Ranching in the Bad Lands 33 



swamp, all gashed and torn, and but a few steps 

 from him the body of a cougar, stabbed and cut in 

 many places. Certainly that must have been a grim 

 fight, in the gloomy, lonely recesses of the swamp, 

 with no one to watch the midnight death struggle 

 between the powerful, naked man and the ferocious 

 brute that was his almost unseen assailant. 



When hungry, a cougar will attack anything it 

 can master. I have known of their killing wolves 

 and large dogs. A friend of mine, a ranchman in 

 Wyoming, had two grisly bear cubs in his posses 

 sion at one time, and they were kept in a pen out 

 side the ranch. One night two cougars came down, 

 and after vain efforts to catch a dog which was on 

 the place, leaped into the pen and carried off the two 

 young bears ! 



Two or three powerful dogs, however, will give 

 a cougar all he wants to do to defend himself. A 

 relative of mine in one of the Southern States had a 

 small pack of five blood-hounds, with which he used 

 to hunt the canebrakes for bear, wildcats, etc. On 

 one occasion they ran across a cougar, and after a 

 sharp chase treed him. As the hunters drew near 

 he leaped from the tree and made off, but was over 

 taken by the hounds and torn to pieces after a sharp 

 struggle in which one or two of the pack were badly 

 scratched. 



Cougars are occasionally killed by poisoning, and 

 they may be trapped much more easily than a wolf. 

 I have never known them to be systematically hunted 

 in the West, though now and then one is accidentally 



