No animal of the chase is so difficult to kill by fair still-hunting as the cougar--that beast of many names,known in the East as panther and painter,in the West as mountain lion,in the Southwest as Mexican lion,and in the southern continent as lion and puma.
Without hounds its pursuit is so uncertain that from the still-hunter's standpoint it hardly deserves to rank as game at all--though,by the way,it is itself a more skilful still-hunter than any human rival.It prefers to move abroad by night or at dusk;and in the daytime usually lies hid in some cave or tangled thicket where it is absolutely impossible even to stumble on it by chance.It is a beast of stealth and rapine;its great,velvet paws never make a sound,and it is always on the watch whether for prey or for enemies,while it rarely leaves shelter even when it thinks itself safe.Its soft,leisurely movements and uniformity of color make it difficult to discover at best,and its extreme watchfulness helps it;but it is the cougar's reluctance to leave cover at any time,its habit of slinking off through the brush,instead of running in the open,when startled,and the way in which it lies motionless in its lair even when a man is within twenty yards,that render it so difficult to still-hunt.
In fact it is next to impossible with any hope of success regularly to hunt the cougar without dogs or bait.Most cougars that are killed by still-hunters are shot by accident while the man is after other game.
This has been my own experience.Although not common,cougars are found near my ranch,where the ground is peculiarly favorable for the solitary rifleman;and for ten years I have,off and on,devoted a day or two to their pursuit;but never successfully.One December a large cougar took up his abode on a densely wooded bottom two miles above the ranch house.I did not discover his existence until I went there one evening to kill a deer,and found that he had driven all the deer off the bottom,having killed several,as well as a young heifer.Snow was falling at the time,but the storm was evidently almost over;the leaves were all off the trees and bushes;and I felt that next day there would be such a chance to follow the cougar as fate rarely offered.In the morning by dawn I was at the bottom,and speedily found his trail.Following it I came across his bed,among some cedars in a dark,steep gorge,where the buttes bordered the bottom.He had evidently just left it,and I followed his tracks all day.But I never caught a glimpse of him,and late in the afternoon I trudged wearily homewards.When I went out next morning I found that as soon as Iabandoned the chase,my quarry,according to the uncanny habit sometimes displayed by his kind,coolly turned likewise,and deliberately dogged my footsteps to within a mile of the ranch house;his round footprints being as clear as writing in the snow.
This was the best chance of the kind that I ever had;but again and again I have found fresh signs of cougar,such as a lair which they had just left,game they had killed,or one of our venison caches which they had robbed,and have hunted for them all day without success.My failures were doubtless due in part to various shortcomings in hunter's-craft on my own part;but equally without doubt they were mainly due to the quarry's wariness and its sneaking ways.
I have seen a wild cougar alive but twice,and both times by chance.
On one occasion one of my men,Merrifield,and I surprised one eating a skunk in a bull-berry patch;and by our own bungling frightened it away from its unsavory repast without getting a shot.
On the other occasion luck befriended me.I was with a pack train in the Rockies,and one day,feeling lazy,and as we had no meat in camp,I determined to try for deer by lying in wait beside a recently travelled game trail.The spot I chose was a steep,pine-clad slope leading down to a little mountain lake.I hid behind a breastwork of rotten logs,with a few young evergreens in front--an excellent ambush.A broad game trail slanted down the hill directly past me.Ilay perfectly quiet for about an hour,listening to the murmur of the pine forests,and the occasional call of a jay or woodpecker,and gazing eagerly along the trail in the waning light of the late afternoon.Suddenly,without noise or warning of any kind,a cougar stood in the trail before me.The unlooked-for and unheralded approach of the beast was fairly ghost-like.With its head lower than its shoulders,and its long tail twitching,it slouched down the path,treading as softly as a kitten.I waited until it had passed and then fired into the short ribs,the bullet ranging forward.Throwing its tail up in the air,and giving a bound,the cougar galloped off over a slight ridge.But it did not go far;within a hundred yards I found it stretched on its side,its jaws still working convulsively.
