for the last couple of years my grandparents have been losing about 80% or more of their calves, and now they have lost a dog to *something* and we want to get rid of it. we don't know very much about the animal(s ) that is doing this. what we do know is that it has a feline like track (no claw marks of any kind in the print), it's track is about 6 inches wide, it is taking animals in broad day-light, and the bodies are "vanishing" (except for the dog, i'll get to that in a bit) there is little or no blood, and there are no drag marks (even in the case of a very large deer), and afterward, there has been no smell detected (like rotting flesh or urine from marking territory). the deer was shot by a game warden because it was blind and they were going to take care of it the next day, but it was gone, and it wasn't in a spot where it could be seen from the road. the dog was a 5 year old husky, and she was basically gutted in the yard, not 5 feet from the house between 10:30 am and 2:30 pm, the other dogs that we still have outside (a rott and a trained blue tick) won't hardly come out of their houses now, where before they used to bark at everything (birds, bugs, everything), and they made no noise when the husky was being killed.
i'm very concerned about this, not only because of monetary and emotional losses, but because not more that 3 miles to the west is a grade school that has the playground back right up against the woods. the local wildlife officials know what is going on, and think that the people who are saying that it's a big cat, are crazy (there have been cougars caught on film and reported, and confirmed that they are cougars).
basically i want to know what y'all think it might be, and how to deal with it. Thanks so much,
alicia