On the prowl
Recent news reports tell of a panther being killed by a frightened hunter in Bradley County. While the state Game and Fish Commission seems disinclined to officially recognize a breeding-size presence of these large carnivorous cats, many residents of rural Arkansas claim they have seen them. And, if they have not seen one themselves, they know someone who has.
I grew up with a panther’s hide in my bedroom closet, and the mounted head of that creature—its yellow eyes staring intently—gazed out from our living room wall. I was an infant in 1949 when my father and a neighbor killed the mountain lion near our farm north of the hamlet of Sims in Montgomery County.
It should not surprise us that heavily armed hunters panic and needlessly kill panthers since generations of Arkansans have waged war on these animals. It is commonly believed that the panther was wiped out in Arkansas by 1920. And what a loss it was.
Known to science as Felis concolor, early Arkansans called the panther by a variety of names: cougars, pumas, mountain lions, catamounts, or “painters” in the southern uplands. While smaller than African lions, tigers, and jaguars, the male mountain lion on average weighs 137 pounds and the female 93 pounds. It is the most widely distributed of the larger land animals in the Americas, ranging from the northern Yukon to Patagonia in Argentina.
Early French trappers encountered these large cats all across Arkansas, and they also learned to recognize their harrowing scream in the blackness of night. Silas C. Turnbo, an early settler in the Ozarks, spent much of his old age writing his memoirs, and stories about panthers get their own chapter. Turnbo’s panthers are as cruel as they are fierce. A 9-year old girl in 1857 is stalked by a brazen lion; a “stealthy beast” nearly makes off with a 200-pound hog; a cornered lion lashes out at dogs and humans with fierce abandon.
Reports of lions trying to kill children were common. The Waldron newspaper reported in 1881 that “a panther made its appearance at the [residence] of Dr. J. W. Sorrels . . . and tried to steal a small child from the house. It was discovered, however, in time and a chase was made, but the parties failed to capture the animal.”
Despite all the stories, despite all the tales told by red-nosed hunters lounging around the campfire late at night, it was the panther which died at the end of almost every story. Mountain lions are by nature stealthy, and they avoid humans if at all possible. Once encountered by humans, especially if dogs are involved, the panther tends to climb into a tree—not realizing that a lion in a tree is a clear target.
Such a deadly encounter was doubly played out in Monroe County in the autumn of 1838 when the Widow McBride learned from one of her children that the dogs had “treed” a panther. Here’s how a Kentucky newspaper reported Mrs. McBride’s handling of the situation: “Having no ammunition, she sent to a neighbor and procured powder and lead, molded some bullets, loaded her gun, proceeded to the tree and brought down her game at the first shot . . . The report [noise] of the gun started up another panther near at hand which ran up a tree within a half mile of the other. She again loaded her gun and killed the second, also at the first shot, from one of the tallest trees.”
Nowadays our resident panthers are probably few in number, and it is likely they are young lions being forced into Arkansas from expanding populations farther west. The Game and Fish Commission has received hundreds of reports of sightings, but it continues to hold the position that a breeding population does not exist here.
In 1987 the Game and Fish Commission entered into a three-year study to figure out “the mountain lion enigma,” as one Commission employee wrote. Alas, little was found to indicate a mountain lion presence.
Those of us who consider ourselves conservationists must admit that facing a real live panther along a trail somewhere in the deep woods would be, at best, a mixed blessing. Yet I hope I live to see the day when that is a possibility.
This sentiment was expressed by the late Harold Alexander, a young Arkansas Game and Fish Commission biologist in 1949, when the killing of the panther in my closet caused Arkansans to debate the issue of coexisting with this much maligned beast. Alexander told a newspaper reporter “the possibility that a wilderness symbol like the mountain lion could be lurking around the campfire’s edge lends a certain appealing excitement to wilderness outings.” At least we know our ancestors experienced that excitement and lived to tell about it.