Outdoor adventure stories tend to get much better with age and a mature shooter or caster is likely to be startled when one of his own accounts catches up with him years later and has been improved until it’s unrecognizable although probably more dramatic than ever. The stirring prose in this account relates events I think took place although I’m not sure of them. You have heard of most of them before unless you were too young to have caught them the first time around.

The good part is that I accept no blame for any utter falsehoods, which takes me off the hook so to speak, and even the partial lies are educational if you walk in mud a lot and have been sunburned frequently. As I compose this material I recall the city editor of long ago who saw me across his cluttered desk and in two words summarized a faulty story I had turned in.

“Rumor bearer!” he snarled.

The best of sporting outdoor stories concern attacks upon hunters or fishermen by wild creatures, like the time I was attacked by a black bass, a stirring account I have repeated since I was a kid and which you must have read if you have kept your subscription paid up. I have tried to make it into a zippy adventure but a largemouth bass doesn’t have much in the way of teeth. I was just paddling a leaky little boat while a friend threw an Al Foss pork rind bait at the creek shoreline. It was warm that evening and I trailed my hand in the water, whereupon the bass struck it and I was disappointed that he left very little mark. I believe it was the same fish my buddy caught on his next cast.

This is not nearly as exciting a story as the one about the Texas tarpon angler who was using heavy tackle many years ago and was drowned when a tarpon got him tangled and pulled him overboard. It is not even as good as the tarpon who resented being boated by two friends of mine, thrashed them out of the boat and then pounded it to pieces and swam away while they stood in four feet of water. Many rental skiffs used to be a little flimsy.

On one of my first Florida bonefishing trips I was wading a flat near Key Largo when I saw a strange threshing ahead and fled from a thing that looked like a waving sickle. I eventually learned it was just the fin of a big permit that was in very shallow water and pursuing crabs—or something. Wasn’t an exotic shark at all.

The panther, whether the Florida version or the near-duplicate “mountain lion,” has often been pulled out of trees with ropes and runs from the hounds but he has the capability for pretty effective sparring and in recent years there have been some fatalities in the West—more cats and more people. The cougar makes a profession of sneaking and many a long-term cougar hunter has never seen one except ahead of the hounds. An old friend of mine got into trouble with a Western fish-and-game department when he shot one of the cats he said was coming for him. But before he could be taken to court for an illegal kill he pointed out that he had nailed the cat between the eyes with a deer rifle. His argument was that he wasn’t that good a shot unless the cougar was close and coming. No charges. I don’t know of any Florida attacks, but old residents of the Everglades country tell me that cougars used to be snarlingly disagreeable when caught pilfering chickens at night.

Having fumbled around the backcountry quite a bit, I have actually had a good view of a Florida panther in the wild only once and have never heard one that I know of. I guess I have heard a mountain cat once. At least it was a very strange series of sounds and came from a spot where there was plenty of cat sign. I am not going to describe it, as it was not particularly scary and sounded like some common human talking and laughing sounds. I was unable to hear any blood-curdling screams so my bird dog and I swore each other to secrecy. The bird dog has since died.