Photo: Getty Images
A Washington man was enjoying his day at Olympic National Park when he came across a cougar, according to KIRO 7.
The day was August 20. Bart Brown, a Port Angeles resident, just started an hours-long hike after fishing at Lake Angeles. Shortly into this activity, he encounters a wild cougar on the trail.
“She’s sitting on the edge of the trail,” Brown told reporters. “And when I looked over, I stopped her dead in her tracks, like she slid over a little bit, you know?”
This was the fisherman's first time facing down a cougar in all his years visiting the lake. He remembers staring down the predator and gripping his flashlight before charging at it.
“It’s one of them life or death situations and I felt like I was going to die,” he said. “Like I was prepared to die. I’m going to fight this cougar and I know I’m not going to win, you know. But I’m going to try.”
He continued: “She gets down and she looks at me and I look at her, too, we’re in it, we’re in a death stare. I’m like, here we go. I muster the courage. I charged her again. We played chicken and I won. And she took off down the mountain."
Jason Knight, the co-founder of the Alderleaf Wilderness College, says Brown did everything right to make the cougar back off.
“They usually see us. We don’t see them," Knight explains. "But if there’s a time that you do see one, if it’s not running the other direction to get away from you, the appropriate response is to be aggressive towards it.”
Check out the full story on KIRO 7's website.