Bodmin Moor beast - is it actually still active?

Right, so I grew up near Bodmin and my dad used to talk about the Beast constantly in the '80s and '90s. There was this whole mythology around it - the big cat, whatever it was, stalking sheep and cattle. Felt like every other week there'd be another sighting reported.

But here's the thing: it seems to have just... stopped? No proper verified reports in years. Either it died, migrated, never existed in the first place, or it got really good at avoiding people. Which seems least likely given how populated the moor is now.

Anyone from Cornwall on here? What's the local consensus? Is the Beast just a cultural relic at this point, or is there still genuine activity that people don't publicize anymore?

The Beast was almost certainly an escaped exotic pet from the 1960s or 70s. Big cats do occasionally escape from private collections - it happened periodically back then. By the '80s it was already an old animal, and animals die. No great mystery, just a big cat living in the wild for a couple decades and then dying of old age.

I've got family in Bodmin. The modern consensus is that it was real at some point (the sheep kills were documented), but it's definitely gone now. Could've been a lynx, could've been a leopard - something large and predatory. The '80s and '90s reports had a lot of unreliability though. Every mangled sheep got blamed on the Beast.

it seems to have just... stopped? No proper verified reports in years.

That's actually interesting from a cryptozoology perspective. If it was an undocumented species rather than an escaped pet, you'd expect it to continue reproducing. If it was a pet, you'd expect it to die off. The complete cessation of reports suggests the 'pet' explanation is stronger.

Disagree with the 'escaped pet' conclusion. There's no documented evidence of a big cat purchase or escape in that area at that time. What we actually have is: livestock kills consistent with large felids, multiple independent witnesses, and then eventually no reports. Could be the animal died, could be it learned to avoid human areas better.