All this talk about cougars and other scary animals got me to thinking about an experience I had as an early teenager. My dad was friends with a fellow who had a very large tract of land (~2000ac) north of town. We got invited out to deer hunt often, and the way it worked was, the caretaker would put everyone in his truck and drive us around, dropping us off one by one, until he was done. Then he'd come back around after dark and pick everyone up. That worked out well if you were the early dropoff, but if you were closer to the end, it could be an hour after dark before he arrived to get you. So one night I'm last out, and about 30min after dark I get down from my stand and walk down the field edge to the two-rut road looping through the property. I'm standing there waiting, with a 12ga shotgun in my hands. I start hearing some noise from the woodlot across the two-rut. Well, as a young teen, maybe 14yrs old, I start thinking about all the giant, hairy, toothy, mean things that might be in the woods wanting to eat me. Of course, in panhandle Florida back in the 70s and 80s, there were only supposed to be bobcats, a few black bears, and very seldom a coyote. But the noise keeps getting louder and closer sounding. Very intermittent, so I'm not able to track it well. As a profoundly scared, but not profoundly stupid boy, I decided I could easily wait in the open-topped box blind until the truck arrived, and made haste back to the blind and up the ladder. I'd been sitting up there a few minutes when I felt an urge to re-load my shotgun. So in go three rounds of 00-buck. Now I'm sitting in a tree, in the dark, with a loaded shotgun, and feeling slightly more secure.
And then I heard a sound the likes of which I've not ever heard again in the wild. I did hear it one time at a wildlife park outside Tallahassee. It was a scream/screech sound, and definitely made by a cat, and definitely made over at the road where I had just been standing. So at this point, I imagine a giant Bengal Tiger is now patrolling under my stand and I'm all about being ready with that shotgun. The cat screams 5-6x, moving across the field in front of me. I cannot see anything, as there was no moon. I almost shot once just to scare it off, but I did not want to waste ammo I might need to fend off the killer.
A few minutes of nervous quiet go by, and the caretaker arrives with a truckload of other hunters. Only when he'd pulled in the field and shined his headlights toward the stand did I unload my gun and climb down. I told the story and they all said it couldn't have been a Florida Panther, but was likely a bobcat. I bought that story until a few years later I had the opportunity to hear the bobcat and the panther vocal sounds. It was decidedly a panther.
Then when I was 17, I was riding the woods where we hunted (part of the Apalachicola National Forest southwest of Tallahassee), one day after school, and came upon a big mudhole. I got out to investigate the best way to cross it and noticed a wild hog's remains scattered over a 12-15' area. Only thing left was part of the skull, and a couple of feed, and some bones. Mixed in amongst the remains, clearly stamped in the mud, were cat tracks (no toenails), measuring about 3.5" across on the clearest tracks. I know what made them. I remember thinking that even out in broad daylight, I'd be better off in the truck.
The Florida Game & Fish Commission denied for years any existence of panthers outside Big Cypress and Fakahatchee Strand and Everglades National Park. I wish I'd had the good sense to snap a few pictures and document the tracks better. The hair on the back of my neck stands up just typing up these two encounters.
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