EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated to reflect the fact the animal spotted by Mr. Black was a light brown color.

Have you ever seen a panther in Limestone County?

District 3 Commissioner Jason Black says he has.

Sheriff Mike Blakely said he saw one years ago as a kid. Someone sent him a video of a possible panther on a game camera several years back, but it turned out to be a bobcat.

Black claims he saw the light brown panther on Easter Sunday while turkey hunting in the Lester area.

“It was a huge cat; it was just there walking,” he said. “It scared me and my friend who were hunting together.”

He claims the large cat made an “unnerving sound” like a high-pitched moan.

“It was a sound like a big cat makes,” he said.

Whether or not it was a panther is up for debate. The News Courier attempted to talk to local wildlife officials, but none were available Friday afternoon.

David Rainer, a writer for the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, produced a lengthy report on the subject in October 2013. In it, he quotes Mark Sasser, a wildlife expert who says there has never been a melanistic (black) species of cougar in the wild or in captivity in Alabama.

“We’ve never been able to document any of the sightings, black or otherwise, through scats, sightings or photographs,” Sasser said in the report. “When someone says black panther to us, we, as biologists, think of the species. … They’re just thinking of a big, black cat. Cougar, jaguar, leopard − to them they’re all panthers.”

There is a history of panthers in Limestone County, however, even as far back as the 19th century. Limestone County Archivist Rebekah Davis shared a story about Robert Elliott who had two black panthers as pets. She said he caught them in the woods in the 1820s.

At that time, Limestone County had a log jail and a town full of unruly sorts who drank moonshine and bet on cockfights or fights between bears and dogs.

“With six taverns and no churches, they outgrew the jail pretty quick,” she said. “The county sold the log jail to Robert Elliott so they could build a new brick jail.”

Davis said Elliott moved the jail to the southwest side of the downtown Square in Athens and used it to house his panthers.

“At the time, when this was Chickasaw country, there was a lot of wildlife like elk, deer and bears,” she said.

John Tanner, Limestone County’s only vice presidential candidate, documented tales of Elliott’s panthers in the 1870s after talking to some old-timers. On a side note, Trinity school’s mascot was the panthers.

“They pulled that from their own county heritage,” she said.

Black said he had no intention of killing the big cat, simply because it didn’t pose a threat.

“There’s no panther season; you’re not supposed to harvest them,” he said. “Just because you see a black bear doesn’t mean you can kill it.”

To find the closest documented panthers, you’d have to travel to Florida. In 2008, however, a Georgia hunter killed one in Troupe County, west of Atlanta.

“Whether that animal moved that 600 or so miles in the wild or somebody got it as a cub and moved it up there, we don’t know,” Sasser said in Rainer’s report. “There’s every kind of speculation you can think of. Did it move 600 miles, crossing highways and was never seen? Well, I guess it’s possible.”

In the same report, Kelly Reetz, a naturalist at Gulf State Park, reported seeing a panther there.

“I know exactly what I saw,” she said.