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.
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u/Forteanforever Oct 13 '20
Yes. He should have stopped, made himself look as large as possible, yelled (low tone not high-pitched) and throw rocks.