A Cougar at Twenty Feet: A Hood Canal Family's Close Call

Walter M. Bywater, a rancher living at Thorndyke Bay, on Hood Canal, eleven miles south of Seabeck, killed a seven-foot cougar last Monday morning. He was going along a trail near his home with his wife and child when his little Scotch terrier dog, twenty inches long, who had been exploring the brush, started a big beast that sprang into the path only twenty feet in front of the family. Mrs. Bywater was ahead and the cougar instantly crouched to spring upon her, but her husband pulled her aside and sent a rifle bullet to meet the varmint, which leaped simultaneously with the shot. The animal, its skull torn by the ball, plunged seven feet through the air and fell stunned, clutching the earth madly with its claws. Two more bullets put an end to its struggles. Mr. Bywater yesterday brought the carcass, which weighed 150 pounds, to this city. The cougar carried four young. These animals, Mr. Bywater says, are not common on the canal, but are so rapacious that they are obliged to scour a large territory to obtain their food. They are swift travelers and can easily move thirty or forty miles in a night.