Gail and Art Marks, two visitors walking the boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, witnessed an extremely rare wildlife sighting. And they have the photographs to prove it.  Gail and Art were able to capture on film a deer-stalking panther shortly past 5:30 p.m. last Friday.

"“We were being corralled out at closing time and we were walking the last couple hundred yards of the boardwalk when I looked over and saw the panther,” she said. “I pointed at it, and everybody stopped and looked. That’s when I handed my husband the camera and told him to start taking pictures.”

“He was shooting and the panther kept coming toward us because it was stalking the deer,” she said. “I think everybody on the boardwalk spooked the deer, because then it started running away directly into the direction of the panther.” Momentarily startled, Marks said the panther then took off after the deer, rapidly gaining ground.

“The last thing we saw was the panther leaping over a hill, and then it was just gone,” she said."

Read more on the Marks' experience. For more information on the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, call (239) 348-9151.