By John Keast - Julian Evans has his eyes skinned. His Rakaia Gorge home backs on to lofty Mt Hutt, and it was across a lower slope just over a week ago that he saw something black, sleek and shiny.
He believes, for want of a better term, he has seen Mid Canterbury’s black panther.
Such a creature has been seen many times in Mid Canterbury, and several times at Mt Winterslow, over the hill from Mt Hutt.
It is on that station that owner David Wightman has set a cage trap to
try to capture the legendary animal, and the station to which
four-wheel drive tours will be run on January 23 and February 13 as a
fund-raiser for the Methven Heritage Project. (Registration forms
available at www.methvenheritagecentre.co.nz or at the Methven I-Site).
Mr Evans has pet deer on his small property, and he was stroking one on
a Saturday morning when he saw something move on the lower slopes of Mt
Hutt Station.
He pressed forward, and saw a creature, cat-like but too big to be a
domestic cat, walking slowly across a track above some sprayed gorse.
He said it was big – it would have to be to be seen at the distance, around 600m – and crouching.
Mr Evans, a retired farmer, has worked with dogs all his life and is sure it was not a dog.
He believes the animal – it had gone when he returned from getting
binoculars – moved into a triangular block of pines near the track –
the same block his foxy dogs refused to enter when he went to explore
several days after the sighting.
He has heard a similar tale from someone else who saw the animal, or something like it, elsewhere in Mid Canterbury.
Mr Evans is convinced of what he saw, and is keeping on a close eye on the hills now around his elevated home.
Mr Evans at the spot at which he saw the “panther” and,
above/below, the area where the animal was seen and, right, the trees
to which it is believed to have gone to ground.
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