Let’s talk about cougars, mountain lions, catamounts, and pumas.
Until very recently, I had seen 5 cougars in my life: 1) distant sighting in Marin county CA, 2) hit and killed a young cougar while driving on Hwy 1 near Santa Cruz, 3) 15 yds away while mountain biking at night on Mt. Tam, also in Marin. 4) 10 yds away, brief glimpse while hiking White Rabbit trail, Ashland OR. 5) distant sighting near a trap range in Livermore CA.
A few days ago, that number increased by 3 in a single encounter.
My wife and I were at staying at a ranch on the Utah/Nevada border. We took a hike just adjacent to Great Basin National Park, at around 7pm. Near a stream, in some willows, we encountered 3 cougars 10-15 feet from us.
They were crouched in grass and bushes, and both of us initially thought they were deer lying down. There was one full size lion and two Great Dane sized juveniles. My wife was slightly ahead of me, and the cougars were on our right. I’ll describe the scene using the road as 9:00 ahead and 3:00 behind us.
Cub1 was farthest away, maybe 15-20’. Lioness and Cub2 were facing us, around 10’ away (!). As they jumped up I drew my P07 from AIWB (~0.9-1.0sec draw). Cub1 ran at 11:00 into heavy brush. Lioness did a 180 and ran to 12:00. I followed Cub2 (who was closest to us) with my sights as he did a 3 point bounding turn and ran to 1:00. I’m guessing it was all over in 2 seconds—and thankfully with no shots fired. We hiked out and watched out backs all the way to the vehicle.
A few observations:
It was a perfect sub-second draw—like a Jedi moment with no conscious thought. I’m very glad to have put in the practice time to make a handgun appear quickly when something looked like it needed shooting.
The shoot/no shoot decision happened naturally, and I feel good about not shooting the cougars while they were retreating. I recall preparing to fire but aborting when they didn’t do anything except run away.
I had a good sight picture on the closest one, and even though they were really fast, I was pretty confident of getting hits on Cub2 and the Lioness.
The situation seemed easier than a USPSA activator/target/swinger combo. There seemed like there was plenty of time, which after the fact was very surprising to me.
I didn’t experience tunnel vision. I was able to keep track of two of the cougars but lost sight of the third as it ran into brush toward 11:00.
If they had attacked we could have been in deep trouble. It seems likely that mom cougar was teaching her (huge) cubs to hunt, and for whatever reason decided we weren’t the prey they were looking for. These were impressive predators up close. Who knows if a few 9mm hits would have been enough. I feel like it was a close call, and Mrs CF is still jumpy.
This is the second time in a year that I’ve pointed my gun at multiple large predators. The take home for us is be prepared.
https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....678#post742678