Forum Index > Trip Reports > 3 mountain lions encountered on my night hike this weekend
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Chief Joseph
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Chief Joseph
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PostMon Mar 25, 2019 9:52 am 
moonspots wrote:
filbert wrote:
The bear paused ever so slightly before apparently concluding that this must have been the dinner-bell and continuing to amble toward me.
Many years ago I was with a scout troop camping in Minnesota. One morning around 5 I heard a commotion and when I looked out of the tent, there was the scout master (a big, tall guy), in his underwear, chasing a bear with a stick! The bear had one of our coolers in its mouth. He retrieved the cooler and bear left in a hurry. Quite funny actually.
Lol, yet another good reason to go backpacking with...Backpacker Joe! He's big and packs heat!

Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
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Alpendave
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PostMon Mar 25, 2019 11:34 am 
Climbed My. Washington (Olympics) and in the way back, lots of cougar tracks next to my earlier tracks. Had no idea I was being stalked. Kept the ice axe ready on the way back to the car.

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nordique
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PostMon Mar 25, 2019 4:43 pm 
Since most of my three hikes a week are as part of a large group of senior citizens, I assume that all the noise we make will not put us in a position of surprising a cougar. And, as a guy with a camera, I'm rarely the first hiker up the trail. We photographers tend to be a bit off the back of the group--oh, wait, that might not be a good location! That's why I like to not be the last of our hikers on the trail. Sorry, Bob! Many years ago on Cougar Mt, we ran across a county ranger--who had just watched a cougar kill a deer. The deer probably died instantly, since the cougar was on a rock, well above the trail, perched for the kill, and broke the deer's neck in an instant.

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moonspots
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moonspots
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PostMon Mar 25, 2019 6:09 pm 
nordique wrote:
Many years ago on Cougar Mt, we ran across a county ranger--who had just watched a cougar kill a deer.
Well, now that we're "telling campfire stories", when I was in highschool, one Monday morning the kid who sat behind me in one of my classes told me he had been deer hunting in the Coburg Hills east of Eugene. He had been following a logging road and came around a corner to find a deer laying in the road, still steaming, cat tracks all around! He said the hairs on his neck stood up and he carefully backed out of the area. He just *KNEW* the cat was there somewhere watching him! I've only seen the back end of a bobcat once while it was crossing the road, and the back end of a cougar once jumping into the trees from the bank of the river. I guess that's good enough for me.

"Out, OUT you demons of Stupidity"! - St Dogbert, patron Saint of Technology
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timberghost
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 5:17 am 
Expect to see more of it. The younger cougars get pushed into the urban areas by more adults looking for an easy meal.

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Steve Erickson
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 9:16 am 
Several years ago I was hiking an old overgrown road up Eagle Creek and as I was about 70 yards or so from the turn in the road, two cougar walking side by side came up the road. As soon as we saw each other, one cougar instantly took off into the woods. The other one ran a bit towards me then took a turn in the woods as well. It was a beautiful site watching the second one running. Anyone spending any reasonable amount of time hiking in the snow will eventually see tracks following them. It has happened to me several times especially up in the Chiwawa area towards Trinity.

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DigitalJanitor
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 9:46 am 
Steve Erickson wrote:
Anyone spending any reasonable amount of time hiking in the snow will eventually see tracks following them.
Shoot, just go up above Roslyn or over into the Teanaway when tracking conditions are good either on snow or dirt. If you amble far enough you should be able to find trace of Big Kitty on any given day.

~Mom jeans on wheels
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OutOfOffice
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 10:15 am 
They seem to be on the prowl this time of year. Saw some huge mountain lion tracks going up Round Mountain a week ago.

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Nancyann
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 10:56 am 
Cougars are fairly common in the foothills above Highway 2. When I was out riding my horse in the snow on the tree farm behind my house a few weeks ago, we followed cougar tracks for quite a ways. I had cougar tracks all over my front yard in the snowy winter of 2007. Last year, a cougar ran across the road in front of me as I was driving down Rice Road by the Sultan McDonalds, maybe going to check out the dumpsters. My most memorable nighttime encounter with a cougar was hiking down West Cady Ridge during blueberry season a few years ago. My friend and I had lingered too long up in the berry fields and as darkness approached I spotted a cougar on the switchback below us. We slowed our pace a bit, but there it was again at the next switchback, politely waiting for us. We began clacking our trekking poles together and talking loudly, so it proceeded down the trail, and waited again further below. We stopped to get our headlamps out, whereupon I discovered mine had dead batteries. By that time, we lost sight of the cougar, but since we only had one headlamp between the two of us, I was a little nervous and kept looking behind my shoulder the rest of the hike down, because it became very, very dark... paranoid.gif

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Galadriel
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PostTue Mar 26, 2019 12:35 pm 
Last October I was sound asleep in my tent when I was awakened by someone wailing and screaming. It took me a couple of minutes to realize it was a cougar – or maybe two, not a human. I was terrified! The sound was very nearby. This was at Bear Pot trailhead south east of Republic, near ThirteenMile Mt. It’s not the first time I heard a cougar scream. When I was 5 years old we lived in Tigard, OR- a remote and forested place back then, and cougars would wail frequently in our back yard. I’ve never seen one though.

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penquin
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PostFri Mar 29, 2019 10:21 pm 
About 20 years ago my wife were coming back down the Pratt Lake trail in the spring and noticed large tracks in the snow which we hadn't seen on our way in. That's really not that unusual but as we dropped below the snow line (probably 1.5 mile from the Granite Mt turnoff) we began to hear an awful lot of screaming and wailing which was something we'd never heard before. It actually sounded like a small child with big lungs. As we came around a corner we saw a large ball of animated fur in the trees above us in what we first thought was some type of spring mating activity. The ball would jump into motion and then stop for a half minute before starting up again. This went on for a little while until what turned out to be a cougar and bobcat rolled out of the woods and onto the trail in 50ft in front of us. It then finally dawned on us that the cougar was killing the bobcat. They finally rolled off the trail a little ways in somewhat of a bloody mess. If this were to happen now we'd probably head up into the woods and make a large detour around them but at the time we decided just to start talking loudly and walk on by. The picture of the cougar crouching there beside the trail over the bobcat and looking up at us is still burned in my mind. And, every time I hike by that spot now I have a vivid recollection of the sounds and sight of what we saw. The next day I called the North Bend ranger station and talked to a biologist there, thinking he'd be interested in my story, but of course he was not impressed saying that it was pretty common in the spring for the larger males to be taking out any other male cat in their territory.

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Gregory
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PostSat Mar 30, 2019 5:49 am 
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cyclaaz
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PostTue Apr 02, 2019 1:58 pm 
Penquin wrote:
... The next day I called the North Bend ranger station and talked to a biologist there, thinking he'd be interested in my story, but of course he was not impressed saying that it was pretty common in the spring for the larger males to be taking out any other male cat in their territory.
Two-thirds of the males meet their end via other males. https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/cougarm198.htm

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BigBrunyon
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PostTue Apr 02, 2019 2:23 pm 
There's no second place in the animal kingdom

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