Posted on 08/20/2025 8:42:53 AM PDT by cuz1961
...“I felt really small,” said McDonald, a biologist and researcher who’s now the founder and president of the Bay Area Puma Project, a local wild cat research and conservation organization that’s part of the Felidae Conservation Fund. “I disrupted his opportunity to get a meal.”...
...And while she had fears, “he was not a threat,” she said. ..
...there have been only 26 total verified mountain lion attacks on humans in California in the last four decades — and four deaths.. ...“Mountain lions still live in the Bay Area and move through the Bay Area because we’ve preserved enough habitat to support them,” she said. “But along with that privilege comes the responsibility to coexist,”. ...It’s not anything to do with humans — it’s in spite of humans that they’re going into these areas.”...“It’s really important to keep your pets inside.”...That goes for outdoor cats and unsupervised dogs in yards as well as livestock ...“Mountain lions will come up and eat cat food off of people’s porches,” Smith said.
But for the most part, “the last thing most [mountain lions] want to do is encounter us,”...if the mountain lion has indeed spotted you, remember: “the last thing you want to do is run or show fear,” Benson said. Stand your ground, he said, and look as big as possible. If you have a dog or child with you, you can pick them up.
“If you have a backpack, you can put that over your head to make yourself seem a bit bigger,” he said. If the mountain lion is advancing toward you, you can even throw rocks or sticks at it, he said.
..
(Excerpt) Read more at kqed.org ...
Mr. Mossberg is a good choice.
Savage, Ruger, Colt, Smith & Wesson, Glock, Springfield are also good choices.
> I have a hard time imagining where there would be mountain lions (cougars) in the Bay Area.
That’s a laugh. Admittedly the Peninsula is easier to get there but lions routinely take meals in the urban side.
One afternoon I was sitting in a window seat at Pancho Villa Taqueria on B Street in downtown San Mateo enjoying my lunch, on my phone watching a helicopter chase a mountain lion through nearby neighborhoods. Suddenly the chase turns down B street and the lion runs right in front of me, less than 5 feet away, with multiple helicopters thumping overhead and police cars in pursuit , California-style. They darted it a few blocks away when it went through Central Park.
They’ve been spotted in urban Oakland before, and Palo Alto in the suburbia expanse between 101 and El Camino, off Oregon Expressway.
No, not exactly. They won't get in if they don't want to. If they fear getting anywhere near people or dogs with them, AND if they have plenty to eat elsewhere, they'll stay clear. That they are even getting close is a sign of mismanagement, as is the crying need we have for herbivory to reduce overgrown and senescent combustible vegetation.
Saw a big one up behind McDunalds at Fremont CA at I-80 south
stalking a horse on Mission Hill in broad daylight at lunchtime.
I think the first one might be the one you’re recalling - it seems familiar. I remember the reporting of one at that park but not specifically. We used to camp at Caspers when we lived in S. California. I don’t think we camped there again after one of these happened. Googled and there are A LOT of mountain lion/cougar attacks in Southern CA...Surprised me...We stuck to Mammoth, Bishop and Big Sur areas for most of our camping trips.
Mountain lion encounters:
March 1986: Laura Small, 5, mauled in Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park in California’s first such attack in 77 years.
October 1986: Justin Mellon, 6, mauled in Caspers Wilderness Park.
December 1997: Mountain lion charges women and children at Caspers Wilderness Park. State game warden kills cougar.
April 1998: Villa Park woman finds mountain lion on her porch. Cat charges animal-control officers, who kill it.
January 2003: Ninety-pound mountain lion shot to death in Silverado Canyon.
Saw another one in Alamo hills CA stalking Big Morgan horse riders.
https://us1049quadcities.com/another-mountain-lion-sighting-reported-in-iowa/
...The DNR’s Clear Lake office receives an average of two to four reports of mountain lion sightings each week. Since 2010, there have been more than 2,000 reported sightings statewide...
...Mountain lions have no legal wildlife status in
Iowa. That means that they can be taken and
possessed by anyone at anytime as long as legal
methods and means are used to take the animal...
Glock 40 caliber.
Shoot.
Continue hiking.
RANCHERS HAVE NO SAY....
Wear diapers before venturing out on a trail where mountain lions are known to exist.
One of the things I still like about living in California is that it is lion country.
I think it’s cool.
Poor middle child.
Or it’s a sign that our cities keep growing, and they’ve got less and less wild territory to roam around in. It’s all part of the cycle, people move to the outskirts to be “close to nature”, and forget that means nature is close to them. Then eventually it gets dense enough nature moves further away. Then people move closer to nature. Lather rinse repeat.
Poppycock, although the MSM repeats that bogus line incessantly. Between ranching, hunting, mining, timber operations and whole towns of supporting infrastructure, rural California is largely depopulated but for bureaucrats and retirees. There was such a rural town just below our house within 15 miles of the Santa Clara Valley with three hotels and a railroad station, dance hall, bowling alley, lumber mill, conference center, and 200 vacation cabins. 5,000 people per day came through Glenwood Valley, daily. Oh the road are paved and the houses are bigger now, but the number of people is way down. It's just the same in Gold Rush foothills and areas that were logged intensively. Less where ranching was dominant, but still the numbers are down there too (ranches needed more hands than they do now).
Not poppycock. I’ve watched it happen where I live and in cities I visit. It’s more obvious in cities I visit, especially if I drive there. The “end” of Phoenix used to be a good 20 miles further from Tucson away than it is now. And coming back the “end” of Tucson is much further north. Casa Grande used to be invisible from the interstate, now it comes right to it. Cities, especially below the snow line, are growing. Wild areas are shrinking. That’s reality.
We're talking about lion habitat, not cities.
Lion habitats BECOME cities when the city goes to where the lions live. Like I said in my first post, I’ve seen a mountain lion walking down the alley. I am IN the city. But I’m also near a wash (basically all of Tucson is near a wash), and the wild animals (mountain lions, coyotes, bobcats, javelina, you name it) use those washes to roam all over. We call it the coyote superhighway, but they all use it.
All that stuff that used to be not city that is now city I mentioned. Guess what used to live there. And probably continued to live there for at least a decade after the expansion of the city. And might still live there. We moved into their neighborhood, and then we whine they’re in our neighborhood.
One was seen in the military housing area next to Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey a couple of weeks ago.
It follows the old adage
If your housecat was the size of a Golden Retriever, you would be food.
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