Australian Big Cat Research Group founder Vaughan King believes Yarra Ranges is big cat hotspot

BIG CAT hunter Vaughan King is so convinced the Yarra Ranges is home to the mystery felines he’s patrolling there for the next two weeks to try and prove it.

Australian Big Cat Research Group's Vaughan King. Picture: Lawrence Pinder

• Dozens claim to have seen big cats
• Another huge black cat sighted in Melb
• ‘Huge’ mystery cats spotted in the bush

IF THE elusive big cat exists, feline hunter Vaughan King is determined to find it.

The 30-year-old Queensland man is calling the Yarra Ranges home for a fortnight while he investigates the most recent reported sightings in Toolangi and Warburton East.

Mr King, a former Australia Zoo big cat handler, is on a mission, devoting the next 12 months to finding undeniable evidence that big cats exist in Australia.

He said there had been about three sightings in the Yarra Ranges reported to the Australian Big Cat Research Group in the past three weeks.

“I want to find blow-out-of-the-water, without-a-shadow-of-a-doubt evidence,” Mr King said.

“Getting decent, definitive footage is the only way you can prove it.”

Mr King believes mountain lions, leopards and jaguars are living across the country.

Many of the reports have described the animal as black, which Mr King said would be closer to Asian, rather than African big cats.

“It’s very rare to get a black leopard in Africa, but there are black cats in India and Thailand,” he said.

So far Mr King has visited Warburton with a man who claimed to see a big black cat on Mt Donna Buang Rd casually lying by the roadside.

The man likened the creature to an Asiatic black panther, Mr King said.

Mr King said the most likely explanation for the existence of big cats in Australia and Victoria was circus “accidents”.

Night vision of what could be a big cat wading in water in West Gippsland, taken in August 2016.

He said over the years which could have led to a number big cats being released into the wild.

“I’ve spoken to one circus who said there’d been a few accidents over the years,” Mr King said.

“They lost a bunch of animals down a hillside during a storm including some primates, and a bear, which they got back because it was tame, but the big cats they never saw again.”

Mr King said there had been people with private zoos and a NSW man with a collection who had admitted to releasing the animals into the wild.

But Mr King said and his family were considering moving to Victoria, the hot spot for big cat sightings.