re: Man killed by mountain lion over the weekend in CA: first fatal attack in ca since 2003

Here's one covered on the podcast I mentioned earlier.

Outdoor Life

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On August 19, 1996, 36-year-old Cindy Parolin and three of her children were riding horses in the Similkameen backcountry, 30 miles northwest of Princeton, British Columbia. Like their mother, 6-year-old Steven, 11-year-old Melissa and 13-year-old David felt a mixture of wonder and excitement as they traveled through the vast wilderness. The four were headed to a cabin to join Parolin’s husband and other son for a camping vacation.

As the family rode along, the horses grew increasingly nervous. The cause became starkly clear when a cougar attacked, suddenly launching itself from the undergrowth at Steven. The animal missed its mark, landing on the horse just in front of the boy’s saddle. The great cat scrambled to hold onto the horse’s neck but lost its grip and fell to the ground.

Undaunted, the snarling cougar leapt again and attempted to pull Steven from the saddle. This time it got away with only a sock and shoe, but the contortions of the spooked horse caused the boy to fall to the ground. The cat was on the youngster in an instant, wrapping the struggling child in a clawed death-grip.

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The rest of the story is at the link.

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bear spray

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This is still cumbersome on a trail run. I’ve carried it on long backcountry backpacking trips in Glacier and places where they don’t haze bears.

But for running I’ll have to figure something out if I want to carry it (sorta do). I encounter black bears all the time running in SC/NC.

My close encounters with grizzlies (all in Glacier BC) have been a mix of having spray on me and not. After one such encounter (a few feet) I decided to hike with the safety off of the spray because I realized how that extra step with adrenaline pumping might be costly. I bent over to get water and summarily sprayed the shite in my eye somehow. Yes Darwin Award. Half second release = day-o-pain.

Generally, I play the stats in life as we all do. I enjoy trail running, and carrying a gun on a run (unless I’m doing hoorat stuff) is prohibitive.

Stats summary (from wiki bc lazy):

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A total of 126 attacks, 27 of which were fatal, 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. Children are particularly vulnerable. The majority of the child victims listed here were not accompanied by adults.

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Driving to work or going to a bar is much more dangerous for me. So I skip those and roll the dice with the critters.

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I guess you've never heard of bag and season limits. They've been so unsuccessful for whitetail deer, turkeys, alligators, bears, etc.

You really mar up your "above the fray!!!" moderate facade when your knee jerk reaction is to take it away from citizens and put it in government hands.

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those animals are killed to keep populations in check. the mountain lions that are killed in California are done so because they present a danger to humans (or their pets) so this doesn't even make sense.

theres a difference between telling the public to go out and kill 3,000 Gators and saying ok public go out there and hunt this mountain lion nicknamed Pawl that resides in this area

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Do y’all think you could strangle the mt lion if you got your hands around it’s neck? I always wondered life/death situation....

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strangle it? not a chance. You'd have a hard enough time strangling a 20lb house cat much less a 90lb one with actual survival instincts.

Now that being said, i do think you can fight back enough to make it realize you aren't going down easily. Most, key word there, most single predators don't want anythign to do with prey that fights back, especially when the prey is larger than them and not really prey but more of a predator.




As others pointed out, if they were shed searching, i would imagine they aren't 150lb emo teens who the lion could easily see as prey. When i first read this i assumed they were both 5'6" 145 "men". We still don't know how big to two guys were but an average 5'10" 170lb in shape male you'd think would be big enough to make a mountain lion not attack, much less two males that size. That lion had to have been very desperate for food to attack two grown men.

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We really are total pussies in the animal kingdom.

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We're basically helpless in the Ocean unless you're on a bigger boat.

the OT aren't hiking snowflakes from Cali baw


that is a terrifying way to go. RIP

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In California, it has been illegal to hunt mountain Lions since around 1990.

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They want you to leave mountain lions alone, but don’t care if you kill unborn babies. What a backwards way of thinking.

What’s even scarier is that jaguars have been recorded crossing into Arizona. They make mountain lions look like kittens.

Well we managed to go evolve and become the most spread animal in the Kingdom because we worked together to make tools that would give us an advantage, when you take that away we are small helpless furless animals...