My friend comes to work after archery hunting elk down in the junipers. He tells a story that everyone thinks is BS. Basically, he's cow calling with a friend and the friend suddenly yells, "There's a cat right behind you!!!". My friend tells me that he just turns his body (thank goodness he is a lefhanded shot) pulls his bow back and sees a cougar crouching in the juniper trees at about 9 yards. He lets it go and drills it right between the eyes. After the backflip it takes off running with the arrow sticking out of its head. They gave it about 45 minutes and went looking for it. The followed a steady blood trail into some thick stuff and it hissed at them and I guess they figured that was that. They called the Game and Fish department and they investigated the self defense shooting. They even tried looking for it a little bit. After that was all over, I told my buddy that when we were on days off I'd get my dogs and we'd look for the carcass. We went down there and I let the dogs go as we approached the area. He wasn't lying! Everything was still there after 5 days of no rain. Even all the pools of blood. As we approached the thicket where the cougar had hissed at them, my dogs started barking. I knew they had found the carcass. Or had they? They started barking more and I thought to myself, "this cat is still alive!" Not too long after that thought crossed my mind, I see a cougar running through the junipers with my dogs right on top of it. It trees up after a short run. I thought I might shoot it because I have a cougar tag, but my friend had purchased one. I get his pistol out of his pack and make our way down to it. The shot rings out and the cat jumps the tree, and it's headed right for me. I actually yell and take a shot at it with my AR from my hip. Luckily it didn't hit my dogs. The cougar runs a bit and falls. My dogs try to finish it off. Here are some of the pictures. The arrow was no longer in it's head but I don't think it was all there mentally anymore. It probably was near starvation too. I have to admit I wasn't exactly calm during the whole situation. My dogs aren't cougar dogs. They are coyote dogs and are pretty good trackers. I was worried about a wounded cougar and what it might do to my babies.
Good job!
Someone, in my opinion needed to follow up with that cat before you did.
They can do someone some harm when they are wounded...;)
Glad you finished the job.
Mercy
Heart rate shad to some elevated both times.
Game wardens should have folloed up more I t5hink.
Great story!!! That is one big cat!!! God Bless.
Very cool!
Paul
"WOW" ..........yep i go along with Rockinbbar on that.... Ron
YCH, glad you finished the wardens job for them. Cats are dangerous enough but wounded like that, they're ten times more dangerous. Fortunately no one was hurt or worse. .............Paul H
Good job Sean!
I'm glad you finished the job. Sounds like things were getting pretty exciting there for a few minutes...a couple of times for your buddy, I'm sure.
I'm with rockin'; someone probably should have followed up on that one before you did. It doesn't sound like the game warden was very energetic about solving the problem.
I'm glad it all turned out ok though, and that cat should make a good trophy, with a story behind it to boot!
Daryl
I agree with all of you. I don't understand why the game warden didn't follow up. Not only can a wounded cat be dangerous but we owe it to the animal to keep it from suffering. It might have been a different story if someone had stumbled on this wounded and hungry cat.