LITTLE RIVER-ACADEMY — The last mountain lion killed in Bell County is said to have met his end near Holland when a farmer with a .22-caliber rifle shot the big cat in a chicken coop more than 40 years ago.

Since then, area farmers and ranchers regularly report seeing mountain lions or “black panthers” on their property. Bell County trapper Gary Silvers estimates he receives 20 to 30 calls a year about mountain lion sightings or kills in a year. He remains adamantly skeptical.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” he says. “I grew up hunting and fishing in this county. I’ve been a county trapper here for about 24 years. Not once have I ever seen a mountain lion or any sign of a mountain lion around here. Not once.”

The culprit, Silvers says, turns out to be a large bobcat, a wild dog or coyotes.

“There’s never been anything to make me even consider the possibility that something might have been killed by mountain lions,” he says.

That opinion is contrary to that of some landowners who say, “I know what I saw.” Reports to Silvers and Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens come from different parts of the county, from the blackland prairie farms around Zabcikville, Red Ranger and Sparks to the woods and hills around Killeen and Stampede Creek.