It is not always these stories are told to misrepresent facts, but it is often the case of imagination or being mistaken. One of the large owls has another cry or call besides the well known hoo-hoo-hoo, which the deer still-hunter often imitates when he wishes to inform a companion just where he is without fear of alarming the deer. The writer has often seen, just at twilight, or nearly break of day, one of those large owls follow along some distance in the woods, flying from tree to tree, lighting on the lower branches of the trees, only a few feet above my head, apparently doing this from curiosity. Frequently the owl would give a screech which was similar to that given by a woman who has been suddenly frightened. Undoubtedly this screech of the owl has often been taken for that of the panther. Owing to the great abundance of down or fine feathers on the quills of the wings of the owl, the owl can light within six feet of a person's head, and if the owl was not seen, you would not know of its presence, for you could not hear the flight of the owl. While I have not had as much experience in the haunts of the panther as some, yet I have been all through the Pacific Coast States and a good part of the mountains, and have never heard what I thought was the cry of a panther, or a mountain lion. My father often told me that he had never heard anything that he called a screech of panther and did not think that a panther ever made any such screeching noise as is claimed, yet in my younger days it was a frequent occurrence to hear some one tell of hearing a panther and how a panther had followed them through a certain piece of woods. Even to this day we occasionally hear of some one being followed by a panther and how they had heard a panther screeching on a certain hill. CHAPTER XXVII. Handling Raw Furs and Other Notes. Boys, as you are nearly all in from the trap line and the trail, (May, 1910), I am going to take the opportunity to give the younger trappers (and some of the older ones, too) a drubbing. I would like to see every trapper get all that his furs are worth and I would not like to see one-half the value of your furs go, simply because you neglected to skin and stretch your catch as it should be. During the past winter I was in town one day and met a fur buyer and he asked me to go over and see his bunch of furs, saying, "I am going to ship the furs tomorrow." I went with the fur dealer and found that he had a lot of stuff, several hundred dollars worth of furs, consisting of fox, coon, skunk, mink, and muskrat, some wildcat. A good part of this bunch of furs had been caught at least a month before it should have been. Of this unprime fur I will have but little to say. I am sorry to know that any trapper will throw away his time and money by trapping furs before the fur is in reasonably prime condition.