Peter Nickerson's
Black Panther Journal
Thursday, December 31, 1998
At the beginning of the hunting season this November, my son Jon and I stopped at the Tide Swamp Unit Game Management Area in Big Bend, Florida. It was close to Perry, the touted Pine Tree Capital of the south. Jon and I were hoping to find Ken, the chiropractor we had hunted with the year before at a dairy farm in Gilchrist County.
This year I joined Sandhill Hunt Club which stretched 100,000 acres from Steinhatchee to Perry, about 31 miles. Just east of our club was the Lafayette Hunt Club, the largest hunt club in America with 250,000 acres. On the west side of Sandhill Hunt Club was the Tide Swamp Unit (GMA) which bordered the Gulf of Mexico. These hunting areas comprised a huge piece of wild land. Ken, the chiropractor, did not have a truck and decided not to join Sandhill Hunt Club after he and I took a tour of the club. Ken is always looking for a bargain, and Sandhill cost $500 a year while you could buy a GMA yearly access permit for only $25. Plus, without a four-wheel drive truck, he could not get into most of Sandhill because of the deep sand and mud holes. Jon and I did not see Ken or his car at the parking area, but at the Dallus Creek check-in station, I started a conversation with a slim, young woman who worked there. All big game killed in the GMA was supposed to be checked by her.
She noted whether the animal was a boar or deer, weighed him, and then recorded the information on her forms. She also posted those statistics on a huge board outside the check-in cabin for edification and encouragement for hunters.
In the course of our converstion that afternoon, Wendy mentioned that she had seen a "black panther" twice in the management area. She said, "I drove my car down the Dallus Road in broad daylight, and there he was on the side of the road. He was on my left, just outside my car door. I was looking right at him, a few feet away. He was crouched down. He stared at me a while and then disappeared into the woods. It was a big, black cat with a long, thick tail."
I was stunned! What was she talking about? I had never heard of a black panther except for the black color phase of the African Leopard and the American Jaguar. This was not the place to expect either of those two cats. Just then, a tall, thin man drove in from his hunting area and got out of his truck. "Mark, you are here more than I am!" Wendy said, laughing. "Have you ever seen a black panther?" Mark was a sensitive looking person and did not seem the type to spend a great deal of time out in the woods hunting. He hesitated, considering his reply, and then carefully said, "I saw something barreling down a old tram (an old railroad track cut into the swamps on which giant cypress logs were hauled out probably back in the 1920s.) He hesitated again and then added, "It had a long, black tail that it held up in the air as it raced down the tram."
Wendy then assured me that several hunters had reported seeing black panthers in the GMA. Earlier in the day, my son, Jon had killed a spike buck at Sandhill Hunt Club across the road, and it was on the tailgate of our Ford F-150. By this time several hunters had joined us, and one of them casually glanced at the buck and mentioned the length of the spikes. The buck was about 20 yards away, and it was twilight. I had trouble even seeing the spikes! But I disagreed with the hunter's assessment and got a tape measure from my hunting bag. I measured the spikes.
Peter "Two Guns" Nickerson, MS, MSW. This site is about the Black Florida Panther Hunt. Here are some pictures
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