[Marxism] Panther/Lion talk

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

NOTE BY HUNTER BEAR:  11/15/04

One of the things that can happen when you have a serious and potentially
lethal disease is that your mind wanders -- though not necessarily any more
erratically than it did before.  In my case -- in addition to the thought
that the best way to cure hypochondria is to become genuinely and profoundly
ill -- I've been thinking of activist-oriented bumper stickers I've known
and utilized.  One, a great favorite, was CUSTER WORE ARROW SHIRTS [1970s].
Another, depicting an armed donkey, and recently given me by the Whitworth
family, is I'M A GUN TOTIN' IDAHO DEMOCRAT.  This reflects the widespread
and systematic move in gun and hunting country generally -- and certainly in
our Mountain states -- to shoot down the false perception that the
Democratic Party is the party of gun control.  [I should add, I suppose,
that in our late election I did write-in the SPUSA presidential level
candidates, Brown and Herbert.]

Getting up early these mornings -- usually anywhere from 1 am to 3 am -- I
see and hear interesting things. No tangible evidence of earthquakes and --
with the exception of a very few odd and shadowy cars seen in our
floodlights -- nothing especially suggestive from the Stormfront White
Nationalist hate outfit or its associated National Alliance.  I have,
however, heard close-by yowling on a couple of very recent occasions -- big
yowling.  I've heard it before, and odds are heavy it's a mountain lion.
Several are often around here, especially in the late fall and winter when
the really up high country is locked in snow and the deer and elk have come
down into this region.  A lion recently wandered into the large Pocatello
suburb of Chubbuck -- and then left in leisurely fashion.

Now we're into November and its winter rains and snow and I always remember
Another Time.  A Teen, whose parents somehow avoided worrying about my many
adventures, I had left my camp on the edge of Sycamore Canyon at night  and
was planning to head to Flagstaff and home.  The roads were really not roads
much of the time but my '29 Model A coupe could always handle them nicely.
Soon after I started the long very dark trip back to Flag, I saw coming
toward me, two horses with their riders.  They turned out to be Ken Fox [a
cowboy and rodeo man not too much older than I who I'd met a year before]
and a slightly older friend of his, Joe MacBride. They were planning to hunt
mule deer. Upshot was, we tossed in with each other.  We now headed away
from the direction of Flag, toward Buck Ridge Cabin -- a line shack on the
Sycamore rim used by cowpunchers.  Joe, who was not in good physical shape,
rode with me.  When we came to a barbed wire "horse trap" [corral] into
which we put the horses, we built a fire and camped right there in the rain.
My buddies, with bedrolls, had a fifth of a caustic whiskey known in those
days as Four Roses and consumed a fair amount before turning in.  They were
soon soundly asleep. I slept under my big wolfskin robe [we still have it
here in Idaho] which, as always when wet, smells like an old dog.

I awoke suddenly shortly after midnight.  A lion was yowling, maybe a
quarter of a mile away.  I reached for my 30/30 Winchester, not too
surprised when -- suddenly! -- the yowls came only a few yards from the
horse corral.  The horses were now frantic.  I stood up and, yelling, fired
one shot into the air.  My buddies arose sleepily but the crisis was over
and the horses settled.  The next morning, Joe again traveling with me, we
continued to the Cabin where we saw a huge wild turkey running across a
clearing.  I shot it at a hundred yards, Joe cooked it inside on the Cabin's
wood stove, and we three ate it and some of the Cabin's grub for a couple of
days before the rain and snow passed. [We left a few dollars on a shelf with
a note.] Then, Joe with me, we headed back north/northwest, 20 miles or so
at least on obscure roads which went around the head of Sycamore -- to Ken's
folks' ranch house.

If I have any tinge of regret, it is that I sometimes wish I spent my life
[so far] in the woods, hunting in emulation of my Great Hero, the legendary
Ben Lilly, "Last of the Mountain Men."  But I did not, although I've often
returned to the wilderness in many capacities and still do, of course,
whenever and however I can.  I did turn down offers to join the business
side of my Mother's family; I did not consider attending the proffered
Wharton School of Business [University of Pennsylvania] which later became a
well known think tank for Phelps Dodge Copper [horrors!]; and I turned down
a management slot in one of the western Bell affiliates [before the
divestiture.]  The ghosts of my Native ancestors -- John Gray et al -- would
have never allowed those heresies. [My father would have been much
displeased -- but would never have interfered.] I may not have devoted my
life [so far] solely to the wilderness -- Audubon's "perfection of
primitiveness" -- but I am satisfied with the activist trail I've taken and
faithfully followed -- as I always will.

Anyway, here is a bit on Big Kitty with mention of Ben Lilly.

PANTHERS [Hunter Gray/Hunter Bear]

First Post  [March 5, 2002]
Note to RedBadBear List:  This is being sent to the SNCC list in connection
with the discussion of the origin of the Black Panther logo for the  Lowndes
County (Alabama) Freedom Party.

Panthers were traditionally found all over Dixie and are still much around
in several sections of the Deep South -- and, by other names,  they're in
much of North America. A broad term for the animal is puma.  In the  general
Southwest, they're called mountain lions;  in the Pacific Northwest and
environs, it's cougar; in  Mexico, they're called leon or pantera.  And in
the South, it's panther or pantha.  There is a slight variant in the Florida
Everglades, but it's the same basic animal.  The general color is
yellowish -- varying with season and geography -- but occasionally one is
born dark.  In the West, those are called "blue" lions [or blue cougars]
and, in the South, "black" panthers. They can easily weigh anywhere from 150
pounds to over 200.  A range of a lion [being from Northern Arizona, I use
that name] is substantial -- 20 or 30 miles is not unusual and it can be
much more than that.

There is every reason to believe panthers could easily have been  in the
Lowndes County region in the 1960s -- and still are to this very point.  And
they would certainly have been seen there.

 Actually, after having been relentlessly "thinned out" in many parts of the
country, they're now returning -- and in increasing numbers.  As a rule,
they are very shy and don't bother humans.  The rare exceptions almost
always involve the very rapid expansion of Western mountain cities into
traditional lion hunting terrain: e.g., Boulder, Colorado.  Two lions -- a
large male and a smaller female -- often come within two hundred yards of
our house here in Idaho. Nice to have them around -- along with all the
bobcats, coyotes, deer, moose, and much more.

Lions can be, in defense of their families and their interests, quite
fierce.  They are a very worthy totem -- or, in the non-Indian context,
logo.

As Ever - Hunter Bear

Hunter Gray  [ Hunter Bear ]
www.hunterbear.org
( social justice )

_______________________________________________

Second Post [March 6, 2002]

They are all the same animal -- simply different names from different
geographical and cultural  traditions. As I mentioned, the Florida
Everglades has a slight variant -- but it's still the same critter.  Other
cats -- with which city folks sometimes confuse the
puma/lion/panther/leon/pantera/cougar -- are the wildcat or bobcat [15-25
pounds] or the Canadian/Siberian Lynx [40-60 pounds.]  The South has plenty
of bobcats but it's doubtful that any rural person would confuse a bobcat
with a panther.  From extreme Southern Arizona down into various parts of
the rest of the Hemisphere, one finds the Jaguar [tiger, tigre.]  These are
often 150 to sometimes 250 or 300 pounds, yellow tan background with many
black spots -- and, like the lion or panther or pantera [Mexican for
panther], there are occasionally dark Jaguars.

I began learning these things when I started hunting from early childhood
on -- and then, for a time, trapped extensively.  [I once had about 200
Number 4 Victor double-springs for large animals -- but I now have only one,
hanging on the wall.  I can set it -- as I always have -- with my bare
hands, on my knee. If something goes wrong in that ritual, I'll then have
two thumbs and seven fingers.]

More to the point here:  There's an excellent book, The Ben Lilly Legend, by
the late Southwestern writer, J. Frank Dobie of Texas [Boston: Little, Brown
and Co., 1950 and many more recent printings.]  I bought my copy as a 16
year old at a Santa Fe bookstore almost as soon as it appeared. Dobie, BTW,
from an old Texas ranching family, was a consistently courageous liberal: a
supporter of  union labor and full civil rights who always vigorously backed
the
Southern Conference for Human Welfare.  He was a very fine writer who
taught at University of Texas [and England's Oxford] and fought hard for
academic freedom over several generations.  He was also a very good friend
of the late Jim Silver, who was, of course, the courageous History prof and
human being at Mississippi's Oxford -- and who wrote the classic,
Mississippi: The Closed Society, 1963/1964 and 1966. Jim told me that he and
Dobie gave each other every book they wrote.

The focus of this particular Dobie book  [ he wrote many very fine ones]
is Benjamin Vernon Lilly, the great lion and bear hunter -- "Last of the
Mountain Men" -- who was born in 1856 in Wilcox County, Alabama, grew up in
Mississippi's Kemper County, hunted extensively in the Deep South and
eventually went down into the Sierra Madre of Mexico, and finally came up
into the Western New Mexico/Eastern Arizona setting where he was active for
decades until his death at Silver City, NM, in 1936.  There is a monument to
him in the Mogollon Mountains.  Lilly was a Southern hunter -- who always
referred to the cats we are discussing as "panthers."  One fascinating
chapter of Dobie's book is Chapter 9, "Ben Lilly on Panthers" -- which is
based heavily on Mr. Lilly's manuscript, "What I Know About Panthers."  And
he knew a lot.

A ranching family in the remote Blue River/Bear Mountain country of extreme
eastern Arizona, at whose home I occasionally stayed in the late 1950s and
1960s especially, had two gunny sacks of possessions that Mr Lilly had left
there during his "last trip through" -- in the early 1930s.  Everything was
kept just as he had placed it: home-made hunting knives, clothing, spare .33
WCF cartridges, etc.  Ben Lilly was highly respected and is to this very
day -- a top authority on bears and lions.  And he always, in the best
Southern tradition, called the latter "panthers."


Sitting right here by my computer is my one-half Bobcat cat -- making it
clear she resents my devotion to the computer and is now ready for a morning
walk.  She consistently gets her way with me.

All best.

Yours -

HUNTER GRAY  [HUNTER BEAR]   Micmac /St. Francis Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
www.hunterbear.org
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the
game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the
high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own
inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down
on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings.  Then
it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and
remembering way. [Hunter Bear]










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