24 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



the Old-World leopard, undoubtedly sometimes turns 

 man-eater. 



Even when hunted the cougar shows itself, as a rule, 

 an abject coward, not to be compared in courage and 

 prowess with the grizzly bear, and but little more dan- 

 gerous to man than is the wolf under similar circum- 

 stances. Without dogs it is usually a mere chance that 

 one is killed. GofI has killed some 300 cougars during 

 the sixteen years he has been hunting in northwestern 

 Colorado, yet all but two of them were encountered while 

 he was with his pack; although this is in a region where 

 they were plentiful. When hunted with good dogs their 

 attention is so taken up with the pack that they have 

 little time to devote to men. When hunted without dogs 

 they never charge unless actually cornered, and, as a gen- 

 eral rule, not even then, unless the man chooses to come 

 right up to them. I knew of one Indian being killed 

 in 1887, and near my ranch a cowboy was mauled; but 

 in the first instance the cougar had been knocked down 

 and the Indian was bending over it when it revived; 

 and in the next instance, the cowboy literally came right 

 on top of the animal. Now, under such circumstances 

 either a bull elk or a blacktail buck will occasionally 

 fight; twice I have known of wounded wapiti regularly 

 charging, and one of my own cowboys, George Myer, 

 was very roughly handled by a blacktail buck which he 

 had wounded. In all his experience Goff says that save 

 when he approached one too close when it was cornered 

 by the dogs, he never but once had a cougar start to 

 charge him, and on that occasion it was promptly killed 



