© UnknownShaun Baxter with the claw marks he says he saw made by a panther-like creature.
Shaun Baxter, a father of one, said he spotted the big cat gouging out the markings while he was shooting rabbits in a field just off Bacton Road between North Walsham and Edingthorpe on Sunday afternoon.
He said: "I was standing next to a tree in my camouflage gear and about 70 yards away was a big black panther-like cat.
"It was scratching on a tree, like a normal household cat would do at its scratching post."
Mr Baxter, a house husband who lives in Bowthorpe, near Norwich, said the scratches were too high off the ground and deep to be made by a domestic cat or dog, and the creature he saw was easily bigger than a husky dog.
After the cat pounced off into thicker trees nearby, Mr Baxter, 42, waited 20 minutes while he plucked up the courage to have a look.
He said: "My heart was thumping. I couldn't believe the marks on the trees."
Mark Fraser, from Big Cats in Britain, looked at photographs of the markings and said, while they were consistent with the type of scratches made by a big cat, he could not be sure without more evidence.
He said: "It's the right height for when they sit up and stretch but they don't look that fresh. It's inconclusive."
The big cat expert said the surge in sightings at the moment was down to the large amount of publicity given to the subject recently. He added: "The big majority are mistakes - 99pc of the prints we are getting are from dogs. Some people even send in rabbit prints left in the snow."
This is the latest in a spate of sightings across the county of a black panther. So far this year the mysterious creature has been spotted in Hevingham, North Elmham and Aylmerton, as well as a sighting in Hellesdon, north of Norwich.
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