THE COUGAR OR MOUNTAIN LION 311 



only a huge cat can leap, the lion flashes upon its prey 

 and crushes it to the ground." 



"After eating his fill," this writer observes, "which 

 is no small part of his kill, he covers what is left with 

 leaves and sticks, or partly buries it ; and woe to any 

 lesser beast of prey that is found meddling with his 

 cache when he returns." 



Roosevelt says that where a cougar kills a deer in 

 the open it invariably drags it under some tree or 

 shelter before beginning to eat. All the carcasses we 

 came across had been thus dragged, the trail showing 

 distinctly in the snow. Goff, however, asserted that 

 in occasional instances he had known a cougar to carry 

 a deer so that only its legs trailed on the ground. 



Mr, Welder says he once knew a cougar to chase a 

 man, who would doubtless have had a narrow escape 

 had not the beast in its spring jumped into a barbed 

 wire fence. Barbed fences being a rarity in the cou- 

 gar country, this one, no doubt, proved a tough propo- 

 sition to the would-be man-eater. If the cougar is not 

 successful in his first attempt, he will seldom renew the 

 attack. If he springs for a deer and misses the mark, 

 he will rarely, if ever, give chase. Roosevelt says all 

 the cougars we came across were living e.xclusively 

 upon deer, and their stomachs were filled with noth- 

 ing else; much hair being mixed with the meat. In 

 each case the deer was caught by stalking, and not by 

 lying in wait, and the cougar never went up a tree 

 except to get rid of the dogs. 



Upon one of Mr. Welder's shooting trips, in Mon- 

 tana, he bagged a lion with a .22-calibrc rifle. " It was 

 the first day (jf the pheasant season," he says, " and, as 



