"My Fight With a Mountain Lion" — True 1800s Maine Survival Story

Описание: We live in a time when some men still live in their parents’ basements, and the greatest crisis they face is the Wi-Fi going out—or not being able to skip an extra-long YouTube ad.
Tonight, I invite you back to another time, when men left the comforts of home, braved the winter woods, and risked life and limb for the thrill of the hunt.
This is one of the wildest stories in American frontier lore and I dedicate this episode to St. Hubert, patron saint of hunters.

Now this story was originally published in the late 1800’s, so instead of saying Mountain Lion, the author actually used the outdated term “Catamount.” So I’ve replaced it with names like Mountain Lion or Cougar, although it was originally titled, “My Fight with a Catamount" (1898).

His story begins:
My guide, Alaric, and I had gone in after moose to the country beyond Mud Brook, in Maine.
Our task was a slow one; we had to examine each snow covered valley for moose tracks, tramping up one side and down the other, or as we usually managed it, separating at the valley's mouth, each taking a side, meeting at the end and then, if unsuccessful, taking the quickest way back to camp.

And unsuccessful we were, since for three days we found no trail.
But Alaric was not in the least discouraged.

"You can never tell about moose," he said; "they travel so. There were moose in this country before the snow, and there are moose within a day's walk of us now. It's just as I told you; we may have to spend five days finding where they are."

It was on the second day that we found that, while after moose, we had been tracked by a mountain lion. The print of its paw was generously large.

"I've seen bigger," said Alaric, "but this feller's big enough. He's just waiting round, I guess, so as to get some of the meat we kill. We'll remember him," he said, looking up at me as he knelt on the snow, "so's to see that he doesn't spoil the hide or the head."

I accepted the theory, and thought little more of it for 24 hours.

At the end of the third day we found that the cougar had for a second time been following our trail—not only our trail, but also mine. He had followed me all day as I walked along the hillside. Alaric examined his tracks carefully for half a mile.

"He was in sight of you all the way," he said. "See here, where he stood for some time, just shifting about in one place, watching?" I saw—and thought...