer County. Parks met with the reporter of this article and shared her phone’s data. The date (June 25) and time (2:36 p.m.) stamps were verified, and the reporter also saw the tree and surrounding area where the photo was taken. The phone showed other data such as the camera’s f-stop (aperture) setting and has a standard 28mm lens. In the photo above, Parks zoomed out to 130mm, according to the data on her phone
When Ellen Parks heard a neighbor’s cat crying outside her home in Creekside Estates, she ventured outside to see what was wrong.
“It was way up in the top of a tree, and at that point I didn’t see the big cat,” she said of an alleged panther on a lower limb of the tree. “I began to clean up some limbs out of the yard, and the dog was barking like crazy. I looked up and ‘bout had a heart attack. That thing was in a limb not far above my head — it was sitting so still I hadn’t even noticed it.”
Parks said she retreated to the ramp leading to her back porch and snapped a photo with her cell phone before going inside.
“I was so nervous I don’t even remember if I zoomed in or not,” she said. “Later, I realized why the small cat had climbed to the top of the tree. It was crying because it was scared and trying to get away.”
Parks allowed a reporter to look at her phone when he visited the home she shares with Debra Belcher, and the date and time stamp read June 25, 2022, at 2:36 p.m. More data showed the phone’s f-stop (aperture measurement that allows light in) and also the lens size, which was 28mm. However, the photo of the cat pegged the lens at 130mm, showing she did zoom in.
Parks texted the photo to Belcher after she took it, and after she got off work Belcher began to do some investigating around their home off Roundtop Road in southern Gilmer County. Behind an outbuilding, she found large tracks in the mud that were similar to those she located online for a panther. She’s convinced that’s what it was.
“Ellen is not one to lie or make stuff up; I believe her when she told me what she saw. This photo was taken right outside our house and is definitely not a house cat,” Belcher said in response to some people’s doubts about the photo.
Adam Hammond, a biologist with the Wildlife Resources Division of the state Department of Natural Resources, said the agency does get reports “periodically” of sightings of panthers in the Georgia mountains.
“I haven’t personally taken any in awhile,” he said of those reports. “But we do try to look into them when those come in just to make sure they’re legit. (There’s) probably several things going on in most (sighting) situations. I’ve been doing this for a long time, working up here since ‘03 and I’ve checked on tons of those over the years — (and) never verified a one. It doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen or that somebody couldn’t have an actual situation where a cougar was either released or got away. There are captive animals around, and so it’s not impossible for somebody to have one escape and be seen.”
Close encounter
Beth Miller had a close encounter with a panther near the Cohutta Wilderness area two summers ago that she described.
“It was in June or July, and I was heading up to the lake (Conasauga) on top of Grassy (Mountain) with my boys,” she said. “I stopped to stretch my legs for a moment at one of the pulloffs where the creek is about 6 feet from the road bed. I walked down to the creek and heard a small crack like a twig being stepped on, and looked up the bank on the opposite side of the creek — because it was also prime time for bears to be out — and saw it. I instantly knew what it was due to having seen them at the Jacksonville, (Fla.), Zoo and at different big cat refuges. I literally went into panic mode and was extremely glad that the boys were still in my (Ford) Escape. At that moment, I was quite concerned as to whether or not it was going to jump down the bank, and quickly rushed back to my truck and left.”
Jennifer Stover lives on Highway 52 West, but said she saw a panther on three different occasions when she lived in the Roy Road area.
“I clearly saw one on Big Creek (Road) jumping up and going into the woods at my grandparent’s house,” she recalled. “My grandmother had a really long gravel driveway, and at the end of the driveway where the mailbox was, she always kept a large cleared area with a huge flower bed for everyone to see as they passed by. The cat was in the flower bed, and when I slowed to go up her driveway, it saw me and pounced up into the woods. This was late evening but before dark and I clearly saw it; there was no mistaking it for anything else.”
Stover remarked it’s “funny” that people don’t understand why she doesn’t have photos of the big cats she saw in the early 2000s.
“Back then we didn’t go around with an iPhone glued to our hands 24/7, so no, unfortunately I don’t have any pictures,” she said.
Until earlier this year, Rachel Chandler lived on Crossroads Church Road near the Murray County line.
“Since 2015, I saw more than one there — and I’m old enough to know the difference between them and a bobcat and a house cat,” she said. “If you follow that road on around, there’s a bridge they’ve redone. There’s some cattails out there where you’ll see one sometimes, where the little bridge is. I’ve seen two different ones for a fact. Is it the same one I’ve been seeing every year? I don’t know. I just know there’s been two different ones for sure.”
Susan Gaddis lives on Highway 282 West, and said a friend who lives on Old Federal Road, south of the where the thoroughfares intersect, asked her to come visit and see if the sound she was hearing at night was a panther.
“She and her neighbors heard something and it had their horses a nervous wreck,” she said of the incident 10 years ago. “It was the same sounds I had heard as a child out on Talking Rock Creek (in Pickens County). We never saw anything, but it is a sound you will never forget — like a woman screaming. She eventually had to move her horses so they could calm down and have peace.”
‘People see things’
Hammond noted some states don’t require the same level of wild animal permitting that Georgia does.
“You can buy these (cougars) in some places,” he said. “And then, too, sometimes people see things that are hard to explain … a lot of times when a picture comes in, we usually run the pictures through a pretty intensive search online and just try to find the picture. Because it seems like a lot of times people call in and say ‘I got a cougar on my trail cam’ or whatever. Half the time it’s their brother or their cousin or their buddy — often they don’t even claim the picture — and they’ll say (the other person) got it on his trail camera. We’ll look into it, and most of the time, a pretty quick search will find it (taken elsewhere).”
But that’s not always the case, Hammond noted.
“There’s some times where that doesn’t happen,” he continued. “So if we don’t rule it out with something like that, we’ll look into it further. Sometimes we’ll do a site visit and get out there and walk around with them.”
Hammond said at one time he and a colleague investigated what initially appeared to be a legitimate photo of a cougar, but when size context was included it turned out to be a large house cat.
“We’re not out there trying to say everybody’s lying,” he added. “(We’re) happy if someone has an actual picture or sightings to evaluate those, but all too often people hear something and they say that was a mountain lion that I heard in the dark at my house on this date. I’m a wildlife biologist, but I can’t tell you every sound that I hear if it’s a mountain lion or a female mountain lion. (But) could it have been a bobcat or a gray fox or two house cats mating? There’s just a lot of things going on there. If you don’t lay eyes on it, it’s not as simple and as cut and dried.
“We just try and investigate things, but in 20-plus years I’ve never had a confirmed sighting.”
Daniel Chambers is also doubtful, and called the photo from late June on Roundtop Road “a common house cat.”
“If that were a mountain lion, then that limb it’s on is the size of a large tree trunk,” he said. “That is definitely a tail behind it; it has the flow and texture of a tail, and the size is proportional for it to belong to the cat in front of it.”
Hammond studied the photo and noted the cat’s pointed ears do not resemble those of a panther.
“(It) kinda looks like a hemlock tree, and given what you said about the photo information, it probably was taken on site,” he said. “If you could stand where the photographer stood to take the photo, the branches and limbs that frame the animal might be useful to give a size estimate for the cat. Just looking at the branch it’s on and the distance out the limb — again using the other branches to guide you — I’m going to guess you could determine the size of the animal pictured. It doesn’t look quite right to me to be a mountain lion.”
Ryan Hensley lives in Creekside Estates and is being cautious after seeing the photo and talking to his neighbors who shared it.
“I’m not allowing my son to go down to the creek, at least until fall or winter and not by himself,” he said. “We go down there to get firewood, and I’ll bring a gun with me like I normally do because we’ve had bears too.”
Chandler said the presence of the big cats has been “a long-going argument.”
“People want to argue because they haven’t ever seen one on their trail cam,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”
Belcher said her roommate has placed six trail cams around their property.