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Ran into a mountain lion today

6K views 89 replies 45 participants last post by  Richard Olmstead 
#1 ·
Out steelheading on the nf stilly and ran into a small (I think) mountain lion this morning. Was about the size of a large golden retriever but much meatier and had a huge tail. Scared the fuck out of me.

The river was pretty high due to the rain so I had to hike up in the woods to go upstream. When I dropped down to the river and broke thru the brush, just 8-10 yards upstream of me this dude was chilling on the gravel bar. I had seen about a dozen pink salmon carcasses/bones in the woods but I thought it was just a bear bringing them up as I have seen bear tracks on this run before. It was pretty clear I startled him too as he darted upriver and into the woods after making eye contact with me for a few seconds. I had never seen one before so I really don't know if it was a baby or was just a young adult (was afraid that the little shit might go run to momma).

Freaked me out regardless, and it seemed I scared him off too. After he turned around, I followed suit and ran away like a middle school girl back downstream. Pretty sure I peed a bit too. Don't think my little fillet knife would have done me much good. Got back to my car and drove a few miles downstream to fish someplace else. I was freezing cold before this and within a few minutes I was sweating. Pretty cool experience overall

Be careful out there....
 
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#41 ·
I have a kitty story. A few years ago, two of my buddies and I drove way back into a remote creek out on the Olympic Peninsula looking to find steelhead. It's a 25 or so minute drive through a maze of logging roads so not too many humans get back there. Once you park, you have another 3/4 mile hike down to the creek. On this winter trip, we brought along our third buddy, Mark, who was a bit of a steelhead newbie. We had struck out on the other more popular OP rivers so we were hoping to have a better chance of getting our newb hooked on steelie on this less pounded spot. When we got down to the creek where you have to cross, we spotted fresh kitty tacks in the frozen sand taking the same path we were going to take. These were perfect prints with smooth impression of the paw pads and sharp edge definition. Inside the prints was dark wet sand contrasted by the surrounding white morning frost. The tracks were very fresh indeed. I wish I took a picture. I remember we were amazed how big the tracks were, putting our hands next to the perfect prints comparing a similar size (with fingerless gloves on too!). Holy shit, that was one big kitty cat!

Well, we crossed and started to turn our focus on bagging a steelhead so soon forgot about the near encounter with Miss Kitty. We hopped-scotched about 2 miles or so and my newbie friend was lagging further and further behind. He had a twisted ankle that was nearly healed but was giving him trouble again. Seems all the river crossing and log jumping was making his ankle angry again. We kept egging him on positive we'll find at least one fish here. Many hours later and without so much as a single pull between us, his sore ankle and the cold had broken his spirit. Mark announced he was going to start heading back and that with his bum ankle we're likely to catch up to him soon anyway. Light was starting to fall and my other buddy and I would have to head back soon anyway. After fishing around the next bend, we turned around as well. It was easy to distinguish our buddies footprints making a straight beeline back up river from our river hugging tracks coming down. Being the joker that he is, he even took time carve big arrows in the sand with the words "CAR" and, "GOOD FOOD", "COLD BEER" and then, "GIRLS-GIRLS-GIRLS".

Our search for steelhead often results in us pushing daylight to the very end and beyond. True to form, it was pretty completely much pitch black when we got back up to the cars. I figured my other buddy would have had a beer cracked and wader off by the time we got there but everything was quiet, dark and cars un opened. Okay, I yelled out, "very funny , dude, quit hiding and let's get the hell out of here, c'mon!" Nothing. Cars opened, lights on, headlamps on scanning the area, it looked like the only fresh boot tracks were just the two of us. Oh-oh, it dawned on us that we'd been here many times before and knew where the crossing was but our newb probably missed it especially since it was so dark. My friend said, "oh shit, speaking of crossings, remember those big cougar tracks we saw down there?....." An icy chill and prickly hairs crawled up the back of my neck. We turned on our headlights, honked the horns, shouted his name and listened for a reply. Nothing. More honking, shouting and flashing of lights. Nothing, dead f-ing quiet. It's one hell of a bad feeling knowing you left your buddy back down in the dark ravine, lost and hobbling around like wounded prey with a hungry bad ass cat lurking around. The hike back down the trail to the crossing was the longest walk ever. I remember shouting as loud as we could and trying to make as much noise as possible. I also remember trying to find a big kitty club but it's the friggin rainforest and all the fallen limbs are pretty much mush. I dug into my fly vest and found my little swiss army knife. I thought about how outmatched I would be against a big cat. Images of raising and sacrificing my left arm to the cat's fangs so I can get a good shot at his body with my puny knife was going through my mind. Should I hold the knife blade down or up?....no, down - the blade is probably not long enough to hit the heart so gotta go for the jugular or an eye or anywhere and everywhere on the head, yep, blade down. And that was the preferable scenario to finding his half eaten corpse and then having to tell his wife and kids. You can't help but to think some pretty sick shit in situations like that.

Sure enough, he missed the crossing. It was too dark and he wasn't familiar enough with what to look for so he passed it. We had crossed behind him before he'd realized he'd gone too far. Then he backtracked looking for the crossing but it was just too damn dark to make anything out. The old boy scout training kicked in. He knew he was pretty close and we'd come back to look for him so he hunkered down in the freezing cold to wait. He remembered the kitty tracks so he found a driftwood club and big root ball to tuck into. He said that sitting in that root ball in the dark and mist with the little glints of the moonlight filtered by the thick old growth bouncing off the newly formed frost covered brushes, rocks and fallen logs made everything look like hundreds of cats slinking all around him. Everywhere he looked, it looked like a crouching back of a cat sneaking towards him or a peaking head and kitty ears staring at him.

So, it was such a huge relief when we got down to the river and saw his tiny headlamp heading up the river arms waving and shouting. He heard us and climbed out of the root ball and came up river to us almost running. We couldn't help but to jump up and down cheering as well. We never saw the actual cat but it sure played a big part that day. Sometimes your imagination is worse than reality. I'm often glad it is.
 
#45 ·
Unless you're a small child, or tiny woman, there's nothing to fear about mountain lions. You've all had them follow you, out of feline curiousity, but were completely unaware. The cat knew all you big lugs were more trouble than you're worth, and simply couldn't believe that a large animal would move through the woods like ungainly clueless doofus.
 
#46 ·
Unless you're a small child, or tiny woman, there's nothing to fear about mountain lions. You've all had them follow you, out of feline curiousity, but were completely unaware. The cat knew all you big lugs were more trouble than you're worth, and simply couldn't believe that a large animal would move through the woods like ungainly clueless doofus.
 
#57 ·
Unless you're a small child, or tiny woman, there's nothing to fear about mountain lions. You've all had them follow you, out of feline curiousity, but were completely unaware. The cat knew all you big lugs were more trouble than you're worth, and simply couldn't believe that a large animal would move through the woods like ungainly clueless doofus.
I don't think that is the right attitude to take with you in cougar country. There is plenty of reason to fear and respect them. My guess is even a deer is tougher prey than a human. We're weak, slow, and unaware. My guess is we just don't taste very good!

In all seriousness, David Loy hit it on the head. It's the younger or the older weaker cats that generally cause problems for humans (adults and children) and our pets.
 
#47 ·
About 8-10 years a go a neighbor up the road a spell shot a huge tom out on the OP. It was damn near some sort of state record: a big, thick, battle scarred cat that was missing all but its thumb toe on one front foot, from a much earlier encounter with a trap. This cat was huge, the mass of the front legs jaw-dropping. The claws awesome- they coulda opened a person up like a zipper. Took three of us to lift it from his truck into a wheelbarrow, where it looked absurdly large spilling over the sides. Can't remember exactly what it weighed/scored, but it was very near to 200lbs. Would not want to come face to face in the woods with a cast ther size.
 
#51 ·
I suppose if they are hunger enough, a cougar may attack a human. I know they scare the hell out of horses and a horse would have a much better time fending off a cougar than I would.

They show up frequently on the outskirts of Corvallis... and sometimes in the city. We not only have urban deer that roam around eating the gardens the human citizens provide for them (as the deer assume), but cougars and coyotes sometimes wander down the city streets.

The cougars are primarily looking for the urban deer and house cats... I have no idea what the coyotes are looking for... there hasn't been a road runner in these parts in years.

Virginia, Mia and I go on a hike in one of the nearby forests every Sunday. At some of the trail heads are cougar and bear warning signs. They indicate that you should flare your jacket if approached by a cougar to give the impression you are larger.

I've tried this with co-workers who bother me and flaring my jacket has little or no effect so I'm not so sure about the flaring the jacket bit as a deterrent.
 
#54 ·
The cougars are primarily looking for the urban deer and house cats... I have no idea what the coyotes are looking for... there hasn't been a road runner in these parts in years.
There is a healthy population of coyotes in north Seattle and adjacent suburbs. We've had them den in the hillside above our house in the past and have seen them in our yard. It is part of inadvertent wildlife corridor that connects some steep hillsides, wet ravines and city parks. Signs stapled to power poles in the neighborhood appear regularly announcing missing cats and asking for information leading to their return. Most owners have no idea when they let their tabby out that 1) even housecats are fearsome predators on songbirds and small native mammals, and 2) coyotes love housecat for dinner. Frankly, I'm on the side of the coyotes...

D
 
#52 ·
I'm not sure this is still current information but when they banned dogs from Cougar hunts, fewer were being "harvested". One result was that many Cougars were living to older ages. Some well beyond their prime hunting capabilities. Some of these older cats started taking more domestic animals, and started watching campgrounds for stray dogs, kids etc. A few years ago I watched one for a while at Pearrygin Lake State Park, lying on a high outcrop watching the campground. I don't know if this is still a problem or not but a few of the comments above mention cats that were battle scarred or missing toes. In their prime I doubt a cat would risk attacking humans unless provoked or cornered. But older animals have to eat too.
 
#53 ·
I've seen 3 cougars in all my years spent in the outdoors.

1) One in CA. - it crossed Hwy 1 in front of our car in the Redwoods so. of Crescent City.
2) One while deer hunting in the divide between the Teanaway and Cle Elum watersheds.
3) And one this past summer crossed the logging road in front of my truck just north of North Bend (I posted a poor photo of that one on this forum).

It's cool to know they're out there, but I've come to respect their presence a lot more after reading this ......

Here's a link to a chronological list of cougar on human attacks;

http://www.cougarinfo.org/attacks3.htm
 
#58 ·
I was playing a good steelhead on a small river that had about a 10 foot high bank behind me, on Vancouver Island, when a cougar stuck its head over the bank behind me to take a look. A fishing friend was on the other side of the pool facing me and yelled. As I turned around the Cougar vanished. I never figured out if the cat was stalking me or just curious. great memory.
 
#62 ·
Unless you're a small child, or tiny woman, there's nothing to fear about mountain lions. You've all had them follow you, out of feline curiousity, but were completely unaware. The cat knew all you big lugs were more trouble than you're worth, and simply couldn't believe that a large animal would move through the woods like ungainly clueless doofus.
Serious question: how do you know this? That's not meant to be a hostile question - I'm just curious since all I know comes from news reports and an a bit of a scare I had in the woods ~20 years ago.

As far as the reports go, it sure seems like there's enough full grown men showing up in the attack-stories to suggest that they will and have attacked full-grown men, and the size/speed/strength of the prey that they take down suggests that they have a pretty good innate capacity to make "kill-or-leave-alone" calculations on the fly.

In my own case, I had an absolutely horrifying experience where I felt like I was being followed while walking alone through the woods in Southern Oregon under a full moon...which eventually turned into an "I'm absolutely being followed....and it's something methodical and relentless that seems to pause whenever I turn around..and whatever bit of the animal I saw creeping under the bush a ways back, illuminated by that shard of moonlight that passed through the canopy sure looked like the forearm and shoulder of a huge-ass tan housecat...."

Thankfully I never actually got a good look at it since this all went down within about 100 feet of a road, and started backing up the trail when I heard a logging-truck coming, then made a break for it and hauled ass across the road when I figured I'd be able make it within a whisker of being killed by the truck, but whatever was following me would be reluctant to follow. In hindsight, the odds of getting "eaten" by the grill on the truck were several orders of magnitude higher than whatever was back in the woods, but I was way past responding to anything but instinct and reflexes at that point.

I also remember thinking "He's laying on the horn - awesome!" as I was bolting through his high-beams, and wondering, shortly thereafter - what he thought of the teenager fully decked out in fly-fishing paraphernalia - rod in hand - exploding out of the blackness, flailing across the road, and diving into the drainage ditch on the other side. Whatever it was, he didn't bother stopping to tell me.
 
#64 ·
Statistically, mountain lion attacks are extremely rare, and most of the victims have been children.

Risk is relative. Humans tend to focus on exotic risks (wolf, mountain lion, shark attacks, etc.) and minimize the far more probable mortal risks...like coronary disease, cancer, automobile accidents ...mishaps that occur every day to vast numbers of people.

Even if you spend a great deal of time in the woods, you're far more likely to die driving there, or in a nursing home.
 
#69 ·
I dunno...I'm always armed, spent the last half century wandering around in cat country, and my only unpleasant run-ins have been with humans. But I guess I just don't have the right attitude.
I'm not saying it's that likely, but you made it sound like there is nothing to worry about because we're big tough men. You just said you're armed in the woods - that right there shows a precaution you take to stay safe from whatever. You are alert, confident, and pay attention to your surroundings. All I'm saying is that a mountain lion offers plenty to fear and people should pay attention and be sensitive to that, not that they should be afraid to go in the woods.

While actual mountain lion attacks might not be super high, I know a lot of people who have had very scary close encounters. My guess is there are a lot of cases where attacks are narrowly avoided.
 
#70 ·
I think the answer to JayB's question lies in some of the contradictions found in this thread.

If, in fact, we are potentially easy prey by mt lions, but virtually never are attacked (as statistics seem to show, with increasing interactions between humans and lions in recent decades), they must simply not think of humans as prey.

They can't possibly know how we 'taste' for the same reason.
Predator/prey relationships evolve over many generations. Lions prey on deer and elk, primarily, because that is what they have evolved to prey upon.

In recent decades, mt. lions have been hunted nearly to extinction by humans, and even now, with reduced hunting pressure, any lion that runs afoul of humans, usually is hunted down and killed, so there is little selection acting to promote humans as prey of mt. lions. If anything, lions probably behave more like prey, carefully keeping an eye on their predator (us), running away if confronted, and only attacking under very rare circumstances, some of which are likely to represent predatory attacks and others self-defense.

D
 
#71 ·
Since they quit hunting them with dogs, there are a lot more showing up in the wilds. Most fly fishers always try to get way out in the woods to be away from the crowds, so naturally you are going to see more of them.

After they quit hunting bears by baiting them, I got used to seeing more of them in the woods of Washington State. I went many years trashing around in the woods there before I came upon any wild animals, before they quit that practice.
 
#72 ·
The wildlife was here before the white man showed up. They were here first and we invaded their way of life. The larger predators have a reason to hold a grudge against humans more than they actually do.

When I'm in the forest, I consider myself in the living room of the wildlife and have the highest respect for their home. I'm the one barging into their living space.
 
#73 ·
The wildlife was here before the white man showed up. They were here first and we invaded their way of life. The larger predators have a reason to hold a grudge against humans more than they actually do.

When I'm in the forest, I consider myself in the living room of the wildlife and have the highest respect for their home. I'm the one barging into their living space.
I'm with GAT.

But, if paranoia in the woods becomes an obsession for any of us "outdoorsmen", here's a really cool instruction sheet on a do it yourself beer bottle cap rear view mirror. Now you'll know what's lurking in your tracks waiting for just the right moment before it attacks you;

http://www.instructables.com/id/Beer-view-mirror/
 
#77 ·
Your best bet is to move to the middle of a large city and stay there.... :) (oh wait, I forgot, a ton more humans are killed by other humans in cities than by the wildlife in the wilds... still, everyone get the hell off my rivers, lakes and out of my forests because they are damned dangerous and I should be the only one stupid enough to venture out there :D)
 
#78 ·
Your best bet is to move to the middle of a large city and stay there.... :) (oh wait, I forgot, a ton more humans are killed by other humans in cities than by the wildlife in the wilds... still, everyone get the hell off my rivers, lakes and out of my forests because they are damned dangerous and I should be the only one stupid enough to venture out there :D)
Sounds good to me...but I thought that was "MY" river!! :p
 
#79 ·
Speaking of mountain climbing risks; in my younger years I did a fair amount of climbing in the Washington Cascades, and Canadian Rockies, and I always crossed off my list of continuing climbing partners those who were slow (nothing like spending a inordinate amount of time traversing below a tottering serac or a face randomly spitting loose rocks).....or those who went through the ritual of digging a snow pit during questionable avalanche conditions but ALWAYS wanted to start an ascent despite every indication the slopes were unstable...mainly because they'd driven so far so climb.

I should add that while I personally know (knew?) quite a few people who died climbing, lots in car wrecks (including my father), a bunch of old motorcycle riding partners, several to accidental gunshots, and a few in industrial/construction accidents...but not a one to mountain lion attacks (not even via the legendary 'friend of a friend'). In fact, I only knew one man who died in any kind of animal attack....one of his cows killed him when she was birthing a calf.

So I'm putting the likelihood of cougar attack as slightly higher than a fatal sasquatch attack, and keeping a wary eye out for pregnant open range heifers.

In fact, these guys terrified me on a recent visit to Black Lake...look at the menacing stare.

Water Boat Sky Watercraft Plant
 
#89 ·
[quote="Krusty, post: 885333, In fact, these guys terrified me on a recent visit to Black Lake...look at the menacing stare.

View attachment 35163
In over 50 years working in forests populated by bears, cougars, and (more recently) wolves - all of which I have had at least a few "close encounters" with - the only encounter with a "wild" animal in which I felt at all threatened occurred 45 years ago in a remote area of the North Cascades when a herd of feral Angus cattle ran me up a tree and kept me there until dark. I later found out that these cattle had been roaming that area for over 30 years without ever having been rounded up, so none of these animals - though descended from domesticated stock - had ever been domesticated.[/quote]
Yup...not only are they tasty, but they're dangerous too!
 
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