Ted on cougar behavior

Sitting around talking with retired U.S. fish and wildlife biologist Ted Cook about hunting and fishing on the topic of cougars came up. Ted had some rather interesting observations when I told him about the experience a friend had.

I have a friend who told me a story about cougar hunting and he was in the snow and he went looking for a cougar, went on this big circular walk, tried to tree a cougar, didn’t. Long expedition. Wintertime. He ended up returning to his car, looked in back of him, and saw at some point that the cougar had been tracking him from behind. Does that sound crazy? Oh, no.

I talk about their behavior but I don't have much experience with cougars directly. But being a hunter and reading tons of stories. A good friend of mine is retired from Fish and game now. He did his master's thesis on cougars. I don’t know how common it is, but there's definitely been stories. Not unheard of. Yeah, absolutely not unheard of. That's a good way to say it. For anybody who's had a house cat, that's a lot like what cougars are like? Cougars are largely sit and wait predators. If the right sized mammal walks by underneath them on a trail at the right time of day, when they're hungry enough, they're gonna say that's a dinner and they do that to people. I mean, as we all know, people have been attacked many times by cougars and sometimes killed and even eaten by cougars. And in the cougars mind that's just another mammal at the right place at the right time. And I'm going to jump on it and eat it. Cougars are aggressive. I mean, they don't just attack and then get scared away that easily. I mean, they'll keep coming at you. Unlike with a grizzly bear, the plan to keep a cougar off, is to fight a cougar.