Through the years, there have been many stories about wild animals prowling in parts of Henry County. W.W. “Billy” Rhoads knows the stories and he can tell ‘em from “experiences.”

His hair-raising stories, which to many persons will sound like fiction, are vividly related. He has taken the time to write them and they are being published in two sections in the News. You’ll find them interesting reading.

The first installment:

Jungle Life by W.W. Rhoades

I have lived all my life in the heaviest timbered section of Henry County, in the south part of the county somewhat over a mile from the Lee County line, on an old road, now partly closed, that ran due south. On that road was old Pilot Grove, a little trading point with two stores, and two blacksmith shops. In that little town I was born over 70 years ago.

When the railroad came through, somewhat over 60 years ago, it missed Pilot Grove and started another town, Pilot Grove station, on the same road. So, the little town of my birth has long since passed into oblivion.

Mother died at my birth and I was adopted by Mary Ann and Davis Rhoades and was reared on the banks of old Bogue Creek in the south part of the county near what is now the Dr. Howard Garretson farm. What is now farm land and homes was then a great primeval forest reaching for miles in every direction, scarcely touched by the hand of man, great white oak, walnut and cottonwood, three and four feet in diameter. In time the saw mills came and those old monarchs of the forest disappeared, and now in many places brush and second growth have taken their place.

This was a natural hiding place for wild animals, both large and small, a jungle and a natural crossing place from one mountain range to the other. Here they could keep to the low ground the broken and timber sections, from off the down Bogue Creek, Skunk River on to the Mississippi, the Ozarks and the mountains of the West.

Only last week while I was making fence between Dr. Garretson’s land and mine, close to the creek. I heard a loud commotion near the foot of a steep bluff covered with a tangled growth of trees and brush. Slipping up behind the bank of the creek, I got within one hundred feet of the noise. On rising up, I saw two old animals with their young. The old ones whirled and stood side by side, facing me, both growling angrily like a fierce dog about to bite. They were as large as a good-sized foxhound, body reddish tawny brown, much darker than a red fox, slim neck and pointed nose, ears three inches long sticking straight up. They continued to growl and threatened me till I yelled and started at them, then they darted behind some brush.

I went up to the cubs. All but two ran into a groundhog hole. The cubs would weigh 6 or 8 lbs. each with shorter legs and heavier body than a fox, dark bushy tail 4 or 5 inches long. I knew better than to molest the little fellows, for the old ones were just behind the brush keeping watch and would have been on me in an instant if I had bothered their little ones.

What they were is as much your guess as mine. But they resembled a Canadian lynx and were the color of lynx at this time of year. Panthers, or mountain lions have been passing over this trail as far back as I can remember. I know of three panthers in my time having been killed in reach of here. They were quite common in an early day. I will write about them as they come in order and in finishing this history as I know it.

I will tell my own experience and narrow escape, and how two young roosters undoubtedly saved my life. Sixty years ago, a man was chopping wood west of Salem; his wife sent dinner to him by their eight-year-old daughter. At two o’clock, she hadn’t come, so the man started home. Having gone but a short distance, he saw a pool of blood and pieces of a dress, and tracks of some large animal that had packed her off. The alarm was sent out by horse back. A man who was staying with us went. They tracked the animal to Big Cedar, into a large cave where one of her little arms was found at the mouth.

The crowd dug and blasted three days and nights, and when at last they killed the animal, it proved to be a panther.

I have always been fond of night hunting and many are the piercing screams, screeches and night voices, strange and weird that I have heard in the past. It would almost be impossible for even the most experienced hunter to name the different animals that made them. A wolf or fox at times will give a scream that is unbelievable, or even a skunk, a screech that is startling.

Quite a good many years ago the Graham and Wilson boys were scared out of the timber, on old Prairie Creek in Baltimore Township, by some large animal with a hair-raising scream. One of the boys was on a load of wood at the foot of old Prairie Creek hill, when some large animal jumped out of the brush and stood snarling at him. He threw the lock stick at it and with a savage growl, the animal grabbed the stick and shook it viciously. One bright moonlight as I was coming home on horseback, I saw it by the side of the road, crouched ready to spring on what I supposed was a rabbit.

That spring, a man by the name of Loomis, living on the township line north of the Boyleston Bridge, had some sheep killed. He put poison on them and after that he found some large animal dead in his pasture, said by those who saw it as filling the description of a mountain lion with its enormous feet and jaws.

The panther, cougar, puma and mountain lion are one and the same animal, only called by different names. I know that the so-called animal books will tell you that the panther, lynx, ring-tailed cat, bob-cat or wild cat are almost extinct in the U.S., but that is not the fact. I know that all of them have been killed within a few miles of my home. And I have seen all of them alive in the timber, during the last several years, or at least they filled the description.

A ring-tailed cat is as large as a big dog, or a good-sized calf. They belong to the cat or panther family. They will tree in a little while if a dog chases them, and when the hunter gets within 100 yards or so of the tree, they give a spring and light beyond the dogs, then tree soon again. I almost ran my legs off till I learned their game.

West of Salem, a mob of hunters ganged up and when Mr. Ringtail tree’d, they formed a large circle around the tree and when the cat jumped, they shot him. Three neighbor boys were out one night, the dogs were on trail, and they sat down to wait under a large spreading tree. Some animal came running through the leaves and with a spring, lit high up among the branches, apparently with as much ease as a guinea would fly up. When shot, it turned out to be a half-grown ringtail.

Less than a mile north of our farm is a large den in solid rock that has been known as the Wildcat Den and well do I remember an old professional trapper, J.W. Frazier, and how he rode an old gray mare with a cow bell on her, and when hunting always rode facing back. At that time, he trapped out the last one that used the den. But a bob-cat dug it out again a few years ago. Until I left the farm, it was not uncommon to run onto a badger or see its tracks in the snow or mud.

One evening when we were shutting up the poultry, a badger ran past within a few feet of us. At the mouth of Fish Creek, yellow coyotes barked at me not over fifty yards away and some campers said they often picked up scraps around the tent. More than one summer, a Kentucky mocking bird was seen in our timber. They are about the size of a blue jay and look somewhat like one. Once I was standing under one. In an unguarded mood, I tried to whistle like him, then I got mine. He stuck his head and neck down at me, twisted in several insulting shapes and with an ugly voice and manner mocked me, till I was ashamed and glad no one was near.

Dennis Wheatcroft, husband of my mother’s sister, took a partner and started cutting cord wood near old Horse-shoe Lake, now owned by the Abrahams. They bunked in an old cabin, without a door or window, which had been made to store the buckets from that big sugar camp. On leaving Saturday, they lent their gun and ammunition to the father of the late Charlie Sheets, who said something was killing his fat hogs. On coming back ‘Den’ went after the gun, but Sheets had shot all of the ammunition.

There was a rail fence between the Sheets’ farm and the big timber of the lake. When ‘Den’ was on the top rail, there was a savage scream. Looking down, he saw a panther in the act of springing. Then, he did the only thing animal books say one can do at such a time. He grabbed his coat tail with both hands and turning it over his head with a yell jumped at the panther. Not knowing just what that thing was, the Panther put back to the timber. ‘Den’ never knew exactly whether he ran or flew back to the cabin. They hurriedly built a bonfire in front of the cabin door and all night long with savage growls and screams, two panthers circled the cabin.
In the morning when the coast was clear, they left for home, left their things and never went back.

This is what a forest ranger, who is hired by the U.S. government to hunt the cougar, says in his book: “I kill the killers.” They are of a reddish, yellow brown, slick shiny fur, are about 8 ft. long, weight 180 to 200 lbs., can spring twenty feet up to a limb, can spring 30 feet on the ground, or 40 feet out of a tree, are absolutely without fear, are so strong they can kill a good-sized horse and drag it off, and when wounded, no man’s life is safe until it is killed. They have enormous feet with long claws that hook down, going into even hard ground, bringing up little chunks of dirt at every step. The longer I hunt them, the more I respect and fear them.

(“The Mount Pleasant News”, Mount Pleasant, Iowa, Saturday, August 25, 1945, page 2)

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Resource provided by Henry County Heritage Trust, Mount Pleasant, Iowa; transcription done by Rebekah Stone, University of Northern Iowa Public History Field Experience Class, Spring 2024.

Contributed to Henry County IAGenWeb March 2025.