A photograph taken on the fringe of Peak District this week reveals large paw prints – with hypothesis they might belong to a giant cat.
Watch extra of our movies on Shots!
and stay on Freeview channel 276
A landowner has been left shocked after he noticed huge footprints at his personal golf course on the fringe of the Peak District, which canine homeowners don’t have access to.
Suspecting that it might probably be a giant cat, which might journey from a ‘large’ woodland behind the golf course, that connects to Peak District, he captured the paw prints earlier this week and shared them with the Derbyshire Times.
We have approached Rick Minter, the Big Cat Conversations podcast host and writer of Big Cats Facing Britain’s Wild Predators, to ask for his skilled opinion on the mysterious paw prints.
Rick mentioned: “The current soggy conditions mean that it’s a good time to spot animal tracks and see their routes. The ground is so soft that many animal footprints are deeper than usual and some are showing slippage. Obviously people interested in big cats are always on the lookout for their potential prints, as one of the key signs of their presence.
“Cat prints tend to have a leading front toe, a wide splay of the toes, and a very large back plantar pad or heel pad. That back heel pad is proportionately much bigger than a dog’s one for example, and it’s a slightly different shape, although the precise outline doesn’t always show up unless you get a perfect print.The wide splay of the toes on a cat print gives rise to the saying about the overall shape: ‘if it’s round it ain’t a hound’, but that’s a bit too simplistic.
“The presence of claw signs in a print is not a black and white rule either, although it is rare in a cat print. For example I have adopted a local stray cat who has two claws out on both back feet, and older cats can lose the retraction of some claws. Also cats may use claws on some surfaces to avoid slippage. When they do show up in a print, cat claws are usually more needle like and not blunt like those of most dogs.
“On these particular prints I cannot see any cat-like features. If we get snow as forecast, there will no doubt be more prints to discuss. Snow can mean that prints expand a bit, so most tracks will look bigger in snow, but again it’s a good time to see the habits of our local wildlife.”
This comes after sightings of massive cats in Derbyshire and the Peak District over the previous few years. In July 2023, Bernadette Hall and her husband found bones in a tree within the Stanton Moor space and Rick instructed the Derbyshire Times the skeletal stays are potential indicators of black leopards within the space.
A couple of weeks later Paul Stocks, and his two sons Jacob, 20 and Ben, 23, from the Mystic Paranormal UK group, determined to search for the leopard within the Stanton Moor space and had been left shocked after they noticed a ‘big black cat’ simply six ft away from them.
The males described the animal as a really massive, silky black cat with a really lengthy swooping tail. They mentioned it was a lot larger than a fox and it moved precisely like the large cats you see on TV.
In 2022 extra sightings had been reported – Josh Williams and his buddy Ben had been walking from Mermaid’s Pool on Kinder Scout in direction of Edale in September, returning home after an evening of untamed tenting within the Peak District. They had simply handed Jacob’s Ladder when the pair noticed and recorded what they thought was a wild cat with a ‘long black tail’ in a close-by discipline.
A couple of weeks earlier, YouTuber Novice Wildcamper who travels across the UK and information movies of his tenting journeys heard a growling sound whereas visiting White Edge. The video which he printed on his channel had over 600 feedback with many individuals saying that the growl sounds precisely like a giant cat equivalent to black leopard or lynx.
In November 2022, Gareth Brimelow was walking by the River Dane within the Peak District, on the trail to the bridge at Three Shires Head – the place the borders of Derbyshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire meet, when he seen quite a lot of carcasses alongside the route, in addition to what he thought may very well be the paw print of a giant cat.
More sightings have been reported in Derbyshire since 2014 – together with in Dunston Moor, St Helen’s, Eckington, Ticknall and extra.
