Hi - 

I moved to Boone in 2004 and had grown up in a very rural area of Mississippi.  It was not unusual for us to hear panthers/cougars at night or to find remains of cattle or deer that had been attacked by them.  I recall very clearly coming home late from a night class and seeing one stroll in no hurry across our road in the light of my headlights.  
We moved to Snaggy Mountain Boulevard in Boone in 2005 after renting elsewhere in the county for a year.  We were frequently visited by bears and coyotes and would occasionally see a portion of a track in the mud or snow that didn't quite look like a canine paw print.  In about 2010/11, our neighbors got a miniature donkey to help "mow" their yard and kept it in the back yard with a pretty sizeable old metal building as its shelter.  One winter afternoon I returned from work to find the neighbors and a representative from the state there examining what was left of the donkey inside the shelter.  Apparently when the donkey had gone into its shelter earlier in the day or morning, something seemed to have leaped from above and killed it before eating parts of it.  There were clear pawprints in the snow that looked much more feline and were about 3-4 inches across (estimating in my memory).  The person from the state wildlife office said that he agreed it looked like a panther kill but that panthers were extinct in NC, so he couldn't put that down on the paperwork.  Instead he put something else, like coyotes, but I hadn't ever heard of coyotes attacking livestock at the tops of their shoulders.  That wasn't what they did to cattle growing up.  
It didn't take long before other neighbors started hearing and then sharing stories of their own.  A friend up the road told us that before we bought our house, he saw a panther cross the road and run through the yard of our eventual house.  Another reported paw prints in the mud.  Even I had seen three long tailed tawny cubs - best I could tell from afar! - in the road one afternoon.  They quickly scattered as I hesitated, aware that a mother could be close.  They sure weren't dogs or bobcats. 

After the Cottages got built, the sightings and pawprints and findings of occasionally curious scat stopped.  

Hope these stories help with your collection! 

Tracie Salinas

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