Cougar Encounter

“I had my first face to face Cougar encounter Wed. night. I was up on the North Fork of the Salmon River in Northern Ca. It was about 2:00 a.m. in the morning when I heard something behind me, I got up and looked with the flashlight and saw nothing. About 10 minutes later my Jack Russell started growling at something. I turned on the flashlight again and about 20 yards in front of me was the Cougar. I grabbed my .38 and we had a stare down for about 30 seconds when he slowly walked away and out of sight. I popped off a shot to insure he wouldn't be back and I could go back to sleep.
I was both excited and scared. The next morning I found tracks about five feet from where I was sleeping.
This encounter will surely live with me for a long time.”

“That is quite an experience. Any particular direction to that shot? A wounded cougar is a bundle of trouble, while a startled cougar may be more wary of humans. This ought to get the "gun vs. no gun in the backcountry" debate going again.”

“It wasn't at the cougar. It was in the woods behind me where the Easteners were camping”

“Sweet Cal, that had to be exciting! If it was 5 feet away, that can't be good! Good thing you had the dog with you!”

“LOL Calnatv, but be careful. Those Easterners might be packin' some gats themselves.”

“Were they Bloods or Cryps?”

“Popping off that round must have sounded pretty loud in the middle of the night, Calnatv. The ol' pump must have been chugging away during the whole event.”

“I hope you had your pup on a lead. My JRT would have been right in the middle of that couger. He's just a little guy, but he thinks he's 10 feet tall and bullet proof.”

“10-4 Hobbit, If I hadn't she would be cougar crap somewhere in the mountains right now. As a matter of fact I think it might have been the dog that attracted the cat.
Pekka, Yep the old pumper was chugging pretty hard.”

“Big cats give me the willies.

Hell, small cats give me the willies.”

“Cool encounter! I love close calls with exciting wildlife. Nothing so humbling as meeting a critter that doesn't consider you to be the top of the food chain.

Unfortunately you sound just like one of those gun toting weirdo Kalifornicans. You folks in Kalifornica are so violence prone. If ya'll were to shoot each other, us easterners wouldn't have to keep bailing you out of your financial messes, comrade.”

“If your'e out there Ice Tea, THIS is something to be concerned about. Not bears or psychos. But very few people ever see one. You are lucky cal.”

“Had a semi-encounter a few months back. I was hiking off the trail through a snow covered section, when I came across cougar tracks in the snow. I stopped looked around and up in the trees, no sign. Kept moving with caution up the ridgeline. Turned back not long after seeing the tracks back across the same snow covered spot, and the cat had marked the whole spot with urine.
This was not far from my camp,head back for some lunch and a nap.(I love naps) Got out of the tent to find a nice pile of fresh scat at the edge of my camp. Never saw the cat but wished I had. No dog to sound the alarm, weapon to spook it. Made for a different outlook while hiking solo for a couple days.”

“An interesting read is R.D. Lawrence's "The Ghost Walker," which covers his year-long study of a cougar in the B.C. wilderness.”

“A 1 year old female cougar, was treed in someone's backyard by family dogs, a few days ago in Edmonton, Alberta. After they tranquilized her and everybody took turns posing with her in photos, they drove her 100km up north and let her go. Beautiful cat.”

“Is a mountain lion the same thing as a cougar?”

“As far as I know, cougars, mountain lions, catamounts and pumas are the same thing. In some eastern states they call them panthers.”

“Yes. They are the same thing.”

“On our llama hike this year Turk found the top of a skull and attached horns of a California big horn sheep. It was a very fresh kill with some hair and the blood was still red (not black.) According to Turk he found it in a sort of cave in the rocks up towards Upper Soldier Lake. I looked at the skull to see if I could discern tooth puncture markings and there were some small ones. I was thinking a cougar had killed it and maybe a badger had taken the skull back to the cave to finish it off as a snack.

I'm sure the California Game and Fish or Park Rangers would have loved to have it for their records but to hell with those sorry a$$holes. Let them find their own. After all, they're to busy trying to bust people in parking lots for hiking with llamas.

I think Turk took the skull home for a rare trophy. Way to go Turk!!!!!”

“Good link, gordy.

There is a population rumored to exist in the Okeefenokee Swamp (GA) - Osceola NF (FL) area.”

“I have seen them in the everglades once!”

“what's a puma? am I going to meet one in Olympic Park?”

“panthers live in the everglades, yo!”

“They ALL the same!”

“Big cats are dangerous but a little pu$$y never hurt anybody.
hehehe”

“Real men hate cats.”

“Calnaty's mistake was firing a round over the cat's head instead of IN the cat's head.”

“Only if he started walking towards me.”

“Nice link - lots of info.

We call 'em catamounts in New England. I've seen one twice and I've got neighbors who've actually seen cubs. We spent one winter tracking one who made a regular loop every three days through my fields and woods and back into the deep woods to its lair in the caves at, of all places, Catamount State Forest.

Even though there have been many confirmed sightings and many casts and photos of tracks, the state's official position is that we're all seeing escaped pets.”

“steiny, DNRs like the "escaped pets" approach; we've heard the same here in the northwoods region. On the one hand, it could technically be true, that persons who tire of caring for an unlicensed (illegal) exotic species such as a full-grown cougar decide to turn it loose or, less likely, it "gets away from them."

On the other hand, the wildlife officials may see that explanation as a way to avoid including another predator species in their management plans, even if the few/new cougars showing up in a region are wild ones which are infiltrating as they expand their territories. Cougars are loners and require fairly large territories and, from my understanding, don't share well with others, so cubs have to find their own ranges once momma kicks them out.”

“Mountain lion and bear populations have been exploding in recent years. Of course there has never been a shortage. All the protection that has been going on has disrupted the balance. Humans have been hunting these predators for thousands of years. The recent restrictions on hunting has upset the ecosystem.
As a result the deer and other prey animals have been on a drastic decrease, at least here in the West. Also there are so many bears here on the West Coast that they are adversely effecting the reforestation efforts by attacking young redwood trees and eating the sweet cambium layers.

I am all for conservation but protectionism is just as harmful. Remember people. We as a species are not aliens to this world but are integral members of the world ecosystem. Conservation is good, but lets not tilt the balance the other direction.”

“Welcome back Alps. I guess now I don't need to e-mail you my story. LOL”

“I tried to call you When I saw the post. Couple of years ago I was cutting firewood up by Kettenpom. I stopped to wipe my brow, as I looked up the ridge and through the Fir trees I saw a lion sitting, wathching me.
Goooood kitty!!”

“Alps, can we send you some deer from the Northwoods? The balance is so far the other way around here, predators very low and the food sources (farms) so abundant, it can only be good if we get some big cats in the region. Of course the hunters don't agree for the most part. They complain about the couple of wolf packs already, and those packs don't even come close to having a significant role in containing deer numbers except in a very very limited area. Whether cougars would head to the really high deer pop. areas is a question, since those are fairly populated compared to the forested north country.”

“Yeah, I here that some of you guys have 7 deer limits to try to control the populations . I used to see herds of 50 deer plus in the winter here. That's the only time of year they herd up like that. The last 10 years or so your lucky to see half dozen together. We have Coastal blacktail here. They are quite a bit smaller than White tail or Mule deer.
I haven't quit hunting all together but I don't try very hard when I go. Since I started backpacking I have been more into admiring than harvesting. I think age has alot to do with that to.”

“It wasn`t that many years ago I was setting on a log pile watching the sun come up over a new burned out clear-cut. The day was cold and crisp and I could see my breath trail away from me with each new lung full of air.

The frost clung to the grass, tiny twigs and to the sides of my pants and boots. It was a great day for a hunt and I was drinking it all in and trying to see as much as I could with each glance as my eyes played out over the burned out draws and ridges in front of me.

Try as I might my ears were picking up the sounds of birds scurrying about and singing their fool heads off and drowning out the sounds of any deer that might be close enough for me to hear.

The sun haddn`t much more than cleared the tree line and was starting to chase the shadows off, when all hell broke loose.

A deer darted out of the cover of the trees and then another and then more and more deer ran out into the morning light and shadows as if their tails were on fire.

I took a deep breath and settled the crosshairs on a nice buck`s shoulders as he came to a sliding stop and looked back over his back to where he`d just cleared the tree line. I eased the safety off and tickled the trigger till the sound of my gun going off broke the morning stillness and the report of the shot could be heard echoing through the draws and back off the timber line. The buck didn`t know what hit him and he was gone before he could hear the sound of the shot.

I eased the gun away from my eye and looked at the buck laying there in the shadows and I was just about to crawl down from my stand when I saw a cougar rush out of the trees and pounce on a deer that had run back to the safety of the trees.

Wow, that was something, it happened in the blink of an eye and I all but missed getting to see it too. The cat did the deer in and turned and faced me, I haddn`t moved a bit, but he knew I was there. The wind was in my face too, but he knew I was there and he picked up the doe by the scruff of her neck and hauled her back into the wood line to eat on her away from my prying eyes.

Now that wasn`t the first time I`d ever seen a cat, but it was the first time I`d ever seen one take down a deer. Not knowing it, he helped me get my deer that morning and I helped him get his, when my shot turned them back into the woods he`d just ran them out of.”

“Cool story!”

“Big Foot, you could sell that one to Field & Stream or Outdoor Life!”

“Too late. They just stole it
(no copyright = public domain).”

“Cool story Mr Foot. You SHOULD try to sell that one.”

“It's been said before but it bears repeating. Mr. Foot SHOULD try to get a number of his stories published. He has a gift that deserves a wider audience than just us goof-balls.”

“Since Big Foot is a clearly identifiable personage, the very act of posting the story here creates de facto copyright. The nice thing is that it is timed and dated, so it is clear who wrote what first.

For the magazine market, BF would just need to flesh out the tale with even more vivid details, foreshadowing of events, background, enough to create a first-hand experience feature story.”

“To clarify, any writer has a de facto copyright on any origininal material he/she creates; it does not have to be registered with the copyright office to have protection. Some professional writers, especially when dealing with the entertainment industry, do mail themselves a certified mail package with a manuscript copy (which they leave unopened on arrival) if they are shopping the work around to various publishers. The Screenwriters Guild has a registration service for its members.

But for the average freelancer, just keep copies in your files that are dated, and query a publisher before sending them your full manuscript. The final question of rights and copyright when it goes into print will be part of the contract after acceptance.”

“Wow,...I don`t know what to say other than Thank You all. I was afraid everyone would get on to me for posting that because it had to do with hunting and nothing to do with bacpacking.

I wish I could write better, but I`d be afraid to turn that in. I just wanted to do something so I could play too. That was a true story and a moment in my life I`ll always remember with a smile.

Thank You all.......”

“Just like watching those animal documentaries on TV, only up close and live. And don't worry, a lot of the treads here don't concern backpacking...makes it more interesting.”

“John Cougar?”