>From TagNet:
Big Cats
By: Gary Stewart (Gadsden, Alabama)
I wanted to comment on the big cat story I just read and relate some of
my experiences. The only mountain lion encounter I have had was in
Steele, Alabama west of Gadsden in 1979. There was a cattleman in that
area thet was offering a $1000.00 dollar reward for the killing of a
"black panther' that had been killing his cattle. Myself and 2 friends
decided we would try to collect on the bounty since we were young and
stupid and I had just returned from overseas in the Navy and need the
money. We were several miles up into an area and new we were close
because you could smell where it had marked its territory. We went up
into a boxed canyon with very steep (200 ft +/-) walls on both sides.We
never could see the cat but when it let out a cry it made the hair on
the back of our necks stand up. It was at this point that we decided
that we had made a serious mistake and got the hell out of there. I
moved to Texas in 1981 and worked as a test technician for a turbine
company. I lived in Tomball just north of Houston way out in the middle
of nowhere in a trailor. When I came in from work one day the pit bull
Nasty was raising hell barking. As I got out of the car and went to go
inside I looked up and he had treed a mountain lion in a big pine tree
next to the trailor. I freaked out and went inside and all I could find
was a loaded 10 gauge goose gun. I ran outside and raised the shotgun
and just as I shot it leapt from the tree and I have never seen anything
move that fast as it took off. I went to work the next day and was
telling everyone and they all said I was crazy and accused me of being
on drugs and seeing things. It was sighted again a few months later at a
farm down the road from me and shot at by and old guy who also missed
from about 200 yards away. I still don't think anyone ever really
beleived me though. When I move back to Alabama I went through a divorce
and went back to college and got another degree. I went to work for TVA
in 1987 and lived on Hwy.117 leaving Stevenson Al. in the Coon Creek
Preserve. My kids were only about 5 or 6 at the time and were playing
out in the yard when I looked out the kitchen window and there was a
large bobcat coming straight at them from across the field. I ran and
got my 357 pistol and ran outside and shot and hit next to it from about
40 yards away and it took off, scared me to death. I lived in Stevenson
for 8 years and in Skyline for 4 and spent alot of time in the mountains
and saw quite a few bobcats and cayotes and one wolf I think. I saw some
kind of a mountain cat once and I'm not real sure what it was but it
wasn't much bigger than a house cat but colored like a mt.lion. My son
even ran over a 8 foot alligator in the road going down the backside of
the mountain from Skyline toward Neversink near some old catfish ponds.
It was in the Scottsboro paper and I still have the picture somewhere
for those who choose to dis-beleive. I have also been chased and treed
by wild hogs on several occasions and have a couple of scares from those
encounters too running through a barbed wire fence and briars.We even
lassoed one with a caving rope and tied in to a tree, God's truth. I
have had many encounters with big rattlesnakes (eg. Walls of Jercho) and
have several skins to prove that too. My point is if you get out way up
in the mountains away from civilization you might run into alot of
things you don't see anywhere else on a normal basis. I always take my
Glock with me when I get way out like that but it's really for
protection only. I have had more problems from rogue hunting club
members around the Big and Little Coon and Martin Wildlife areas ( eg.
Iron Hoop, Bluff River) than I have form the 4 legged and no legged
predators.Those guys are really crazy!!!, but those are stories of there
on. They just take there hunting leases very serious there even when
it's not hunting season. Look out and read the signs cause they like to
ask if you can read at gunpoint. Yes I'm still crazy after all these
years. As always cave friendly and leave nothing but tracks in the mud.
NSS 38127 Gary Stewart [email protected]
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