Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1879-04-29
A PANTHER FIGHT.
A Life and Death Struggle IN the Eyilds
OF New York State.

Colonel Seth A. Abbey, the veteran
printer, who in 1921 issued 10000 copies
Of the old English Reader, has just re
turned from California, Oregon and
Washington Territory He is full Of
those hunting "reminiscences now so rare,
and favors the Cleveland Herald with
the following: | went to Watertown,
Jefferson county, New York, in January,
1919, with my printing establishment,
and commenced publishing newspaper.
-Jairus Rich was kind of halfway law
YER he had started newspaper a year
Or two before and failed. He and his
wife then started little tavern near the
court house, and they did not succeed in
that very well. He said to me one day:
Il think I can get better living with
my rife and traps in the woods than
can by hanging around here in the vii
lagen Rich was Vermonter by birth;
a small, muscular man. The north por-
ton of Jefferson county, at that time,
was an almost unbroken wilderness. and
thither Rich, with his wife and traps,
bent his way. A number of months
elapsed before / heard anything from
him. At length rVmor came that
he had been killed by a panther. Near
ly month after this got letter from
him describing his encounter with
panther; he was hardly able to write
then. His story ran thus: ( | had fast
ened one of my traps to the root of 4
large hemlock tree, and near by was a
dense thicket Of low hemlocks Of about
half an acre. When | visited my trap
this morning | discovered one panther
fast in the trap and another near by. |
fired at the one outside of the trap and
wounded him, and he made Immediately
for this thicket. | had a little whifet
dog with me, and | put the little dog
nto the thicket where the panther enter
ed, and | ran around the thicket where [
thought the panther would come out and
met him lust as he came out of the
thicket. / tried to shoot him, but my
gun missed fire, and there we were, face
to face, and | had to run or fight. |
threw down my rifle and drew my
hatchet from my Belt and made pass at
him and he knocked my hatchet more
than twenty feet from me. We then
clinched in and we were up and down in
every shape; he tearing away with his
claws and chewing my hands. He
would sometimes have one hand in his
mouth and sometimes the other. We
were wrestling and tearing in this way
until was nearly done for. In one ofthe
falls he happened to come under. and |
clapped my knee right in his flank, for
ward of his hind leg, with my left hand
in his mouth | then slipped my right
hand into my pocket and pulled out my
iack-knife and opened it with my teeth,
and made short work of it then. lay
there by the side of my victim long,
long time My clothes were torn off
from me or hung in shreds; my face and
limbs gore of blood. The nearest
settler was two miles. | came to myself
after a time, so that / killed the other
panther. 1t took all the rest of the day
to make the house of the nearest settler"
l knew this man for many years after
this encounter, and, strange to say, he
still continued to hunt panthers and
wolves. | saw panther skin that was
green. killed by him and just taken from
the body, that measured, from the nose
to the end of the tail, nine feet. Iwould.
like to tell you one Of Rich's wolf stories.
He did not tell it for several years after
! it oecurred-the reason why YOU will
probably guess at after hearing the story
He said he was out among the rocks and
discovered a wolf; he shot and killed it.
\ Upon examining it he found it to be a
she wolf, and sucking young ones He
| finally found her den and crawled into
it, and found ten young pups He took
them to his shanty and built log pen
! for them and reared them on deer meat
they were too young to get the bounty
on. There was then bounty on each
grown-up wolf offered by town, county
/ and State, in all amounting to about $50
\ for each wolf They were the large gray
wolf, one of them nearly black. This
one, he said, he used to take out and play
! with it the same as q dog. He said he
regretted to kill this one very much, but
$50 was too great a temptation. As
these wolves grew up, he would taey