Jim Shortridge has been hunting his entire life and says he knows what he saw.

"A lot of people doesn't believe it, but it doesn't really matter to me. I know what I saw and I'm not lying,"   Shortridge told MetroNews Talkline Friday.

What he claims to have seen is a full-grown, male African lion. The king of the Jungle was parading back and forth in front of his homemade deer hunting blind on his property in Greenbrier County.

Shortridge has told his story to several people and a number of news outlets have picked up on it this week. Apparently, he's not alone.

"When I called DNR last Wednesday, they said I was the second caller that had called that day about his lion," he said.

Shortridge said he walked to his hunting shack to prepare for a day of bow hunting and initially thought it was a deer, until it growled at him. He said the lion soon bolted when he yelled and although he was amazed, he didn't think much more about it, until he returned from a second trip to his truck to pick up his bow.  

"I picked the bow up and started walking toward the blind, and he started growling at me again, and I said, 'Lord, I should have just gotten in my truck and stayed there,'" he said.

Shortridge said he watched the animal pacing back and forth growling and "puffing" at him in an aggressive and threatening manner. He admits he was starting to get nervous, before the lion finally decided to move along.

Some speculate the lion may have been an exotic pet who simply escaped or got too big for the owner to handle and was turned loose.   

Shortridge said he hopes animal control officials can capture the animal and get him into a place where he'll be protected. He and officials from the DNR and DEP are returning to his hunting area this weekend to put out more bait and set up motion sensitive cameras in hopes of catching some photographic evidence of the lion.