Lone hunter is stalked by a family of mountain lions

When the cat got up and ran away, I had six or seven bullets left in my gun. There was also a mile and a half between me and my truck, and as I drove that way, I wished I had brought a second magazine.

I circled as I walked, looking for more threats as I weaved through the brush where the cougars were watching me. I stepped out into the open and ran as fast as I could, constantly looking over my shoulder until I reached the truck and locked myself in the cab. Still pumped with adrenaline, I called my buddy. I needed him to tell me what to do.

“Go ahead and report it,” he said.

A solo barn hunt in the southwest

I was born in upstate New York in a small town called Cattaraugus. I grew up hunting and fishing, and trapping was a source of income in our home. Not many people make that kind of living anymore, but being outdoors is more than just my way of life. It is my life. Whether I’m hunting deer and turkey close to home, stalking big game out west, or guiding offshore fishing trips where I live in North Carolina, I’ve always enjoyed the sense of freedom and adventure that comes with being in the wilderness.

Even when I’m not hunting game, I find peace away from the asphalt and surrounded by like-minded people. So when a friend from Arizona invited me to go elk hunting in Unit 6A outside of Flagstaff, I headed west. The spring elk hunt has become a regular event over the last few years, and every year my friend reminds me, “Make sure you have your gun, there are cougars out there.” I knew he was right; I’d seen their tracks all over the mountains. But after a few seasons of elk hunting, I started to get the feeling, Yeah, okay. I’ve been coming here for three years and I still haven’t seen one.

My buddy had to go back to work in a few days, so I was alone on April 1st. I had hiked the six miles to get to where I wanted to look. My time in the Marine Corps had taught me habits that serve me well in the outdoors, and I had gone over my backcountry checklist that morning. I had an extra Gore-Tex jacket, a survival kit with medical supplies, and, as my buddy insisted, my Springfield XD .40.

The walk was beautiful and I eventually found some sheds on a hill about 10 miles into the 15 mile day I had planned. By this point I was hungry too.

It was about 2:00 PM when I took off my pack and sat down next to my antlers to eat lunch. There was snow on the ground and in the branches of the trees, and it was warm enough by now that the snow was melting and falling from the branches. It sounded a little spooky. But I’m used to being lower on the food chain than most people, and I wasn’t too concerned when I looked up from my lunch and saw a mountain lion watching me from about 70 yards away.

A creepy find in the pines

I was an infantryman in Afghanistan. Seeing one cougar wasn’t that big of a deal compared to walking into an ambush or stepping on 40 pounds of homemade ammonium nitrate left by someone who wants to see you split in half. The big cat wasn’t threatening me in any way. He was just curious about what I was doing on his turf. I just wanted him to go away so I could do the same.

Still, I didn’t want to give him time to think about it too much, so I pulled out my gun, stood up, and tried to get big. Then I yelled and made a quick charge at him. I still don’t know if it was the right decision to bluff him, but he ran away. The whole exchange only lasted a minute or less, but it felt much longer. So much for lunch.

I was probably three miles from my truck, so I packed my pack and started hiking, the Springfield still in my hand. I was physically exhausted but mentally wired, feeling more like a Marine on patrol than a shed hunter looking for antlers.

By 3:30 pm I was about 1.5 miles from where I had chased the mountain lion away. The pines were getting thicker, but my GPS told me I was on the right track and that I was only 1.5 miles from my truck.

Then I found the carcass of a moose.

The cow must have been shot and never seen again, and she was basically just bones and skin. But every elk has a set of ivory teeth, and hers were still there. Taking them home with the barns I found would be the icing on the cake.

Consecutive costs

I looked around and saw no sign of danger. So I put down my gun and picked up my knife. I had just begun to dig into the ivory of the elk when I heard something to my left—a sound much more substantial than snow falling from a tree branch.

I grabbed my Springfield, turned, and searched for the source of the sound. I saw nothing. Given the encounter I had already had, I didn’t feel comfortable hunching over and concentrating on elk teeth, but I turned my attention back to the carcass and pulled out the first tooth. As I worked on a second tooth, I heard the sound behind me again. I kept looking over my left shoulder as I dug, the time between glances growing shorter and shorter.

I was about halfway through the second ivory when I heard something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There was a different quality to the sound and I remember thinking: Something is wrongI stopped digging for the tooth, grabbed my backpack and decided it was time to get out of there.

I was only a few steps away from the elk carcass when I heard the cat yelling behind me. I turned to my left and saw a mountain lion running toward me, now 40 yards away and closing in on me. I raised my pistol and began yelling as I headed for a large tree that I wanted between me and the cat, who was now sprinting.

But when he was only 25 meters away, the lion turned and ducked into the bushes. That was another surprise on a day full of lions.

As soon as the lion disappeared into the undergrowth, I heard more growling and screaming. I saw movement, but no details, until suddenly I saw two large cats staring at me, their tails twitching. The one that had made the first attack made eye contact with me as he started working his way back towards me. The second cat sat down.

I wanted to scare them off, so I fired two shots into a mud puddle created by melting snow. It was a bad decision and a waste of two potentially crucial bullets, but at the time I was more worried about getting in trouble for shooting the cougars than the cats themselves. That kind of thinking could have cost me my life.

The two .40 caliber rounds shot up a big tail of mud that I hoped would scare the cats off. It worked for the closer lion, who turned and ran. But the cougar that had been in the bushes was no longer there. He lunged at me, picking up speed as he ate the space between us.

With eleven rounds left in the XD I started shooting. I didn’t stop until the cat went down and rolled only 10 meters away from me. The lion got up and fled. I quickly checked how many rounds I had left. There were six, maybe seven, left in the magazine.

Taking in the scene

I don’t think the Arizona Game and Fish Department took my report as a joke, but since it was April Fool’s Day, it probably seemed like a joke at first. By the time I was turned over to a game warden, I had calmed down enough to tell him my story. He said he wouldn’t make it that night, but he would be out first thing the next morning with a team of dogs to look for signs. He told me that if they deemed the lion unsafe, they would kill it—if I hadn’t already.

The next evening I received a phone call from AZGFD agent Edward Sini. He told me that he had entered that part of the unit with a team of lion trackers, their dogs and other guards.

“When you told me the story, at first it seemed like something wasn’t right,” Sini said over the phone. “But when I got up there and saw what you were describing and what the tracks showed, you described it to a T.”

Sini told me they had found the elk carcass, along with my .40 caliber shell casings and several sets of lion tracks. That wasn’t surprising, since I knew I had seen more than one cat. But he said it took them a few hours to get on the right tracks, since they had identified not two, but four different sets of cougar tracks. By following these tracks, he was able to recreate the encounters I had had the day before.

Sini said the first cougar I encountered was a collared male. His tracks showed that when I chased him away, he ran in a wide “U” shape and then hid at the edge of the brush to watch me leave the area.

As for the two lions that attacked me in the pine trees, Sini thought they were 12- to 16-month-old siblings, probably the offspring of the male with the collar. It seemed that one of the young cats—probably the one I shot—had run parallel to my tracks for 300 to 400 meters before hiding in the bushes. I would never have known.

The trackers saw where the lion had settled into the bushes to watch me. They think the other lion—the first one to attack me—saw its sibling and jumped into the bushes to fight instead of attacking me. But they could see that the other cat had attacked me seriously. They also found a set of large female tracks nearby, which means the whole family was probably watching me on the mountain that day.

From my account of what happened and the indications they got from the tracks, they judged the lion I had shot at to be unsafe. They found the spot where I had shot him, but there was no blood trail. They followed him six miles over the snow and far into the night, but they could not get him into any trees, and the last I heard they were still trying to find the lion.

Arizona has never had a fatal cougar attack, and I think I avoided becoming the first by being prepared. Officer Sini said I did everything they recommend when traveling in lion country. I was armed and alert, and I got out of the area as quickly as possible.

I still don’t know how close is too close, but I do know that there is always a risk when you travel alone in the wilderness. That’s part of the appeal.