KI-YU: A Story of Panthers. {Inscribed and Signed by Roderick Haig-Brown}.

Boston and New York. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1934. First Edition. [10], 3-213 [214-216] pp. With an interesting, signed inscription by Haig-Brown in the year of publication to "The Sheriff / Roderick L. Haig-Brown / Dec. 1934 / A pleasant meeting" on the front fly leaf. Ki-yu is Roderick Haig-Brown's intimate story of Vancouver Island panthers (or cougars or mountain lions, if you like), Blackstreak and Nassa and their cub, Ki-yu. These panthers roamed at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, and sometimes weigh as much as 250 pounds - powerful and fearless and who hunt deer and elk and only occasionally attack cattle and raid chicken coops. It is Ki-yu who grows to be the largest and most powerful and fearless of panthers as he ranges over the Plateau and the Wapiti Valley. And it is the story of the ranchers who fear him and seek to kill him. Haig-Brown studied panthers under the watchful eye of John Cecil Smith, the greatest of Vancouver Island panther hunters. Roderick Haig-Brown's story is based on first-hand experience, his own and Mr. Smith's. The book is bound in beige cloth with orange titles on the spine and a silhouette in orange showing a panther with black muzzle markings. Pictorial dust jacket. The book is clean and fine and the jacket is very good with light edge wear and chips with a bit of restoration on the spine panel.