Capcom's offering a £50,000 prize to anyone that can offer conclusive evidence for the existence of ten real-world monsters. I’m pretty strapped for cash so, with that in mind, I traveled to South-West England in order to meet a bona fide cryptozoologist, learn the tricks of the trade and bag myself a beast.
Unfortunately for me and my wallet, my boss said that I had to actually do some work while I was away. So, with some reluctance, I present to you a foolproof guide to becoming a real-life monster hunter.
Meet Jon Downes, director of The Centre for Fortean Zoology. Jon has spent over 25 years travelling across the world on the hunt for mysterious animals, last year discovering scientifically verified leopard hair in Devon, England (for context, the scariest thing you’d typically find in Devon is a village without easy access to a cinema).
Big cats of any kind were our target on the hunt, as the South-West is a hotspot for sightings (most famously of the Beast of Bodmin). Jon would become my guide and mentor as we went on the hunt for whatever the countryside could throw at us.
You need to know what you’re up against before you head out hunting. Jon gave us an exhaustive discussion of how, why and where big cats might have ended up in rural England before letting us anywhere near the woods. While some more fanciful hunters think beastly cats have quietly lived in England since it snapped off of mainland Europe during its original Ice Age Brexit, Jon has a somewhat more realistic theory.
The UK passed a Dangerous Wild Animals Act in 1976, banning unlicensed ownership of exotic pets - big cats were apparently more common than you’d think. Many owners simply released their poorly-chosen pets into the wild, and Jon believes a few became breeding pairs, maintaining a low population (he estimates around 200 wild big cats throughout the UK) ever since, making them hard to spot and harder to catch.
You don’t just need to know where your prey might be, but how it would use that area. We head first to Powler’s Piece, an area of isolated woodland that’s the subject of not only big cat sightings, but UFOs, ghosts and a really spooky snowman in the shape of a fertility symbol that Jon’s wife found once.
Powler’s Piece is extremely densely wooded, rendering the whole area night-time dark, even at noon. It’s a theoretically perfect place for shy big cats, but certain areas have been cleared for walkers - these clearings make ideal hunting grounds, with excellent sightlines to spot passing prey from the dark wood beyond. Jon immediately points out an area (granted, it is the car park we arrived in) and we begin our search. As you can see from the picture above, I got slightly lost, and things got spooky.
In the case of big cats, the easiest trace (as seemingly proved by Jon’s own leopard discovery) would be hair left behind as they hunt, whether rubbed off against trees, or snagged on thorny undergrowth. We fanned out through the woods, looking at what we assumed was cat-height for any hair we could find. As it turns out, spider-webs look a lot like hairs, they are everywhere, and I hate them now.
Once you do find a hair, make sure to grab it and bag it without touching it with your bare hands - the oil from your skin will apparently make DNA analysis near-impossible. Please refer to the picture above for a suggested tool and cool face to make when on a hair expedition.
Unless you’re one of those mad Bigfoot guys from TV, it’s fairly likely you don’t actually want to kill or harm the monster you’re searching for, so more devious traps than “spike pit” or “elephant gun” will be required. In our case, we kept things simple - we laid an inch-thick circle of sand in a possible hunting spot to catch footprints, topped with some meaty offcuts and, appropriately, cat food. As you can see, it looks irresistible.
In the trees nearby, we strapped up infra-red cameras, primed to take a picture at the hint of a movement. One pointed towards the trap, another into the forest behind it, in the hope of snapping any stalking beasties who might approach at the smell of delicious Wiskas. All we had to do was wait.
Perhaps my biggest tip as a fledgling monster hunter - prepare for disappointment. Arriving the next day, our meat treat was gone, but we found what Jon thought were both dog and fox tracks instead of leopard prints. I noticed three long scratches that looked to me like they could be from a baby Godzilla of some kind, but Jon was having none of it.
Our trail cameras were of even less use - a branch had fallen in the way of one, and the other took one picture of some mist. Another useful tip - don’t be deterred. Jon immediately had us head to a nearby moor which had also had big cat sightings. The search continued - and reaped rewards.
This is probably the least relateable of my tips, but I really recommend at least trying to have a skeleton discovered in a ditch while on your hunt. It’s extremely exciting. While talking to Jon, someone literally sprinted past us shouting “a skeleton! A SKELETON!” and both of us lost our minds for a few seconds. After mistaking the back of the skeleton’s head for the front and assuming its neck bones were some weird teeth (I am not a scientist), it became apparent that this was a sheep or deer.
While most of its body was intact, its leg bones were found about 10 feet away. Hairs were found in several locations nearby. Jon was immediately convinced that its snout had been mauled, as if it had been bitten down on - a genuine killing tactic used by big cats to suffocate and weaken their prey. I’m a little less certain on the cause of death, given that this skeleton was found directly next to a relatively busy road, but I’m not the expert, am I?
Once you’ve found what you think is monster evidence, it’s time to bring in the experts. Our hair samples and images of the skeleton have been sent to a DNA analysis lab in Denmark, who’ll return their results in the coming weeks. If it all goes well, this entire article could be moot, because I’ll be £50,000 richer and living on an island or something.
Honestly, even if it all comes back saying we just found a load of sheep wool, the skeleton was just another sad car accident statistic, and English leopards are still a mystery waiting to be solved, I can honestly say that monster hunting was some of the most fun I’ve had on a weekend for some time. As silly as it can feel, having the woods, countryside and even the occasional car park turned into a potential home of mysteries has a strange and wonderful effect, like you're looking at the world through new eyes. I wholeheatedly suggest you try it out. Go find a Mongolian Death Worm, people.
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