THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
When it comes to fighting anything on equal terms the full-grown 
cougar can kill the largest dog, and even now they kill full-grown cattle 
and horses occasionally; but towards man he is quite inoffensive, although 
there are one or two records of boys being attacked. A few cougars have 
lingered until recently as far east as New Hampshire; but they are now 
practically extinct east of the plains bordering on the Rocky Mountains. 
Perhaps nowhere are they so abundant as in Vancouver Island, where a 
Campbell River hunter named Smith told me he could kill one almost 
any day with the help of his trained collies. No animal is less seen by the 
hunter than the cougar, although his tracks are often plentiful in the snow. 
During the day this large cat keeps hidden in scrub, hollow trees or rocks, 
and only emerges at morning and evening to lie in some small recess close 
to a game trail and dash out on unsuspecting sheep, goat or deer as they 
pass its ambush. Cougars have regular places in Wyoming and Colorado, 
often behind a large overhanging rock, where they wait for the game, 
and sometimes twenty or thirty skulls and skeletons, silent witnesses of 
their prowess, may be found lying together. They kill much as other cats 
do, by seizing their victims across the shoulders and biting through the 
vertebrae of the neck. So great have been their depredations in the two last- 
named states that parties are regularly organized in spring to hunt them 
with packs of dogs, which, after a sharp run of a mile or two, take them 
to bay in a tree, where they are easily shot. Some of the hounds employed 
in this chase are so keen that they can also climb the trees, and will 
stand baying at the game within a yard or two. 
The chances of seeing a cougar and shooting it by the ordinary methods 
of stalking are rare, so that, if a skin is desired, it is best to make arrange- 
ments to go out in spring with Steve Elkins, Ned Frost, or one of the 
regular cougar hunters, who make a practice of hunting these animals 
and possess a well trained pack of dogs. 
Cougars play great havoc with chickens, pigs, sheep and farm stock 
generally, especially where game has become scarce, and so every western 
farmer keeps a shot-gun, loaded with buckshot, standing behind his front 
door that he may seize it and run to the rescue of his property if the 
depredator should appear and attack by day, as he sometimes does. 
These animals are also fairly easy to trap, and large numbers are also 
destroyed by the use of strychnine. 
The cougar runs from man in fear, and will never attack, even at close 
quarters, when wounded, and I cannot find any reliable instance of a hunter 
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