Cougars Among Us
Art: Don Weller
A couple of years back, my wife, Dana, took advantage of one of those perfect springtime Park City afternoons by packing our 1-year-old son in the baby jogger and heading over to the Rail Trail to meet a friend and her daughter for a leisurely stroll.
A few minutes into the walk, a movement up the hill from the trail caught Dana’s attention. The movement was a tail, flicking back and forth in that syncopated rhythm a bored housecat affects just before it gets into serious mischief. But as Dana’s gaze followed the tail to its source, she saw not a bored housecat but a full-grown cougar crouched in the dappled shade of the scrub oak. With less than 30 yards separating the mothers and their toddler-loaded joggers from the big cat, the two moms decided a speed walk in the opposite direction sounded more appealing just then than a stroll on the Rail Trail. With nervous over-the-shoulder glances every few steps, they high-tailed it back to town. The cougar made no attempt to follow them.
If Parkites were to play a wildlife version of the old game “six degrees of separation” with cougars as the object, the game would never go far. As elusive as cougars are, it seems almost everyone here knows someone who has had a cougar—or mountain lion, as they are also known—encounter.
Most of my friends who live anywhere near the edges of Park City and its outlying areas have either seen cougars, identified their tracks, or been party to the day-after neighborhood buzz about a sighting in the area.
The closest encounter I know of was my friend Dave Ringelberg, who, while bow hunting on the north slope of the Uintas, had a cougar challenge him for the moose Dave had just shot. “I yelled and threw a handful of gravel, and the thing actually took a step forward, put its paw on the moose and stared right at me,” says Dave. After an adrenalin-charged 30-second stare-down with just 15 yards separating them, the cougar finally retreated when Dave kept yelling and lobbed a big rock at it. Needless to say, it made for a nervous few hours as Dave field dressed the moose, quartered it, and made five trips to pack it out, all the while knowing the cougar might still be lurking nearby.
Mike Bodenchuk, Wildlife Services Director for the State of Utah, says the statewide cougar population is estimated at 2,500 to 3,000, with 200 to 300 of those cats probably living in Summit County. His department responds to four or five incidents of cougar sightings each year in Summit County. But he quickly adds that there have not been any situations in which his officers felt like someone was in jeopardy. He says that if cougars have a kill nearby, they’ll defend it, but that they don’t stalk people. “Cougars are pretty well defined by their food,” explains Bodenchuk. “When deer show up in people’s yards, at some point cougars will probably show up, too.”
His advice if you do encounter a cougar? First, don’t run. Second, make noise. Third, maintain eye contact while backing away. “Don’t bend over and pick up a stick, because making yourself look small makes you look like prey,” he says. “Grab your jacket and lift it up over your head so you look like you’re nine feet tall.”
Mark Menlove writes Eye on Nature in each issue of Park City Magazine. He still has one degree of separation between himself and a cougar encounter, and he wonders if it would be hard to look nine feet tall while his legs are turning to jelly.
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