A man was stalked and charged by a mountain lion last year while reportedly hunting elk late last year.
Fortunately, he was carrying a handgun. Unbelievably, he caught pretty much the whole thing on camera.
“Not what I expected going elk hunting. Good thing I was packin!” Erickson said of the encounter.
That may possibly be the understatement of 2022.
You can hear Erickson say “Get back” in the video to the extremely keyed-in mountain lion.
You can also hear him breathing. It sounds silly, but this was the scariest part of the view for me. Erickson’s not an out-of-shape guy. That’s just the body responding to the reality of being in a life-or-death situation.
There are a lot of commenters on the original Instagram video that claim that the mountain lion may have been bluffing, because as one posited, these animals attack from the front to protect something. They attack from behind if they intend you to be prey.
It’s really irrelevant when things got this far. It seems as though Erickson attempted to prevent the use of force until absolutely necessary, and then use only enough force to eliminate the threat directly in front of him.
There’s something to be said for letting brass fly after the initial attack, but I find it hard to fault the course of action taken here.
Maybe let’s lose the camera next time, though — even if the footage is incredible.
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