Background to Exmoor Beast
Over the last 15 years there have been numerous sightings of the so called Exmoor Beast.This four-legged enigma has been followed by journalists, farmers and hunters alike but no-one has yet managed to track the beast down. Sightings of similar animals have cropped up all over the North Devon area from Combe Martin, South Molton and even Georgeham and Braunton have all had their fair share of 'sightings'. It is not just Exmoor that is plagued by beasts - similar reports have come from Bodmin moor.
The beast is described as a catlike creature shaped like a puma and jet black. It was the slaughter of 80 lambs and sheep around South Molton in 1983 which led to the theory about the beast. It seemed the only likely explanation to the baffling claw marks and tracks left from the scenes of the killings.
The likelihood of it being a wild cat began to take root after various sightings by eye witnesses whose stories all seemed to corroborate. All the people described a large cat around 4 ft long and 2 ft high with an extremely long tail, and a black coat. However much people may have speculated about what kind of animal it was, the slaughter of sheep continued on and around Exmoor. The number of sheep and lambs have cost Exmoor farmers money. The sheep were killed in a distinctive way with the lower jaw and shoulder and foreleg missing.
The phenomena of the Beast of Exmoor has caused nationwide interest not only from believers but also from sceptics who have tried tracking down the beast. Various methods have been used over the years. In 1986 a local man, Nigel Brierly of Bishops Nympton, who had been studying the initial killings analysed some hairs found on the sides of dead sheep - he identified these as coming from a lynx. But the Ministry of Agriculture stepped in during 1988 as the numbers of sheep killed rose - they in turn called for the services of the Roayl Marines who were brought in to conduct a massive hunt - using local church towers as observation platforms. The Ministry however came to the conclusion, after examining a dead young foal, that the killer was nothing more than a fox. This did not appease farmers who had lost valuable livestock to the animal, these farmers lost sheep to foxes every year but the killings did not seem to match up to those by foxes. And the sightings kept on coming from the Exmoor vicinity of a catlike creature.
In 1993 a Lynton man, Barry Hanks claimed he had found the remains of bone fragments - he assumed these were from a sheep until he noticed the large four inch tooth which appeared to be a canine. People thought that he had inadvertantly come across the remains of the beast, but this story later was proved to be a hoax. Fleeting glimpses of a catlike animal continued to be reported. Traps were put down in 1992 by the same man who had originally analysed the hairs, Nigel Brierly - the traps were eight feet in length and three feet in width with large lumps of tripe used as a lure but, the only animal to become trapped was a domestic pig.
Nevertheless sightings continue to this day to manifest, as in April 1997 in the Braunton area, and the beast still holds fast in the nation's imagination when the killings occur. Whether the beast is fact or fantasy it has now become of local legend in the Exmoor area.
[Source: North Devon Journal 1997 Archive]
