Same thing here, heard the growl turned to my wife and said "Nature hike's over, I'm ready to go home. How 'bout you?"
The great thing is in Kalifornia you can't even carry a gun to defend yourself.
Some of us wanted to see the critter, but since we were trolling with lion bait (a dozen kids) we decided the prudent thing to do would be backtrack and view the owls from the road.
She may have had a cub nearby and didn’t want to get into a fight. She made her point.