Category: Local Tales

The Catamount Hunt of Stepstone

On By Ginger Karrick KincaidIn Local TalesLeave a comment

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An illustration of a catamount, also known as a cougar, puma, mountain lion, or “mountain screamer.” They can be the size of a full-grown man.  Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

This is one of our family favorites, and we hope you enjoy it too.  Mr. Burl’s grandfather, Jacob Kincaid, lived at Stepstone until he moved to town around 1900, give or take a few years.  The best we can figure is that this catamount hunt at Stepstone took place in the latter decades of the 1800’s.

From the journals:

“Most all children love to have parents or grandparents relate unusual tales to them.  Perhaps this is something the children of today do not have enough exposure to.  What follows is a tale my grandfather used to tell me.

A predator of some sort was killing and maiming the livestock in the Stepstone community years ago.   The slaughter of small livestock reached such a magnitude that men of the area would ride through the pastures and woods searching for the culprit.  Some of the riders carried rifles and some carried shotguns.  The search went on for several weeks with no progress.

One day, “Jake” Kincaid and a Mr. Utterback were riding through a wooded area when suddenly from behind an old log a ferocious animal sprang up on his hind legs.   The animal let out a blood-curdling scream.  The two men were almost overcome with “buck fever,” but both got off a shot at the wild creature.  Both men thought they had dealt the fatal blow.  Kincaid and Utterback, seeing the cat was dead, eased closer and closer to determine what their victim was.

The two friends later decided that it was a large “catamount.”  Folks in the community that had seen such animals before supplied the name.  A catamount goes by other names depending upon the section of the continent where it is found.  Other names for this member of the cat family are panther and puma.

The Stepstone community rejoiced because the slaughtering of their small animals would and did pass.  Mr. Utterback volunteered to take the big “cat” home and skin it and this tale ends there.”

That tale does end there but mine is not quite finished!

Catamounts are mentioned frequently in old newspaper clippings from around the time period of the Stepstone incident. The January 5, 1899 issue of the Owingsville Outlook states that a Chas. Skeins caught a catamount Sunday night at his home near here. This was in the Hillsboro section of the paper.

Additionally, in the February 2, 1892 issue of the Mt. Sterling Advocate, this report is given of the killing of a catamount: Two grown sons of Jerry Carpenter, living near Daisy Dell, in this county, killed a catamount recently so large that when they tied its hind feet together and suspended it on a pole between them, its head dragged the ground. After they shot it through the body it whipped their dogs and they had to kill it with an ax.

Is this all past history? Are the catamounts gone from the wild forever here in our neck of the woods? Well, maybe not. Folks still claim to see the big cats from time to time. ~ Ginger

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The man on the right in the back row is Jacob Kincaid in his older years.  That’s Mr. Burl in the front row on the right, probably at about the age when he took great pleasure in hearing the catamount tale from his grandfather.

Fallin’ Weather, Jefferson (Mr. Jeff) Darnell, and Tom Turner

On By Ginger Karrick KincaidIn Local Tales1 Comment

Last night as we were standing in our backyard getting something out of our car, we noticed that we could hear the sounds from the drag strip over the hill very clearly, as well as the ones from the football game on the other end of town.   Don said, “It’s fallin’ weather.”  Woke up this morning to rain and lots of it.  Fallin’ weather it is!

From the journals:
      Fallin’ weather – just what does that mean?  It is an old expression that folks used when they were more or less trying to predict the weather.  If you heard a train whistle close to Preston or Olympia and you were in Owingsville, it meant to an old-timer that rain or snow was imminent.
      When someone would observe smoke from a chimney hovering close to the ground and not rising, then he or she would predict rain or snow.
      These days, there are no C&O trains running through the county,  but if you do not live far from I-64 or other busy highways, you may make your predictions based on the volume of the sounds emanating from these thoroughfares.   If the sounds of cars and trucks increase substantially in volume, it is a good indicator of ‘fallin’ weather’ – so they say.
 
On a side note, everyone in my family was saddened by the passing of Mr. Tom Turner.  He always had a smile for everyone he met, and I think he was one of those people who deliberately chooses happiness and kindness and what a blessing that is when a person like that is a part of your life and community.
 
When my oldest son, Jacob, worked at the IGA while in high school,  Tom would talk to him there and tell him stories about his (Jacob’s) great-grandfather Jeff Darnell (father-in-law of William Burl Kincaid, Jr.).   Tom would also tell my husband these stories.  In a very real way, my husband and sons got to know “Mr. Jeff” just a bit better because of Tom Turner, and when you think about it, that’s what small town living is all about – weaving those kinds of threads that make everyone a bit closer.   – Ginger
Jefferson Lee Darnell (“Mr. Jeff” to most folks – when he was vice president of the Farmer’s Bank, he kept a loaded shotgun by his desk when word got to him that banks in neighboring communities were being robbed.  I don’t know if that’s a story passed down in the family or one from Tom Turner – probably both.)