Of Wolves and Wild Dogs

[Gary51]

I've seen 4 of those non-existing cougars on my place over the last couple of years. Of course I could be just confusing those 80-100 pound long tailed cats with somebodies house cat.

[F.L. Jennings]

I mentioned a black panther and my brother. Here's the story. Years ago before the freeway (I30) to Memphis from Little Rock was completed, it terminated a few miles east of the North Little Rock city limits. The point of construction termination at that time was at an overpass. The road to one end of the overpass came in from the old Memphis highway, hwy 70, which is the way we came in. There was no road, just an 80 or 100 acre grassy field at the other end. All around this field are brush and water filled swamps and marshes.

These are filled with dense buck brush, floating logs and debris, all covered with duck weed and moss. There are some blue ribbon prize winning cotton mouths in there. I used to live next to and hunt in adjoining Ink Bayou. I would be easing along or standing in thigh deep water and some big old cotton mouth would lazily swim right by me. There are huge swell butted cypress and Tupelo gum trees there, and I used to get in those huge (10-12 ft diameter) swelled hollow butts and use them as a duck blinds.

The large grassy field was used by radio control model plane clubs, of which my dad and brother were members. The field was flat and perfect for take offs and landings. One day my dad and brother were flying planes there (I was older and proabably off chasing girls) with several others. Jimmy, my bro, walked up onto the overpass so that he could get a good bird's eye view of the planes. The swamp that wrapped around the field was pretty close to the overpass on the east side. Lots of the field was covered in 30 inch
high brown sage grass, since only a small portion was kept mowed for the RC landing strip.

Jimmy was on the bridge and saw that a couple of hundred yards down along the side of the swamp were a couple of quail hunters with two bird dogs. The dogs were casting around trying to locate a Bobwhite covey. Jimmy said that he heard both of the dogs begin to bark, which is pretty unusual for a trained pointer. He then noticed something moving one hundred yards or so in front of the dogs. He caught glimpses of black through the waving tan grass, then at a little green bare spot next to the swamp's edge, a large black cat with a very long tail sprang into view. He had very good place from which to observe the whole scene as it unfolded.

The dogs in the distance were barking excitedly and I guess the hunters wondered what was going on. The cat was crouched low to the ground with its head turned back toward the dogs.The dogs were barking non stop and casting back and forth over the cat's trail. The thing that really caught his attention was the long tail of the creature. As it paused there that tail slowly switched back and forth. The dogs were getting closer now and the cat made a few short leaps and disappeared into the nearly impenetrable grenery of the swamp.

You can still see these uninhabited swamps and marshes today as you drive east out of North Little Rock on I30 east. Was that a mirage or a case of mistaken identification? Try and tell him that.

I let a retired bachelor friend move his trailer onto our acerage, and we both hunt deer in my small fields. Below and east my pond is an area that I just leave alone it is 5 or 6 acres of brush and pines. He was over in that one day about six weeks or so ago and he jumped a deer. As the deer sped off he thought "that ain't no deer". It was a nice sized black bear. We killed several deer last November and the gut piles were always gone the next morning. Which one were eaten by the bear and which by the coyotes I don't know. He also found a pile of unusual scat at the end of this old river channel (see photo) on our place. I had killed and gutted a small buck there the evening before.

My wife Martha and daughter were driving to Benton and a few miles from the house a large black bear ran across the highway right in front of the car. That place is only about two miles away as the crow flies. I haven't seen one yet but several neighbors have spotted one.



My friend Mike, found bear scat at this end of this old river channel which lies one hundred feet below our home. There is a field to the left of this old channel and then the Middle Fork. Beyond the stream there are section after section of unihabited forest wnd brush covered hills and hollows.

[Unclebuck257]

GREAT story!!

About four years ago I saw what I thought was a mountain lion on our place in the open pasture. He/she was coming up behind our horse and our mule and really spooked them. It didn't really chase them, but spooked them enough to run off in a huge hurry and then jump our fence onto the county road. By the time I got my rifle, that cat was long gone and never to be seen again. I called our game warden who then came out rather quickly. He told me that a big cat had been raising a lot of problems in a neighboring county, Montague County, killing livestock and house pets, but he hadn't heard of one around here in quite a while. He told me that there is no season on these cats and if I could, shoot it, but he doubted I'd ever see it again. He then told me that although they look like Mountain Lions, that they are actually Mexican Panthers, from of course Mexico, usually colored black, but some with the gray/blonde color too, like the one I saw.

Nothing else seen or heard about that cat until just two weeks ago. My sister and brother in law live about 1/2 mile from me, and directly across an 80 acre farmed pasture from me. They have a home with a small backyard, fenced in with cyclone fencing. Beyond their back yard is untouched, all natural, grazing pasture. My brother in law went out to feed and after feeding was just resting, leaning on their backyard fence, looking out into that open natural grazing pasture. He saw something about 50 yards out, laying down behind some small bushes and then went into the house for his binoculars to check it out. The minute he got back out with those binocs to the back of their yard and put the binocs on what he had seen, IT stood up and looked right square back at him. He told me it was a mountain lion at first. After I told him what the game warden had told me four years ago, he said it was one of the blonde/gray colored ones and it was huge in size. It stood up fully, looked at him looking at it, and then vanished into the brush very quickly. Those Mexican Panthers are definitely still around this area of North Texas and apparently doing well too.

[F.L. Jennings]

Originally Posted by Unclebuck257

GREAT story!!

About four years ago I saw what I thought was a mountain lion on our place in the open pasture. He/she was coming up behind our horse and our mule and really spooked them. It didn't really chase them, but spooked them enough to run off in a huge hurry and then jump our fence onto the county road. By the time I got my rifle, that cat was long gone and never to be seen again. I called our game warden who then came out rather quickly. He told me that a big cat had been raising a lot of problems in a neighboring county, Montague County, killing livestock and house pets, but he hadn't heard of one around here in quite a while. He told me that there is no season on these cats and if I could, shoot it, but he doubted I'd ever see it again. He then told me that although they look like Mountain Lions, that they are actually Mexican Panthers, from of course Mexico, usually colored black, but some with the gray/blonde color too, like the one I saw.

Nothing else seen or heard about that cat until just two weeks ago. My sister and brother in law live about 1/2 mile from me, and directly across an 80 acre farmed pasture from me. They have a home with a small backyard, fenced in with cyclone fencing. Beyond their back yard is untouched, all natural, grazing pasture. My brother in law went out to feed and after feeding was just resting, leaning on their backyard fence, looking out into that open natural grazing pasture. He saw something about 50 yards out, laying down behind some small bushes and then went into the house for his binoculars to check it out. The minute he got back out with those binocs to the back of their yard and put the binocs on what he had seen, IT stood up and looked right square back at him. He told me it was a mountain lion at first. After I told him what the game warden had told me four years ago, he said it was one of the blonde/gray colored ones and it was huge in size. It stood up fully, looked at him looking at it, and then vanished into the brush very quickly. Those Mexican Panthers are definitely still around this area of North Texas and apparently doing well too.

I'm a native born Texan, and my family moved here to Arkansas about 1948 so I claim both states as home. I was born in Bonham (Fannin County) in 1944. My dad and his family lived on a farm at the old Hilger community east of Bonham. THere was a small creek that ran across their place, and it also crossed the old gumbo road they lived on. He said that when he was a boy (born in 1925) every Tuesday night a panther ran that creek and when it got to the place where it crossed the road it would always let out a scream or two. Smelled the humans that had crossed I guess.

Years went by and one night as a young man walking home from somewhere he got to that crossing and thought of that panther which hadn't been heard in years and the hair stood up on the back of his neck at the memory. Every year when the crops were planted his family would go and camp out on the Red River and once saw a panther or mountain lion there.

Before they dammed it, Coffee Mill Creek near Bonham was surrounded by hundreds of acres of hardwoods. Lots of Bois d' arc I remember (osage Orange) from which the Indians made good bows. When we went home there for Christmas or some other holiday, all those old boys would go into the Coffee Mill Creek bottoms for a squirrel hunt. I saw some of those forests as a lad and it looked like anything could live in there to me.


An old time cowboy watches stock on the hills around Bonham, Texas and an Indian leads a pony near Bonham, circa 1900.