State wildlife officials now say that what local experts thought were the footprints of a large cat near Youngs Road were actually bear tracks.

Local Wildlife Control agent Paul Tillman said that Jonathan Shaw, an expert with the North Carolina Wildlife Commission, called him after looking at the photographs of the prints early Thursday afternoon and said that the tracks belong to a black bear.

Shaw stated in an e-mail that there are several reasons that the tracks likely belong to a bear.

"There are five toe prints not four. ... The width and arc of the pad are characteristic of a bear," he stated. "The overall shape of the track is not circular like a cat track would be. ... There have been known bears in the area, there have not been any known big cats in the area."

Claudia Coleman, the woman who first found the tracks on her land off Youngs Road, wasn't buying that.

"Bear tracks leave a claw," she said. "Anybody with a 10th-grade tracking book can tell you that."

Tillman said that sometimes bear tracks do not have visible claws and that he was going to collect the traps that he had laid out because they might be harmful to a bear.

Though he initially said that the tracks pointed to a big cat such as a cougar, he said that he has no problem believing the state experts.

"They can use their computers a lot better than I use mine," Tillman said.

Black bears are native to this area, but they are rare. There are probably only 12 to 14 black bears in the entire county, Tillman said.

Alicia Rosser, who lives on Youngs Farm, lost a horse about five weeks ago because something spooked it and it broke its leg. She was not relieved to hear the state said that there may be a bear in her area.

"I'm shocked," she said. "Good grief. Oh, my word. That's incredible. Wow. I'll certainly be keeping my animals in at night."

As was expected, when word came out that there might be a large cat on the loose, several people wrote to The Pilot to report sightings.

Kathy Owen wrote that a large cat of some sort attacked her dog in her backyard. She said that the attack promoted quarantining of her two dogs for six months and she and required her and her daughter getting two months of rabies shots.

Butch Abling said that he spotted a large cat headed into the woods about a year ago off Plank Road on Fort Bragg. Kenneth Cutrer said he spotted a large cat on Youngs Road in June.

Just because the state says the tracks belong to a bear doesn't mean that people are imagining things, Tillman said. He called for people to try to photograph the animal if they have a sighting. That would provide even better proof than the track.

"It was a bear print," he said. "That's not saying, by any means, that some nut case has not let a cat loose."

Matthew Moriarty may be reached at 693-2479 or by e-mail at moriarty@thepilot.com.