The above photo was sent to me by the person who found this muntjac carcass in the area around Bildeston in Suffolk in the first days of 2025. They requested anonymity and that I be vague about the location.
I ran these photos past zoologist Richard Freeman, zoology director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology. He commented: “The deer is typical cat kill with the bones left mainly untouched and the soft organs gone.”
The nose bitten off is a characteristic of attacks on prey by pumas, and – less commonly – leopards.
The witness also photographed some footprints found locally, which are clearly from some kind of cat. But these are only 5cm across, so too small for a big cat. Richard Freeman thought these photos of the prints were “too small to be an adult lynx” but they could be from a “from a savannha cat, a serval / domestic hybrid, though this is unlikely to be what killed the deer.”