IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt writes:
This guy rules. American legend.
Didn't know he was from Arkansas, but of course he is....
Some people might be interested to know that the way he talks is fairly typical for people from here.
February 15, 2019
The man who lived to tell the tale of his 10 minute fight with a mountain lion.
It's Travis Kauffman. The lion had his right wrist locked in its jaw the whole time:
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt writes:
IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt writes:
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51 comments:
Don't wear earbuds when you trail run. That was one of his takeaways (he wasn't wearing them)
(Why does the video autoplay?)
My question too.
I put it after a jump.
Replaced the video with something that doesn't autoplay.
Something about the video embeds have changed for me too (I'm using iOS).
The takeaway here is that you shouldn't screw with people from Arkansas (he is).
A CO boy would've been dead meat...despite his pepper spray and rape whistle.
Next time, he’ll kill it in under 5 minutes.
"...pretty bummed out to see a mountain lion chasing me."
Heh.
Seeing and facing it gave him a chance. They usually sneak up behind.
After listening to his description of trying to stab tha cat with rotten sticks, I think I'd start carrying a knife.
This guy rules. American legend.
Didn't know he was from Arkansas, but of course he is.
Don't bring a knife to a mountain lion fight. Bring a gun.
Some people might be interested to know that the way he talks is fairly typical for people from here.
Yeah, but if you don’t have a gun, a Kabar knife would be nice. Available through the Althouse portal from Amazon.
Lucky it was a baby.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers retrieved the dead cat. They said their investigation and a necropsy confirmed Kauffman's account.
"Travis is a pretty amazing young man," said Ty Petersburg, a wildlife manager for the agency.
Kauffman was the 22nd person attacked by a mountain lion in Colorado since 1990, Parks and Wildlife said. Three of the attacks were fatal.
A necropsy report said the lion that attacked Kauffman was male, four or five months old, weighing 35 to 40 pounds (16 to 18 kilograms). The cat had limited fat, indicating it was hungry but not starving. It showed no sign of rabies or other diseases, the report said, but many of its organs had been scavenged by other animals before the body was recovered.
Adult male mountain lions average about 150 pounds, Parks and Wildlife said.
Petersburg said officers set up cameras and traps in the area for several days after the attack. They saw no large mountain lions but captured two young ones in good health. He said both are in a rehabilitation center, and the agency hopes to release them back into the wild.
Wow, pretty amazing.
Superimpose that Justine Smallet guy's head on that video -- it's the same survival story!!
You know, I’ve been harboring a deep wish to see a cat up close. Pretty sure I don’t.
Way to fight for your life and stay cool in the moment.
After years of Clinton-inspired contumely, Arkansas resumes its rightful place as the home of free and self-reliant men and woman, thanks to this man. He can lick his weight in mountain lions.
I don't suppose he's a dentist. #CecilTheLion
Great story, great guy.
Kitty must have confused the runner for a gazelle.
I've heard some comments elsewhere that this wasn't so impressive because the mountain lion was so small, but even a tiny domestic cat can do a lot of damage. I agree, this man is awesome.
I wonder about the parents of anyone named Travis. Did they harbor some nebulous hostility to their newborn? Stretch marks! Sagging tits! Feeding every ninety minutes! You ruined our glorious, furious, impromptu fucking, you brat!
The curse of Travis manifests itself suddenly, mysteriously, and usually in the woods. If it's not a ravenous predator, it's aliens on a probing mission.
A necropsy report said the lion that attacked Kauffman was male, four or five months old, weighing 35 to 40 pounds
In another article they said it weighed 80 pounds. But in any case, the important fact is that I predicted that it weighed 50 to 80 pounds on the original post.
After listening to his description of trying to stab tha cat with rotten sticks, I think I'd start carrying a knife.
I carry a good-sized knife when walking in the BLM (sheriffs and such claim there are lions in the area, but I've never seen a sign), but when the border-collie mix got ahold of the badger - straddling it "doggie style" and holding it by the neck - the best way I could think of to separate them without ME getting chomped by a possibly rabid animal was to whack it with a stick, then a big rock.
I think throwing up his hands, boxing style, saved the jogger's life. Had the lion gotten hold of the guy's neck, juvenile or not, the cougar would have won the fight.
Fur is murdered!
Mad props to the guy, but he didn't win so much as the mountain lion lost.
(1) It approached him from the front. (2) It bit his wrist, which wouldn't kill him and left him with three limbs free to fight with. (He also had his teeth, though these were much less of an advantage to a human than they would be to other prey species.) (3) It didn't have the sense to give up. It should have let go of the wrist, aimed one good lunge at the neck, and if that missed, it should have run away.
Clearly the mountain lion was a juvenile with limited hunting skills. According to Wikipedia, if I've got my species right, offspring leave the mother at one and a half to two years and are sexually mature at one and a half to three years. This may well have been a cub whose mother died and who had to do the best he could on his own.
See!! Walls don't keep us safe!!
"I wonder about the parents of anyone named Travis. "
Haha.
"...and there's people who haven't heard of him yet."
Nothing about the way he talked said to me, "Arkansas."
Everything about the way he talked said to me, "millennial."
He is lucky. He should carry a large, easily accessible hunting knife, at a minimum, during such activities in such locations. Had the cat been full grown, though, he would have been a goner.
This is exactly why I always carry a sternly worded letter from my attorney when I'm in the wild.
Nothing about the way he talked said to me, "Arkansas."
Everything about the way he talked said to me, "millennial."
For some reason people expect accents from Arkansans, and you can find those in certain parts of the state. But Arkansas millennials mostly sound like millennials anywhere else.
Its is funny- I once knew a guy named Travis from Arkansas, and he sounded much like this newer Travis did, though I suspect a house cat could have killed the other one.
i am waiting for the animal rights activists to take to twitter.
Knowing now that it was a 35 lb months-old kitty changes everything. It's unlikely it could kill most men. Maybe a child or a small woman, but that's a very inexperienced and small puma. 35 lbs is only about twice the size of your house cat. It could do some damage no doubt, but if you fight, it's gonna lose. A grown man would have to virtually lie there and let it kill him. You could strangle it, break the face with punches or kicks, break it's neck, etc. I pity the kitty that tries that shit on me, especially if I just had an energy drink, or just finished watching Kung Fu.
I detected no accent. I'm from western PA, and we have one, but he sounded average middle American to me.
If Arkansans are like Carolinians, they sound quite a bit different away from cities and towns, especially the older or darker ones. Sometimes I had the devil of a time understanding my ex-boss's father.
I still wouldn't call either of them a mountain pussy.
Had the cat been full grown, though, he would have been a goner.
No, there are quite a few cases of people fighting off full-sized mountain lions. That's why they say to "fight back" rather than "play dead" as for grizzly bear attacks.
re fighting back - the unusual aspect of the case in question is that the guy killed the lion rather then it giving up and running away.
I can't resist. We have wild everything, including bears. One morning, I stepped out of my cabin with coffee in hand. A cat came from behind me, looked at me and then pissed on my boot. He then looked at me again (probably with cat version of disdain) and calmly walked away. We have seen one another since then, but keep our healthy distance. He was typical for our area, probably not more than 40 lbs, maybe less, but kills for a living. He obviously was not hungry. One glad human, and I still wear those boots (walking boots) today.
For some reason people expect accents from Arkansans, and you can find those in certain parts of the state. But Arkansas millennials mostly sound like millennials anywhere else.
My family left southern Texas in '61 when I was 10. Kids in California teased me about my accent. I visited Austin last year and I couldn't hear much accent at all in the way the locals talked. I think we're losing our regional sounds. Everybody sounds like they're from California now.
Besides, Daniel Boone "killed him a b'ar when he was only three." Grown ass man killing a mountain lion, big deal. Heh.
I thought Crockett has been assigned to killing a "b'ar" at three. However, I could be wrong.
“A CO boy would've been dead meat...despite his pepper spray and rape whistle”
Hope that you are wrong there. I carry either a 9 mm or 10 mm handgun, depending on what else I might run into, up in NW MT. Preferably, mountain lions and wolves get hollow point, and bears, black or brown get solid cast, but you don’t always know, so I tend to alternate in the magazine in the gun. And when we had a mountain lion coming through the property every day when we lived in the mountains west of Denver, I carried a 12 gauge pump loaded with buckshot. Nice thing about a shotgun is that it makes a nice club, if the mountain lion gets too close to shoot.
Dr K is correct - mountain lions are most typically ambush hunters, preferring to drop onto the back of the neck of its victims. Which means that in lion country, you need to be checking the trees and rocks above you when you walk in areas where they ugh be hunting. Never seen them in the neighborhood by our house in MT, but have, we think, seen some of their deer kills. As likely, coyotes, but you still always check the trees and rock outcropping, JIC.
My what big ears he has.
All the better to hear mountain lions with.
One of the great things about the internet is that everyone speaks like a well educated Nebraskan. There are limited areas of accent like Boston and New Jersey.
Metropolitan New Jersey.
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