Wild jaguars in the U.S.? What sounds implausible was proven true in 1996 when two male jaguars were photographed, first in southern New Mexico and then in Arizona. Until that time, experts had concluded that our hemisphere's biggest cat-seldom seen north of the Mexico border since European settlement-had disappeared forever from the U.S. "It was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen," says Warner Glenn, a big-game hunter whose hounds brought a large jaguar to bay during a late-winter mountain lion hunt. Glenn took a series of remarkable photos. "I felt tremendously lucky," said the rancher, who wrote a book about his experience. Six months after Glenn's sighting, members of a party led by Jack Childs treed a jaguar in the Baboquivari Mountains near Tucson. Childs caught the cat on videotape as it settled into an aerie of juniper branches. "I considered it a once-in-a-lifetime event," says the retired surveyor.
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