I grew up in Perry County on 160 acres in the middle of Talladega NF. We moved from there to Gadsden in 1990 but kept the place and were usually back down there every weekend especially during deer season. We fed the deer in two different spots, both of which could be seen out the window of my room. One spot was in the back yard on the edge of the woods and about 60 yards from the house, and the other was in the upper end of the green field that was planted in the bottom below the house, about 150 yards from the house. I would always wake up at least once in the middle of the night and shine a spotlight out the window and see what was on the corn piles. The deer got used to it over the years I guess and it didn't seem to bother them at all. Well, one night I shined the back yard at about 2am and there was a lone spike in the back yard. I watched him for a couple minutes and he kept looking up the hill to my left in the woods. I shined the ligh up there and could see eyes a few yards back in the bushes. After a couple minutes of me switching the light back and forth between the two, the spike kind of eased off into the woods to my right and out of the woods to my left came the cat. In full stalk mode, squatted all the way down, he crept right straitght across the yard and right in where the spike had gone.

The whole scenario lasted about 6 or 8 minutes, but the cat was in the yard, in the open, 40 or 50 yards from me for about a minute or so. There is no doubt what it was. It was as plain as the one in the Field and Stream article posted above.

We also heard one scream one night when we got home from dinner. We got out and shut the car doors and one screamed across the green field and up on the side of a big hill a couple hundred yards away. No doubt in my mind what that was either. Made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I was also sitting in a ladder stand about 100 yards from where I saw the first cat one cold morning when 2 cubs walked right under my stand right at first light. I could hear the mother cat (I presume) walking parallel to them in some thick stuff behind me but I never saw her.

Another instance of a guy I took down there seeing a black one at 50 yards. He would not lie and said the cat was 7 or 8 feet long from nose to tail.

Never saw one track in the 20 years that I lived and hunted on this land. Can't explain that.