(Photo courtesy Valerie Abbott)
Cougar (Puma concolor), including black panthers, are fairly commonly seen in Illinois.  I am assuming black panthers are a melanistic color phase of the cougar. My purpose here is not to delve into the political aspects of these wonderful animals but provide information about possible misidentification of their vocalizations.
There is something in the woods of Illinois that screams. What that animal is can only be sorted out by comparing recordings with known animals. Although I have had four sightings of cougar in Central Illinois, Â I have yet to get a good recording.
For  a previous post about cougar please see: Big Cat Crossing
Other articles concerning Illinois cougars include:
Wildcat scare keeps Palmyra pupils inside / DNR officials doubt it
I am doing recordings in several areas with frequent cougar sightings so I hope to have sound files of these large cats posted soon.
Copyright 2004-2010 by Stan Courtney. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
I'm 51, an avid outdoorsman my whole life in both N. Alabama/Tennessee and central Florida. For years, myself & many others, kept disputing biologists' claims that the Florida Panther's range is only in S. Florida. We have heard their screams for years while camping near Bull Creek Sanctuary. ( Osceola county). The screams were rather close, sounded just like a woman screaming bloody murder. This is the scariest sound you can imagine. In recent years, various homeowners in Palm Bay Fl. (Brevard County) FILMED & PHOTOGRAPHED panthers on their property, often toting a freshly killed small domestic pet. The biologists had to recant their claims. We were vindicated.
I don't believe cougar scream "like a woman". With the hundreds of cougar in zoos and private collections there are no audio recordings showing that they make that type of a sound. I suspect that the real culprit is a sasquatch. Cats don't sound like people but sasquatch do.