My colleague, LM, forwarded a receipt from top taxidermist Roland Ward. The receipt is for the stuffing and mounting of a wild cat. There were literally hundreds of these cats killed, stuffed and mounted because it was a 'fun' trophy.
Date is January 1908 so at a time when 'sportsmen' KNEW the population was going extinct.
People still do not seem to want to believe that 'sportsmen' hunted wild cats. It goes "against the British grain" (the British wiped out so much wildlife for profit and 'fun'!). The historical records are on this blog as well as The Red Paper 2022 Felids.
The last known Scottish wild cats were wiped out ion the 1860s at the same time as the Old fox and squirrels and others. What happened after extinction -why do we still have wild cats? Firstly, as with every other species killed into extinction the 'sport' just HAD to continue;. Importing foxes, deer, squirrels (red) and wild cats was the answer. In The Red Paper I note how I was casually reading a wildlife book and a line made no sense. I re-read it. The, uh, 'sportsman' in question had shot a cat in the North of England and sent it to a taxidermist-in the 1930s when wild cats in England and Wales were supposedly extinct "It was of the type found in the Scottish Highlands".
It made no sense but I also knew of wild cats shot during the same period in Shropshire and elsewhere -and there were hybrids. My assumption was that these were remnants of old wild cat populations even if more widely spread than I expected. When I read that another 'sportsman' had previously shot a similar cat "I just threw it over a low tree branch and carried on" I had a lot of questions. Then it turned out that both had stated elsewhere that they had purchased licences to shoot on the hunting territory. Not far outside this territory two other cats had been shot previously.
Once Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had made Scotland a Royal holiday spot the Scottish craze went berserk. Hey, Albert had shot a Scottish wild cat so everyone wanted to shoot one and every museum wanted a wild cat that looked exactly like the one Albert shot. Many were killed and sent to museums post 1900 and were rejected as "not being to type" -this was the Victorian era and rather like dog breeds the wild cat was designated to have very specific features (variance was frowned on). That type is still accepted by museums and zoologists/naturalists who have carried out no real research work. Try to find a museum with a pre 1900 wild cat taxidermy. I tried every museum including the Natural History Museum (London) -none exist rather like pre 1900 fox taxidermy.
Even at the end of the b19th and into the early 20th century, naturalists and zoologists who knew what a wild cat looked like noted how not one museum they visited had a genuine wild cat -just hybrids.
Hunting territories were pieces of land that were "stocked for sport" and it seems that the North of England territory was stocking up on wild cats to release to be shot. These were hybrids of European wild cats which is what we see today. Wild cats but not the Old type we used to have that could kill hunting dogs and seriously savage a hunter if cornered. You cannot bring back an extinct species especially when you do not even know what it looked like that is a miracle beyond DNA because so far no one has shown interest in taking DNA samples from genuine Old cat taxidermy!
When you look at where the specimens from the 1900-1943 period came from you see a pattern and that pattern shows release for hunting on estates or profitable shooting territories.
The history of wildlife in the United Kingdom and how humans -and only humans- saw to their decline and extinction through uncaring cruelty even when fully aware of that fact must never be brushed under the carpet while we falsely preach conservation and criticise and talk down to poorer countries about their lack of caring for wildlife and conservation.
Extinctions are still occurring in the UK in 2025
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