I have never been afraid to hunt, fish, or hike alone. Solitude and self reliance are important to me. Don't get me wrong, I am a social animal. I enjoy recreating in places I love with people I love. Many times, there just isn't a hunting partner available to go with me. Folks have busy lives and other commitments, even to other hunting partners. Often, I hunt alone out of necessity, but I don't shy from the opportunity - I relish it. My mind wanders both broadly and with depth when I hunt alone, but I also find moments when I am completely focused. Whether I wander or focus, the result is cathartic. I get to purge my busy brain, decompress from sudden and unexpected adulthood, and hope to get to that state my Pop and I have always referred to as "predator mode."
Predator mode is that subliminal moment when a hunter is 100% completely focused on his or her quarry. In most successful, do it yourself, hunts, there is a time when everything converges; where hunter and hunted are in the same place in the space-time continuum, the hunted is unaware or off guard, and the hunter is completely focused on the hard conclusion. Senses heighten and heart rate increases, but if you are in predator mode, the adrenaline doesn't lead to jitters, or buck fever, or panic. For a moment, it makes you primal and deadly.
I didn't expect I would ever experience prey mode, on the receiving end of predator mode. I didn't think I would be the sole fixation of what is likely North America's most fixated predator. Puma, Panther, Catamount, Cougar, Mountain Lion. No matter how you say his name, he is a frightening creature, at least when he has you on his terms. Mountain lions are reclusive, silent, powerful, athletic, and absolutely majestic. Now I know how it feels to be in his sights, caught unaware, or at least off guard.
I was hunting turkeys in fresh snow. It had already been an eventful morning, but not on the turkey front. I had hiked a couple of miles for a couple hours with no responses to my calls, but the morning was crisp and bright, and it felt good to be hunting while most of the Pacific Time Zone was barely filling their coffee pots. Earlier, I had a close encounter with a great grey owl. He watched me with suspicion, rotating his head further than seeems natural as I walked around and under the snag on which he was perched. Naturally, I already considered the outing a success. It isn't every day you get to see a great grey owl. With only fifteen more minutes hiking to do, I heard a gobble in response to a yelping call. That was why I was out there, for the hunt, and I thought "responsive toms are worth a few hours of vacation time."
I could hear three distinctive gobbles across a meadow. My goal was to get within a 100 yards or less of the birds, and entice them into shotgun range with the calls of a willing mate. Call, locate, hike, set up for a shot. I repeated this several times, but the birds kept moving away from me, apparently not convinced my calls were truly those of a willing partner. Finally, the gobbles drifted out of earshot. I knew the birds had crossed above me, moving left to right, and I knew with fresh snow, I could follow them with more purpose and greater direction. I trailed them for several hundred yards, through thickets and snow banks, around a curving ridge to the edge of a ravine. That is when I got them calling again. I thought they might still be in the bottom of the little drainage. They sounded close. I could hear clucking and putting and other turkey noises in addition to the volleys of excited gobbles. This is when turkey hunting gets really fun..
Still, I couldn't get a bird to show himself. I carefully crept to the edge of the ravine, which was littered with dead fall and noisy branches. I could still hear the birds, but I then knew they weren't in the ravine after all, rather they were calling from the bench on the other side. I crouched and crept to a tree ten yards below the edge of the bench. I knew this would be a tough spot to bring the birds in, with such a severe blind spot, but I couldn't go further without risking exposure. Now the birds were hot, instantly responding to each of my calls, but still, they were hung up. The blind spot made them wary. With my head low, I moved across the face of the ravine to another tree twenty yards away hoping to change the game just a little. I settled in with my back to a tree and started to call again.
That is when I heard a noise of soft movement behind me and over my right shoulder, from a small thicket of dog hair timber. My first thought was "excellent there is another tom coming in." I raised my right hand to cup my mouth to slightly muffle the sound of my diaphragm call. I let out a burst of yelps, the toms let out a burst of gobbles, and I heard a burst of movement from behind my right shoulder. I actually froze at that moment. In the split second, I thought I was going to see a sex-crazed tom turkey run right past me. The only question was whether I would be able to swing my shotgun on him without him noticing. The gun was laying on my lap, muzzle pointed to my left, where I expected the other toms to come into the open. I was one convergence away from predator mode. I turned nothing to the right but my gaze, and as I did, a primal fear welled out of my core when I saw the lion make the sharp turn around my tree with vicious speed. My hand was still at my mouth from calling, so my arm was already in a defensive position. The lion's right paw swatted me hard in the chest, and I pushed away from his chest with my raised arm and I screamed. I didn't notice until I felt a bruise later on, but the cat must have hit me hard on the right shoulder as well. I fell on my side and he reared back. He must have been startled by my scream. Turkeys don't make that kind of noise. Turkeys don't weigh 235 pounds and they probably don't fight back all that well. I guess he must have been startled by that too. For a second the cat stood there just a few feet from me. His tail was long and it was crooked at a couple of places. His fur was thick and healthy, but it looked wet or at least oiled, not like the clean tanned pelts successful hunters hang on their walls. I yelled again, "holy sh#t!," and the cat hesitated then retreated back to the thicket, looking confused. I jumped up to face him, this time with my shotgun ready. He stood in the thicket, only ten or fifteen yards below me. He wasn't a huge cat, but he was an adult. His length was remarkable, with that iconic long tail flicking the same way our house cat's tail does when he is agitated. Lions can look confused and disdainful especially when an easy meal of nesting hen turkey turns out to be much more than he bargained for.
The cat slinked away, but my rush didn't go with him. Those three silly toms gobbled again above me, apparently not dissuaded too much by the commotion below them. I marched over the hill, thinking maybe there was still some luck in my bank. Thirty plus yards away, a tom turkey popped his head up. I aimed and fired, but my aim wasn't true. Everything that day had converged in the space time continuum, except the turkey's head and the lead from my shotgun. I suppose not being lion food was enough luck for the day.
In hindsight, the speed of the attack was what was truly frightening. It wasn't the silence... I knew something was there. It was the speed. I was armed, but once I knew it was a threat, not quarry, there was zero chance of defending myself. Even a sidearm would have been useless, other than for a potshot through the trees as the cat slinked away. In the high of the adrenaline rush, I didn't feel scared, but truly exhilarated. I had just counted coup on one of the most formidable predators in North America. I checked for bites and scratches, but couldn't find much. My chest was a little sore, and I had an almost indiscernible laceration on my right nipple. I was lucky that biting wasn't the first thing that lion did to dispatch his poultry dinner.
Now, for the first time in my life, I woke up and thought twice about hunting alone. After processing for a couple of days, I know now that was my most frightening moment, and I might need the buddy system when I go back to the woods. I will hunt alone again and I will do it soon. It is too important for me to have that solitude to let a scary kitty cat get under my skin. I think I will probably look over my shoulder a little more now. I know what it feels like to touch the wildest of wild, and walk away unscathed. I would rather foul up a turkey hunt than meet another mountain lion on his terms.
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