The cat dialed back pressure through its crushing jaws, and the friend was able to pull away, fellow cyclists said in an interview one month after the incident east of Seattle.
A group of Seattle-area cyclists who helped one of their own escape the jaws of a cougar recounted their story this weekend, saying they fought the cat and pinned it down.
The woman who was attacked, Keri Bergere, sustained neck and face injuries and was treated at a hospital and released following the Feb. 17 incident on a trail northeast of Fall City, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said in a statement.
Bergere said she spent five days at an area hospital and was still recovering.
Fish and Wildlife Lt. Erik Olson called the actions of her fellow cyclists “heroic” in the statement. But the extent of the cyclists’ battle with the 75-pound cat wasn’t immediately clear then.
Do NOT play dead with a cougar. They will fuck you up.
Fight back like your life depends on it.
https://www.nps.gov/pore/planyourvisit/yoursafety_mountainlions.htm
tldr dont run, stay big and aggressive looking. the moment you turn around or act small itll attack on instict.
What about throwing rocks? I’ve heard some people say it’ll scare them off and others say it’ll just piss them off even more.
That’s pretty badass of the women. Using the bike to pin that big cat down in just the right spot must’ve taken some brass too. The thing would be hissing and freaking the fuck out trying to claw you while holding it down.
When your friends fight off a mountain lion, and then pin it down, that’s how you know you have some good friends.
In the article I read one of them dropped a 25 pound rock on its head until she was exhausted. She’d almost given up when it finally started letting go. Before that they were stabbing with a small knife and kicking the shit out of it with tree branches and nothing was really working. They also tried choking it out but said it felt like it was made of iron. Scary shit.
No chance you’re gonna choke a cougar, but i don’t have a better suggestion haha. They’re real beasts.
From what I’ve read the only way you’re gonna choke something that big is if you jam your entire arm down their throat and pray you last long enough.
I was hiking in the Rockies with friends. We got to our next campsite when a group behind us asked if we’d noticed the massive kitty footprints along the muddy trail. No. No we had not.
You don’t see or hear them when they’re hunting until they want to be seen. It’s incredible.
We have a bell on our cats collar precisely for this reason. It’s impossible to know where they are unless they want you to know otherwise.
I tried putting a bell on a cat once but he learned how to sneak without the bell jingling and would still bring home presents
Went hiking by myself once up a mountain in Aspen about a week or 2 after a mountain lion attack. I was about 1000ft up from the base in the woods when I noticed it was too quiet. I questioned my judgment and turned my ass around and couldn’t have gotten down that mountain any faster.
Oooo yeah is it true that birds and nearby animals get quiet or leave when a predator is nearby?
It’s always wolves and bears in movies, but if either attack a human it’s because the human ignored warnings and the bear or wolves couldn’t retreat anymore…
Big cats tho?
It’s very easy for them to consider humans food.
A Cougar can stalk a human for miles before striking, and you’ll never know it’s there.
If you turn around and see a cougar staring at you, you’re already considered food and running doesn’t help. You need to act like a bear, make a shit ton of noise and pretend you’re not currently shitting your pants. And you’ll likely scare it off. Act like prey and run tho, and it’s going to act like a predator.
Run from a bear and wolves, and they got exactly what they wanted and won’t chase.
As unlikely as it is to ever come up, you shouldn’t run from wolves or bears either. They both have a strong prey drive and might chase to kill even if that wasn’t their objective in the confrontation.
Yeah this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Bears (brown, not so much black) and wolves don’t see people as prey? Wrong. Humans just cross paths with them less frequently.
Humans may not be the prey of choice for bears and wolves. But that’s the case for mountain lions too.
Wolves almost never see adult humans as prey. Since 1761, only 77 non-fatal attacks and 40 fatal attacks from wolves. However, of those 40, only 9 occurred in the last 100 years and 2 of them were death from rabies. Many of the non-fatal attacks and a few of the fatal attacks were from captive wolves. Most of the attacks involved children and/or pets.
You’re both wrong, none of them see humans as prey. JFC. None of them want anything to do with humans.
*Downvote all you want. This is fact. People need to be afraid so common parlance has bought into the completely wrong idea that these animals hunt humans. They do not.
Yeah, don’t literally “run away”. But even if you did most wolves won’t follow. They’re not around humans enough to consider us food. And they’re not going to attack stuff their unsure of.
Coywolves or a rare Wolfpack that lives close to humans might, but that’s really rare.
They don’t have to consider humans food for the chase reflex to kick in. All predators in general but canines in particular have a set of reflexes that make it very dangerous to turn your back and flee.
It’s why you don’t have to teach puppies to chase a thrown stuffed toy, even if it’s entirely novel to them.
A bear might just be trying to scare you off, but it’ll chase you down solely because you ran.
Run from a bear and wolves, and they got exactly what they wanted and won’t chase.
That is the worst advice I’ve ever seen: a black bear can run 30mph/48kmh and will run you down if you run. Wolfs have a strong predation drive and will also run you down but in a pack. Both of these animals look for weakened prey and weakened prey always run.
With bears the big thing is prevention. Make sure to keep your presence known as not to scare a bear by having little bells on your backpack.
Also knowing what bears are in the area will help. Brown bears are much less likely to attack a human, whereas Grizzlies will have no hesitation. To tell which ones are in the area, look for bear scat. If you come across Brown bear scat, you will notice it has nuts and berry seeds in it. If it’s grizzly bear scat, you will see it filled with little bells.
Very good points! Preventing these encounters is the best thing you can do. Number one thing with bears is don’t have any food on you.
My dad was solo backpacking in the California back country and thought he had stashed all his food in a sack hung from a tree, but forgot about a granola bar in his pocket. He had a dream a bear was licking his face and when he woke up, a black bear was licking his face. He felt around his pockets, found the granola bar and threw it, and the bear went after it and then left him alone.
I have no doubt he wouldn’t have survived if it had been a hungry Grizzly.
What would be handy to have for defense? Something like bear mace, boar spear, or air horn? Would one of those stranger danger backpack alarms scare em off?
I’m sorry, this is just fearmongering based on a rare event-
A total of 126 attacks, 27 of which were fatal,[1] have been documented in North America in the past 100 years. Fatal cougar attacks are extremely rare and occur much less frequently than fatal snake bites, fatal lightning strikes, or fatal bee stings.[2][3][4] Children are particularly vulnerable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America
Bears, wolves and cougars are, generally, not dangerous to humans.
Even the article linked to calls it rare.
If anything this proves his point even more.
27 fatalities out of 126 attacks is an insane death rate. I guarantee you it’s much lower for bears, and maybe wolves too.
This would be because, like the posted stated, bears don’t have the intention to kill you they just want you to leave. If they attack it’s less likely you will die from it.
Cougars attack with the intent to kill you though, hence the higher death rates.
Yes it’s rare, but the poster never said it was common.
What that kill rate indicates is that cougars don’t attack unless they’re pretty damn sure they can not only win, but not be very injured in the process. Because injury = starvation for them. The only other case they’d attack humans is they’re really desperate, perhaps a female protecting her cubs, or all prey has been killed by fire, that kind of situation.
If a fully grown cougar gets the jump on you and you’re alone, you will likely lose. But if you are paying attention, see them and let them know they’ve lost the element of surprise, and make it clear you’re going to leave if they let you but fight if they attack, they probably won’t.
Of course if you’re hiking with your children or pets you should choose areas without known cougars, and keep them leashed close to you. Note: if you’re snack-size, you should bring bear spray, or your neighbors’ obnoxious kid who runs slower than you.
This was part of their point:
If you turn around and see a cougar staring at you, you’re already considered food and running doesn’t help.
So you’re saying that people have only seen a cougar behind them staring at them 126 times in the last 100 years?
As for what you’re saying:
Cougars attack with the intent to kill you though
Please support that with evidence. Because if the kill rate is far less than 25%, which it is, they must be terrible at being hunters.
These animals aren’t dangerous until they are. In the wild, you don’t know if you’re encountering an injured or desperate animal. My main issue with OPs comment is the terrible advice on what to do when encounting one of these predators.
Also, how was the mountain lion population in the US doing until recently? Extermination of wild populations is a major reason why incidents in the past are so rare.
This cannot be a fact:
Big cats tho?
It’s very easy for them to consider humans food.
If this is a fact:
A total of 126 attacks, 27 of which were fatal,[1] have been documented in North America in the past 100 years.
I was stalked by a cougar once while walking my dog. It was evening and we were on our regular walking trail with a headlamp and flashlight.
Then I see a pair of eyes reflecting back at me about 20m into the trees, just staring straight at us.
My dog is clueless because he’s just sniffing at bushes to pee on.
Immediately I start walking backwards, never taking the flashlight off the eyes, and they start following us all the way back to our property completely silent until they eventually disappear once we get to the lit up pathway. Luckily we were only about 400m into our walk.
snapped a photo with flash to try and see if I could make out if it were a deer or not, but deer don’t try and follow you lol
Looks more like two bobcats than 1 cougar.
The one with eyes has huge ears, and I think the other ones eyes are just blocked. But it looks like ears and the flank of a bobcat. Just a little in front of the obvious one behind that stump.
They wouldn’t be following for you if they were bobcats tho, maybe if your dog is under 25lbs. Or maybe it’s a breeding pair and they want to know why a human and dog are walking around their den at night
I dunno, maybe that is a cougar tho. Where I grew up authorities spent decades saying we just had bobcats and no cougars. It wasn’t till someone shot one that was prowling around a barn till they admitted we had a cougar population and they didn’t seem afraid of humans.
They havent gotten anyone yet.
I dunno. Looks more like a mountain lion. Or a puma.
I can’t rule out a panther or a catamount, though.
JFC no Cougars don’t consider humans to be food. Attacks are very, very rare and almost always from sick or malnourished Cougars who can’t catch prey and are trying to eat anything.
Don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Very rare for cougars to attack humans - around 20 attacks in the last century. As ambush hunters they prefer prey that they can easily take down, and generally will run away if faced with much resistance. Children or small dogs may be at more risk.
What a fucking boss.
