
FOREST AND STREAM. 






NATURAL UIST 




The Panther. 
Editor Forest and Stream: ; 
It is extraordinary what different ideas 
ditterent people seem to have about the panther, 
but 1 suppose most people never saw one out- 
side of a cage. There are a great many people 
that have spent a good deal ot time out of doors 
and in countries where there are panthers and 
lots of them, who never saw nor heard of one. 
Usually a panther is a mighty slow, cautious 
animal and does not mean to be seen by any- 
body. Much of the time he is quiet himself, 
sitting or lying around, waiting to see whether 
something will not come up within his reach. 
When he moves about he goes as quietly as a 
cat and keeps out of sight, traveling through the 
brush or creeping silently through the long 
grass, or if he is going through open timber, 
keeping well back from the edge, moving slowly 
and every now and then stopping for a long 
time to listen and look. His color matches 
well the dead grass, leaves and tree trunks, so 
it is not very strange that but few people see 
panthers. Those that are seen are stumbled on 
by accident, or walk into sight of some man 
that has been sitting quiet for a long time, or 
sometimes one may blunder on a young one or 
two that have never seen a man before, and do 
not know enough to make a dive for the brush 
as an old panther would. I remember that 
Johnny Jones, who used to live out on the 
Wagonhound near Elk Mountain, rode up to a 
couple of full-grown young ones, and they sat 
there and looked at him until he got off his 
horse and killed them both. 
In my time I have seen a few panthers, but it 
was always just by luck and chance, except when 
I had dogs along and was ‘regularly hunting 
them. I recollect once, a long time ago, I was 
going down Henry’s Fork of Green River look- 
ing for a deer—and there were plenty of deer in 
that bottom—when I walked up to within about 
twenty steps of a panther that was lying on 
the limb of a cottonwood tree that I had to 
pass under. I do not know just how it came 
about that I stopped shortly before I got to the 
tree and looked up, but I did so, and there I 
saw a sort of yellow lump on the gray limb, and 
recognized it in a second as the head and 
shoulders of a panther. I do not know how 
long he had been watching me, but I do know 
that the instant I saw him, he turned and made 
a jump to the ground, and that his jump 
brought the trunk of the cottonwood trees be- 
tween him and me, and I had no chance to 
shoot. I hopped to one side and threw my gun 
to my shoulder, but the panther had leaped into 
some willow brush and I never saw him again 
to know him. 


I have done a little hunting of panthers on 
snowshoes in winter with dogs, and I have been 
surprised to see how afraid of a dog a panther 
is, and what a poor, miserable fight it puts up 
when even a little dog tackles one. 
A good many years ago I had a good dog— 
good for panthers and good for most everything 
else. He would take after a panther in winter, 
and if the snow was not too deep for his short 
legs, would run the panther up a tree in sur- 
prisingly short time. Then when I came up on 
snowshoes I would find him barking about the 
tree, the panther watching him and not watch- 
ing the back trail at all, and it was no trick to 
shoot the animal. A number of times I have 
seen him overtake a panther and catching the 
end of its tail in his mouth, stick out his feet 
and make the panther drag him through the 
snow. Of course, that would make the panther 
mad and it would slow up and turn around and 
try to kill the dog, but when it did this it al- 
ways found when it made a stroke at him with 
its paw that he was not there. He was some- 
where else. The panther never seemed to try 
to chase the dog, or even to really try to fight 
it. It simply wanted to be left alone and to be 
allowed to get up into the first convenient tree. 
I guess all panthers act alike in this way, for 
I have heard plenty of men tell about their ex- 
perience hunting them and they all tell about 
the same story. I have seen some pictures 
that Billy Wells and old man Wallihan took 
one season of panthers that had been run up 
into trees by dogs, and these pictures all showed 
the animals cross and snarling maybe, but never 
really doing anything. 
This little black dog that used to hang on to 
the panther’s tail was a good dog on other game. 
He would slow-trail a deer, an elk or a bear, 
drawing and pointing just as slowly and care- 
fully as could be, and he would also point 
chickens in good shape. However, toward the 
end of the time I had him he got more and more 
headstrong and besides that, got deaf, and at 
last he got so I could not control him at all 
and he just hunted in his own way. If I chose 
to come along it was all right, but if he took 
up a trail or wanted to go in a certain direction, 
he was going, and it did not make much differ- 
ence whether I came or not. 
There are many people who think the panther 
is a dangerous animal, but I never saw any- 
thing to make me think that it was. A num- 
ber of times I have been followed by panthers 
and I have heard of other men that had the 
same experience, but none of those men were 
ever attacked by the animals, and in fact I 
never heard of more than one man who was at- 
tacked, and this, I think, was by mistake. 
On the other hand, I knew of a case over in 
Oregon a number of years ago when two little 
children, a boy and a girl, were followed through 
the woods for a mile or two by a panther. They 
were going from a neighbor’s house to their 
home. The panther came out of the woods and 
trotted along behind them and beside them and 
they thought it was a dog and tried to make 
friends with it. It never did anything but just 
keep along with them, and when they got to 
the little fence around their own house, it went 
off into the woods. The mother saw it as it 
was going away and was terribly scared, but 
the children did not mind it. 
This man that I speak about that was jumped 
on by a panther was traveling along a trail be- 
tween Cook City. in Montana, and the Yellow- 
stone, and a panther jumped on him from a rock 
above. caught him by the shoulder and threw 
him down. The man yelled and the panther 
let him go and ran off. I have always believed 
that the panther just took him for a deer and 
when he found out that it was a man was just 
as badly scared as the man was, and made 
tracks. 
Of course, people will tell you all sorts of 
stories about the fierceness of the panther, but 
if you ask them how they know about it, usually 
they will tell you that they read it in a book or 
saw it in a newspaper, or they had a friend 
who used to be somewhere who heard of an- 
other man who had a friend to whom some- 
thing happened. I have never been able to pin 
anybody down to anything that a panther 
actually did in the way of attacking human be- 
ings. If a panther was wounded he might put 
up a pretty stiff fight, because they have long 
claws and could bite pretty hard, but do they 
ever do it? I doubt it. I recollect a few years 
ago I heard that the President—that was be- 
fore he was President, maybe—went out hunt- 
ing somewhere down in Colorado with old 
John Goff and killed eleven or thirteen panthers, 
but I do not recollect that he said anything 
about any of them putting up any sort of a 
fight. All they wanted to do was to get away, 
if the dogs would let them. In fact, if I recol- 
lect right, one time they scared a panther out of 
a tree and he jumped down and the dogs got 



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hold of him and Mr. Roosevelt ran in and k} 
the panther with a knife. f 
I have heard men who had been run 
panthers with dogs say that down in the mi 
tains of Colorado, when they get a panther 
one of those thick, stubby cedars that they ]f 
down there, they sometimes put a dog up 
the tree and he will climb up close to where| 
panther is and bark at it, but I never hear 
any dog being tackled by one when he wa 
the tree. 
I have read in books about panthers cor) 
up to a camp-fire and parading around c 
to it and of how the men that were in c 
were afraid that the animal would jump in 
tackle them, but to me all that seems just yf) 
foolishness. I reckon the men who were al 
of having that sort of thing happen had 
stories about lions in Africa jumping into ca) 
and carrying off men. All I have seen or h, 
of panthers makes me think that they i 
mighty harmless animals. t 
Panthers kill considerable game, of cot, 
deer, elk, sheep and maybe goats. I remer 
once, a good many years ago, I was trave 
up a stream in the mountains where it 
narrow and there were’ thick willows. I 
out into a little opening and saw on the o} 
side a deer standing close to the brush} 
slipped off my horse and shot at it, but jus) 
I fired, it took a step or two forward and), 
ball hit it too far back. It jumped into} 
brush and I took its trail and had not follc 
it more than seventy-five or a hundred y\| 
when I came out into a little open place | 
there was my deer lying on the ground al), 
panther lying by it with his jaws fast te), 
throat. I was pretty close to him and he | 
lifted up his head and began to snarl a 4 
when I killed him. 
I remember another time in the mount, 
close to the head of the North Platte Riv«) 
was watching a band of elk a little way | 
waiting for them to get into a place whe, 
could creep up and kill a heifer, for I ne; 
meat. While I was watching, a panther jun} 
out of the brush on to a cow and grabbed! 
by the neck with his teeth. She ran this Fi 
and that, butting into trees and brush, an, 
seemed to me she was trying to scrape! 
panther off. She kept moving so qui; 
though, and the other elk starting off n, 
things so confused that I could not see exip 
what happened. In a minute everything F 
out of sight and I stepped along down to}, 
to see what had happened, and I had not §, 
far, when I saw the elk lying on the ground} 

t 
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the panther wogking at her throat. Of CO}, 
I killed him and got my meat. by 
I have heard people say that somet}, 
panthers and bears have big fights, and I tn 
seen one or two grizzlies killed that had fei), 
naked ridges on their backs that looked } 
long deep scars. I always believed that}, 
bears got these by fighting with other bears}, 
of course, I never saw such a fight and I n} 
saw a fight between a lion and a bear. iF 
I was told something a good many years}, 
by a man who had been a great deal in the S 
that interested me very much, and whic 
think, is worth telling about. This man } 
Major Cremony. He had been a good de: 
the Southwest, especially among the Apai: 
and they said he could talk good Apache. 
told me that once he and a couple of Apa, 
were out hunting down on the Pecos and cam 
the tracks of a big lion and took the tra 
look for it. They were following up this 
toward a rocky cafion, where they thoug}, 
lion might be found, when suddenly they hy 
a fearful noise coming from this cafion. As 
as I could understand, it sounded a good |° 
like a pig squealing or groaning. Major 
mony did not know what it was, and I j 
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