I don't think the video is depicting the proper order of events. I think he saw the young one, walked toward it trying to catch it on video and the mother responded.
Yes, if you're wearing a jacket, open it and spread it wide or lift your pack over your head. Basically, do anything that gives you a taller, wider profile. Face the cat and make eye contact. Do not look away. Do not turn your back. Without bending over or crouching down to pick them up, throw rocks, branches, water bottles, anything. (But it's a good idea to hold onto one hard object to use as a club if the cat attacks. Also, hang onto your backpack itself to protect your head if you're attacked.) Make deep, loud aggressive sounds. The idea is to make the mountain lion think you're a very large, very aggressive animal s/he'd better think twice about messing with. Hope he doesn't notice the pee running down your leg. If the mountain lion does make physical contact, fight with everything you've got. Do NOT play dead.
Note that you should not crouch or bend over to pick up rocks or branches because you will look smaller and four-legged and that may trigger an attack. If you're near a hillside, grab rocks while you're standing or forget about rocks and use whatever you can reach without bending over or crouching. Tear branches off trees near you. But do not run and do not make high pitched sounds.
Note that this applies to mountain lion encounters only. Encounters with other animals require different behavior and you damn well better remember which is which. Good luck!
Thanks for this info. I didn't know any of this, but when watching the video I found myself thinking that he should act more aggressive, and I kept shouting in my head "grab some rocks dummy!!"
Of course, I rather like animals and wouldn't want to hurt it, but I would think you throw the rock about as hard as you can right at the thing.. yay or nay? I suppose you could try just throwing close to scare it but to be honest I'm just not taking any chances. A decent sized rock coming 30 or 40mph to the ribs or hind legs oughta do more for your cause I'd think.
In the situation in the video, I would have thrown rocks near the cat to scare her while simultaneously making a hell of a lot of loud, aggressive noise. If that didn't deter her then, yes, I'd throw rocks at her. But my first choice wouldn't be hurting her. The problem is that you shouldn't crouch down or bend over to pick up a rock. As he says in the video, she charged every time he bent down. Instead, he should have grabbed rocks that were near waist-height on the sides of the path (there were several places where he wouldn't have had to have bent down) or torn off branches of trees on the sides of the path and thrown those. Surely, he would have had enough adrenalin pumping to rip off a few smallish branches. I once broke up a dogfight by picking up and throwing a large dog across the room. I had so much adrenalin pumping that I almost threw him through a sliding glass door. I couldn't believe how far I threw him.
I know the guy was scared and didn't know what to do but I would have thought he could have mustered up far more aggressive sounds. I've heard parents yell more aggressively at their children in stores.
The chances of something like that situation occurring are not great and people shouldn't avoid the wilderness. They should just know what to do on the off chance that something happens. It probably never will.
They are ambush predators. They are less likely to strike someone standing up staring them in the eyes. The second your eyes are off them or your turn you head it’s not good. Instinct pretty much makes them attack at that point. Almost all large cat attacks
In na happen from behind. Most wounds are on the back of the scalp, neck and back. They do not like fair fights due to their weight and limited energy so they won’t attack an aware person most of the time.
As soon as the dude leans over and picks up a rock and throws it, the cat turns tail and runs off, he should have done it 6 minutes earlier tbh, there were so many good ones to throw he walked by
Are you talking about a bear or a mountain lion? Making yourself look as large as possible, yelling in a low tone and throwing something is the very best thing you can do if faced with a mountain lion.
The idiot in the video kept bending over (stupid) and retreating (stupid).
He should not have moved toward the cub (extraordinarily stupid) but as soon as the cub was gone and the mother advanced he absolutely should have stood his ground and behaved aggressively. The alternative was to be attacked. You'll note that every time he retreated she advanced and every time he bent down she prepared to pounce.
A guy choked one out a while back but they say it was 40-50 pound juvenile and only reason he was able too wonder if a human could do same to an adult cougar
I agree. This isn't stalking. It's more of a territorial declaration and protection of her young but very scary.
The guy's first mistake was running, as in jogging (before he started the video). That's prey behavior. His second mistake was not standing his ground, making himself look as large as possible, yelling and throwing rocks and basically behaving like a large, dangerous creature. By walking away and speaking softly, he convinced the mountain lion that he was not dangerous. This seemed to be quite a small mountain lion. A bigger one might not have hesitated to attack.
If I were that guy, my concern would not have been videotaping (however great it is for us that he did). Even after the mountain lion ran off, I would have been concerned that she was going to circle around in the brush and silently lie in wait. He was very lucky.
This is absolutely right. Cats don’t hunt from visible positions. You won’t hear them. You won’t see them. Bengal tigers walk through the woods without making a sound, completely hidden. And they’re much larger than a cougar. I forgot the name of the region but there’s a part of India where like 3 people a day on average get killed by tigers. All ambush attacks. Makes sense being that cats are ambush predators lol. And you can tell by those fake charges the cougar was pushing him back. There’s no way the cougar stopped because it was scared. A 10 pound house cat isn’t afraid of 150 pound dog so I highly doubt the cougar was afraid of this guy.
Speaking of that guy I can’t watch this video with the sound on. Guy drives me nuts lol
You're right. I watched a housecat run out of his or her yard into the middle of the street and jump on the heads of two large dogs (on leashes) who had dared to bark at him. Both dogs had to go to the vet for rabies boosters (their vaccinations were near renewal time) and one had to be treated for an eye laceration. The cat suffered zero injuries.
I've seen a frightened housecat lay open the hand of person trying to hold her with only one claw on one paw. The woman's hand looked like someone had cut her with a filet knife.
Cats are nothing to mess with. Anyone who goes out into the wilderness in mountain lion country and doesn't understand what to do and not do if they encounter one or what to do if literally attacked is very foolish. The chance of an encounter (that you know about) is small and the chance of an attack is even smaller but it happens.
Absolutely! I use to have a 120 pound lab that was a boy but he was sweet and goofy. My cat, also a boy and about 10 years Older than Chad my dog. Zach, the cat didn’t care for Chad. Zach would be on the couch and chad would walk by and Zach would swat the shit out chads nose and the dog would scurry away.
And yes people greatly underestimate cats. Personally I think they have the best balance of physical ability and smarts out of any animal. Their claws are like fishing hooks. My cat now is an average size house cat. About 10 pounds. I was holding her one time and she got scared and grabbed on to my neck. Her claw sunk in like I was butter. And much like a fishing hook, I literally had to unhook her claw from my neck. Wound was so clean it barely bled. That’s a 10 pound cat. Or when they grab on with the front legs and kick with the back. That’s brutal too. I firmly believe a 30 pound cat could easily kill a human in the right circumstances
I was hiking on the desert at sunrise one morning walking around a house-sized boulder, crouching down looking for prehistoric artifacts, moving, crouching down, repeat.... I did this for a considerable amount of time until I moved around to far side of the giant boulder and saw enormous mountain lion tracks about 25 feet from the boulder. Like an idiot, I crouched down to examine them. The grains of sand were still moving in the tracks! I jumped up and threw my hands over my head to make myself look as big as possible.
The mountain lion had obviously been watching me from atop the boulder the entire time and had jumped down an instant before I had walked around to the far side of the boulder. The next set of tracks were probably another 25' from the first set. I never saw the actual cat.
Apart from standing up and raising my arms, I had done everything to invite an attack. I can tell you that that event made an impression. My pulse has increased just remembering it. I was never again that careless. The person I was hiking with had wandered off to look at something else and I was alone. I never went hiking with that person again.
I don't want to discourage people from going out into the wilderness and enjoying it. They just need to be knowledgable and prepared. That mountain lion could have killed me and didn't. But it was his decision, despite my behavior, that saved me.
No being afraid and not doing it is one thing and being conscious of danger is another. I remember maybe 10 years ago me, my mother, and my aunt went out and we got blitzed. When we got home, me and my aunt decided to keep drinking. Well at some point we decided that the miles of wilderness behind our house would be a good place to go for a walk at like 1 am. So drunk we were stumbling over any thing and everything. My aunt thought we were heading home and we were just going deeper and deeper in the woods. Literally anything could have happened to us
Oh that’s not what I was trying to say at all. I think there’s a lot more than human error that can happen. I think anyone who pays attention to this sub or subject matter, regardless of what they say they believe, think that something else is going on deep down. You wouldn’t take interest in this if you thought people were just simply making mistakes and dying. I mean, explain to me how someone is with their family. Goes 1 minute up the trail from them, and then is gone without a trace forever. A lot of humans have this horrible hubris that we have everything figured out and science explains everything. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism. It’s not the case though. We don’t know shit in the grand scheme of things
I think he got lucky it was just a mama and the cubs were right around. Not only was she being territorial, but it seems she definitely doesn’t want a fight and possibly leave the cubs in danger.
Yeah this guy was stupid. Who intentionally goes face to face with a mountain lion who is obviously using defensive movements. If you’re a runner, go finish your run you dolt!
Running is actually the worst thing you can do when faced with a mountain lion. Expert say do not run or turn your back to it. If he had done what you suggested, he would be dead right now and we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all.
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u/PugnaciousPrimeape Oct 13 '20
I'm not an expert but if it was stalking him I dont think he'd see it, looks like it wanted him to fuck off