Fondly Remembering Harold C. "Red" Palmer
He Would "Bring 'em Back Alive"  

By Harris Dalton

Harold C. "Red" Palmer killed big, dangerous wild animals, but his lifetime objective was a more humane "near death" state that allowed him to capture and study the world's most vicious creatures. Red Palmer, a pioneer developer of the tranquilizing gun, gained fame with his "bring 'em back alive" exploits. He was courageous, friendly, loquacious and strangely unpredictable.

Although a native of the South Georgia town of Meigs, his manner of speaking along with his appearance were more Australian, much like Crocodile Dundee.

I first met Red after being told a big game hunter was to speak to a Baptist ladies' group at the Douglas County Chamber of Commerce. Red and I were the only males at the meeting, and after a few announcements, the lady chairman asked if I had anything to say.

I answered honestly, "No, ma'am, I came to hear Mr. Palmer."

Red's florid face broke into a wide smile as he said, "There's a man who knows how to make a speaker feel welcome."

We became friends because there was nothing Red loved more than having someone to listen to him, and I enjoyed hearing his adventure tales as much as he reveled in telling them. He invited me to come visit him on his 600-acre menagerie of lions, tigers, elephants, hyenas, cougars, cheetahs, llamas, guanaco, elk, monkeys, alpaca and other animals.

When I arrived at the Douglas County facility, a guard opened the gate and led me to a building where Cap Chur, his tranquilizing equipment, was manufactured. The secretary told me Red was in the lab building, pointing "Out that door, follow the walkway, and you'll see the lab sign on the building."

I was some 50 yards down the walkway when I heard a mighty roar like one I'd only heard before a movie. I looked and saw a majestic lion running at a high rate of speed behind a wire fence not more than five feet high. It was easy to see that lion could jump over the fence with a single bound, and I calculated I was too far from the equipment building I just left to outrun him to safety. My only weapon was a twin-lens reflex camera with a large flash attachment which I planned to jam into the snarling mouth as the lion attacked. I figured I'd make him eat that camera before he ate me.

You can imagine my relief when the chain around the roaring lion's neck ran out of slack, and he was jerked to a sudden halt. When I told Red about my apprehension, he laughed and said, "Leonardo is just a big pussy cat. He might have licked you to death, but he'd never eat you. We feed him too good to be satisfied with the likes of you."

We spent the rest of the afternoon with Red telling me of safaris. He told about leading Prince Rainier of Monaco on an African safari. Red was revered worldwide as a wildlife expert, and in 1961, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with Salvador Dali. He also helped in the production of Wild Kingdom and escorted presidents and foreign dignitaries around his Douglas County preserve. He also furnished animals for laboratory experiments to the Yerkes Primate Center.

Back in the 1960s when there was a rash of plane hijackings, Red offered his tranquilizing equipment to the Federal Transportation Commission, but was rejected on the grounds that air marshals were not practicing medical doctors and therefore were not qualified to administer drugs.

Red's reaction: "They're not qualified to administer drugs that can save human lives, but they are authorized to inject lead into another human being with the strong possibility that death will result. Go figure!"

Red was an iconoclastic vision as he tooled through the streets of Douglas County in his classic Bentley with the steering wheel on the right side and his Australian bush hat cocked at a jaunty angle.

I remember working on a story about the world's fastest animals, and who better to turn to for pictures of the cheetah than Red Palmer?

"Yes," he told me on the phone, "I have two cheetahs. Come by tomorrow, and we'll get some pictures for your article."

The cheetahs were housed in a large geodesic dome made of a material that resembled chicken wire. When I arrived, Red said, "Let me get my pistol." Returning, he noted my consternation while viewing the pistol in his hand, and he said, "Don't worry, it's just a blank pistol like they use as a starter's pistol."

"Why should we need a pistol?" I asked. "I thought I could take pictures of them through their cage."

"No they won't come out for us. They hide inside the brush we've cultivated for them in the dome. We'll have to go inside and flush them out."

"With a blank pistol?" I asked.

"They don't know it's a blank pistol."

"But I do," was my response before being coerced into the geodesic structure. It was hard to refuse Red without looking like a wimp in his eyes, so I stepped into the cage where the world's fastest animals were hidden somewhere in a thicket looking at us.

With his left hand, but still holding the pistol in his right, Red picked up a stick and began beating the brush where the cheetahs were hiding. Sooner than I wished, the two appeared in a clearing that surrounded the brush pile. They must have been as afraid of us as I was of them because they scampered to the farthest-most space they could retreat to. I snapped off several shots without taking careful focus, hoping for the best.

"You got what you need?" Red asked.

"Yes," I lied, anxious to get out of there.

Red's stout heart stopped pumping at age 85 on May 14, 2000 of complications from heart surgery. His heart had served him well in some very tense situations.