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When Panthers Roamed These Hills
Written By: Jane Gibson Nardy - Cashiers Historical Society | Issue: 2020/03 - March
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Many generations back in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, people were outnumbered by the wild animals of the forests.
Several times a year, every homesteader had to deal with monstrous six-foot long black panthers with a tail as long as their body. Sheep, piglets and fowl had to be cooped up at night for safety, or one of them would be killed by a panther and dragged off to its den.
Many a daybreak farm scene would have the panther “treed” by dogs barking and waking up everybody in the household. The homesteader would grab his rifle only to see away up in the tree tops a large black cat that at the sight of the man with a rifle would leap from one tree to the next, getting away and heading back to Panthertown. The only way to kill a panther was to shoot it right in the eye. No doubt this is how William Comer “Panther Bill” Peek from the Ellijay community of Macon County got his name.
From newspaper accounts, I learned that in the Fall of 1874, a hunting party consisting of Joseph Dodgens from the head of the Toxaway River, Charles N. Jenks from the head of the Cullasaja River, and Milton Moss and his son, Dan Moss from the village of Hamburg, were camping out on the spine of the Blue Ridge in-between the peaks of Little Hogback and the Great Hogback Mountain near the Jackson and Transylvania county line.
Sharpening their blades while sitting around a campfire, the men’s conversation led to Joe Dodgens being asked how many bears had he killed over his lifetime?
“I can’t tell exactly, but I can count up over 300 and think I have killed over 400.” Lying around the fading embers of the campfire, they could hear a panther’s shrill screams from over in Panthertown Valley. Besides their hunting knives, the men had their old-time flint and steel long-barreled Kentucky Gillespie rifles.
Other famous skilled hunters from that section of the Blue Ridge were Bobby McCall of Whiteside Cove and Rodrick Norton, who had moved from the Cove to the hills above Hamburg in his later years.
McCall and Norton had powerful strong bodies and were absolutely without fear of man or beast. In an instant, they would come to the aid of a friend or favorite dog in peril with just a knife. Both men could show scars left by a bear’s teeth and claws.
by Jane Nardy,
Historian, Cashiers historical Society
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