Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1882 — Panther vs. Bear. [ARTICLE]

Panther vs. Bear.

Peter Stewart was once hunting in Rockland, when he saw some deer bones lying at thejnsath of a crfcvice in some rocks. He knew thSfc it was a panther’s den, and that the bones were the remnant of a feast the occupants had made on a deer they had captured. Stewart hid himself behind a tree and awaited developments. Imagine his surprise when he saw a big bear come out of the cave, carrying under its arm a panther kitten, which was squalling and kicking with all its might. The bear rose on its haunebes, and gave the kitten a box or two on the ears with its fore paw, squeezed it to death and threw it on the ground. The bear then returned to the Gave, and in a short time came out with another kitten under its arm. This was treated as its companion had been. What the future intentions of the bear were Stewart never found out, for the second kitten had barely been killed when the aiother panther appeared on the scene. This seemed to take the hear by surprise. The old panther saw her kittens lying on the ground. She bounded first to one and then to the other, smelling and licking them, and uttering plaintive cries. Then she turned on the bear, which remained in the erect position it had assumed when squeezing the second kitten to death. With a yell that almost froze the blood of the hunter, used as he was to the fury of panthers, she sprang upon the bear, and fastened her claws in its shaggy coat and her fangs in its. throat. The bear hurled its antagonist ten feet away with its powerful paws, and then attempted to escape a second attack by flight. But the panther was upon it in an instant, and a terrific conflict ensued. The bear endeavored to catch the panther in its hug, but the latter was too agile, and with every spring upon its huge enemy the panther inflicted terrible wounds with its sharp claws. The blood poured from a dozen great gashes in the bear’s body, and at last the panther leaped on the bear as it stood facing her, and, fastening her teeth in its throat, thrust the long, sharp nails of her hind feet into its vitals. The bear fell to the ground dead. As the panther was returning to its dead kittens, Stewart shot her through the heart.