I believe half the confusion is that when a BIG cat is spotted in the wild, people simply don't know what they are called (officially). Cougar, Puma, Panther, Mountain Lion, Catamount and who knows what else? Heck, I've seen four in the wild ... 2 in California, 1 in Nevada and 1 in Florida. The Florida cat was easy, I simply assumed it was a "Florida Panther". The one's I saw "out west", I simply called Mt. Lions ... I honestly have no clue what the differences are. I suppose I could study up on it and figure it out.

The cat I spotted here (Florida) was just 30 minutes north of me. I had my business then and I was sent out to a small land clearing site on the outskirts of "The Green Swamp" to clean a piece of heavy equipment they had to perform maintenance on. I had to travel down a dirt road for about a mile off the highway (Hwy. 471). On the way back out, a "panther" crossed the (dirt) road right in front of me. I got an excellent look at the cat as it crossed not 20-30 feet in front of my truck and was moving fairly rapidly, but not overly hurried. I wanted to take pics of it's tracks, but that was the pre-cell phone camera days and I had no camera with me. What concerned me the most was it appeared emaciated. VERY skinny. The crappy part, I was all excited about spotting one there and immediately reported it (via cell phone) to the Florida Fish & Game Dept. What surprised me was they acted like they could give a rat's ass. Sort of a "Oh, yeah, ok" response. They didn't even care for the details on exactly where I was. Now that I think about it, I guess I'm not really sure what their response SHOULD have been ... I just expected a bit more interest I suppose.