A man has stumbled across what is believed to be the elusive Canterbury black panther.
Sam Williamson was walking his dog yesterday afternoon when he saw an extremely large feline in the wilderness.
"I spotted it down at the Waimakariri River," he told the Herald.
Williamson managed to catch the cat on camera, and said the animal was the size of a "medium dog".
"It was sitting over in the trees. I thought 'what's that?'. I thought it was a dog at first then I saw it take off," he said.
"I thought 'it's not moving like a dog', so I pulled over to have a better look at it and tried to get closer to get a photo but it then just took off and ran away.
"It was pretty out of it. I'm still not entirely sure what it was.
"I've never seen a cat that big before."
However, park rangers dismissed the black panther theory, telling Williamson it was just a feral cat.
The legend of the Canterbury panther took flight in 2001 when Marcus Ewart and David Tutton reported seeing a large, black panther-like cat near Alford Forest. Two years later the cat appeared again, this time spotted by Peter and Toni May in the Ashburton Gorge.
A month later, in October 2003, truck driver Chad Stewart was startled by a huge black cat in the Mayfield foothills.
Extensive searching from air and on land found no trace of the mysterious animal. In the years that followed numerous people reported seeing a similar creature lurking on mid-Canterbury farm land.
The Canterbury panther was then spotted in September last year near Eiffelton by local Ange Montgomery.
She described the animal as "bigger than a Labrador dog and smaller than a cow".
Black panthers have an average life expectancy of 12 to 17 years.
