The Hunter and the Cougars
A Skagit County hunter recounts a harrowing, split-second encounter with a pack of cougars while stalking deer in the snow.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Reuben Smith lives near Burlington and owns a beautiful Winchester and two intelligent deer hounds. On Tuesday morning, with his dogs and rifle, Smith started out to hunt for deer. The new snow had obliterated the deer tracks, but he could tell from the way the hounds were behaving that there was game somewhere. Suddenly the dogs started forward, and in about a second there was a great commotion—breaking brush followed by snarls, growls, and ear-piercing screams. Five frantic cougars, followed by the yelping hounds, bounded into view not forty rods from the spot where the hunter stood. He instantly drew a bead on the foremost cougar and fired. The bullet entered the animal's head; the cougar made one blinding leap in the air, then fell trembling to the ground—dead. The dogs treed two of the cougars, and Smith advanced and shot them. They came tumbling down and the excited hounds had hold of them the moment they struck the ground. The battle was over in less time than it takes to tell, and Smith didn't have time to get excited until the scent of powder faded away and he stood alone in the silent forest. The largest one measured six feet six inches and the smallest one just six feet.
“He stood alone in the silent forest with his bleeding trophies.”
Encounters with cougars remain a part of rural life in Skagit County, though the context has shifted from frontier hunting to modern wildlife management and habitat conservation.
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