The ranger also told me that they can be 3 feet away behind a bush and you would never know they were there. He was not trying to scare me.
Kids were running up and down a shrub covered hillside and he had been yelling at them to get down off the hill. The parents were somewhere else.
He told me that he was not trying to keep them out of poison oak - he said there were probably no cougars there at that time, but one would never know. He also said there were rattlers up there. Lovely.
No but one night , playing war games with Night Vision Goggles (NVG's)while stalking my trainees I turned to see a about a 130 pound kitty about 30 meters from me. All I had was blanks in my M16 but I did have some artillery simulators ( fircracker about the size of a cardboard toliet paper roll insert).
I tossed em as fast as I could. Big Boomage, lots of flash and fire and noise. They simulate a 105MM howitzer if ya catch the drift.....:o)
Kitty was gone when the Smoke cleared. I hunted my cat with dogs. He was treed and I dropped him with a 45 colt S&W Model 25 Hunter from the performance shop. My hunt was part of a NMF&G project to cull the kittys who were getting too close to the four hills area near edge of Albuquerque. Normally I make it a hard and fast rule to never hunt for trophys, only for food or to cut back on varmints, rabid animals or conservation projects such as my Cougar Hunt.