About this time last year, during another period of intense heat and drought, I saw a large, tawny animal coming down the side of Santa Anna Mountain. It was just after dawn, and at first I thought it was a gold retriever, but it leapt from one rock to another in a way that wasn’t very dog like. I’m not 100% sure it was a mountain lion, but I think it was.
A fellow down the road from us said he saw one a few years back. He heard a noise in the middle of the night, and came out to see what it was. He says it was a mountain lion prowling around his building. It heard him come out, and took off running down Avenue B. From time to time, people spot them out here, although the population has to be pretty thin, and they roam large territories, so a mountain lion spotted 200 miles from away could easily be the same one someone saw here.
Big cats are a secretive group. They are rarely seen, even when the population is healthy, yet they hold a fascination for us that spawns all kinds of stories, rumors and even legends. There was a time when another big cat, the jaguar, roamed the hills of west central Texas. Although rare even in the frontier days, jaguars were seen in Texas from time to time, and there are several proven episodes of the jaguar’s existence here. One of the most famous encounters took place in Goldthwaite in 1903.
Known as the Goldthwaite jaguar, the animal was killed by a man named Homer Brown while hunting mountain lions in the area. Brown’s account of the incident was printed in Texas Game and Fish in 1946. It says, “Henry Morris came to go hunting with me that night. I had a boy staying with me by the name of Johnnie Walton. We three took supper at my home and then started for the mountains, 3 miles southwest of Center City, where we started the jaguar just at dark. We ran him about 3 miles and treed him in a small Spanish oak. I shot him in the body with a Colt .45. He fell out of the tree and the hounds ran him about half a mile and bayed him. I stayed with him while Morris went to Center City after guns and ammunition. In about an hour and a half he came back and brought several men with him, so then the fight commenced. We had to ride into the shinnery and drive him out, and we killed him just at 12 o’clock that night. We commenced the fight with ten hounds, but when we got him killed there were three dogs with him, and one of them was wounded. He killed one dog and very nearly killed several others. He got hold of Bill Morris’s horse and bit it so bad it died from the wounds. The men in the chase were three of the house boys, Al and Joe Tangford, George Morris, Bill Morris, Thad Carter, Claud Scott, Henry Morris, Johnnie Walton, and myself. The jaguar measured 6 feet from tip to tip, 36 inches around chest, 20 inches around head, 21 inches around forearm, 9 inches across the bottom of foot; weight, 140 pounds.”
In another recollection, the story is told that this jaguar was not alone, that another cat accompanied him but managed to elude capture. The remains of the Goldthwaite jaguar were donated to the Smithsonian, where they are today.
People say that Texas never had a large population of jaguars, that they simply wandered up from Mexico from time to time. It’s hard to say for sure I guess. The same claim is not made regarding mountain lions, however, which are still relatively frequent visitors to ranches and wilderness preserves, particularly around the Big Bend area.
The jaguar is considered extinct in Texas, having not been sighted here since the 1940s. If history teaches us one thing though, it is that everything rises and falls. Civilizations, like the big cats, come and go. Perhaps one day, in the far distant future, jaguars will again roam the hills of west central Texas, and the stories and rumors concerning these elusive and secretive animals will start all over again. If they do, my bet is they set up headquarters right here on Santa Anna Mountain. I’m pretty sure the mountain lions are doing it already.
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com
