by Cat Urbigkit
Reacting to Wolf Encounters
If you encounter a wolf, stay calm and don’t run. A frightened or nervous wolf will hold its tail between its legs. A wolf that runs away, while stopping for a quick look back every now and then, is not a threat. Do what you can to reinforce to the animal that humans should be avoided.
A wolf exhibiting defensive behavior may dash toward you at a run, veer away, and bark. If a wolf barks at you in an encounter, it’s alarmed. The animal could have a den site or animal carcass nearby, so slowly back away. Never turn your back on the wolf. If you are suddenly surrounded by a pack of barking wolves, you are almost certainly at a den or rendezvous site, and you need to deliberately retreat.
Sometimes wolves will watch and “test” you. The animal may move around you, approaching at a slow walk, or even bounding forward. It may try to grab your shirt or jacket sleeve as it continues its testing behavior, and it may seem friendly or playful. This requires aggressive action on your part. A wolf that is conducting testing actions is a wolf that is testing your suitability as prey. Stand tall—wave your arms around overhead to try to appear larger. Be loud. Yell and throw rocks or other objects at the wolf.
A wolf with hackles up and holding its tail high is showing aggression. You should demonstrate some aggression on your end in response to this.
A wolf with its ears flattened and its lips back in a snarl is warning of an imminent attack. Aggressively fight back. If you are in imminent danger, do whatever is necessary to protect yourself.
If you encounter an aggressive wolf, again, stand tall and try to appear large. Yell, clap your hands, throw objects, lunge toward the animal—be aggressive in your actions. Keep your eyes on the wolf and don’t bend down or turn your back to the animal. Stand your ground and fight. Use noisemakers, firearms, bear spray, walking sticks—anything you can grab as a weapon. Retreat to safety if you can do so without turning your back on the animal. Escape into a vehicle, a building, or even up a tree.
Be sure to alert other recreationalists and wildlife authorities about your encounter with an aggressive wolf, so that action can be taken to lower the risk to others.
CONFLICTS INVOLVING DOGS
Domestic dogs and wild wolves are involved in dozens of conflicts each year. Under various circumstances, wolves may view dogs as competitors or challengers for territory or food, as potential breeding partners, or as prey.
Small dogs are often viewed as prey, which wolves easily and frequently kill and eat. Some wolves learn that residential areas harbor dogs, which the wolves then turn to as a food source. Do not leave pets outside overnight unless in a sturdy kennel, and do not release dogs outside after dark in areas where wolves are present.
If hiking in wolf country with your dog, keep the dog leashed and close to your side. If you are in an area where there is concentrated wolf use, reconsider your use of the area. Wolves have been known to approach people hiking with leashed dogs and to kill the dogs, in apparent disregard of the presence of humans, especially from May through July, when wolves may be defending a den or rendezvous site. If you do hike with a dog, make noise as you move, so the wolves will hear that a human is present. Placing bells on the dog’s collar may also reduce the likelihood of an encounter. Keep an eye out for wolf signs (tracks, scat, animal bones, etc.).
Hunting hounds are at risk when hunting in wolf territory. The baying of hounds may be viewed as a territorial challenge to wolves, which then quickly move in and kill the hounds as they pursue game. The high-risk time period for hunters using hounds appears to be July through September, when wolf packs are tending to pups at rendezvous sites. December also poses a higher risk, as the winter breeding season approaches.
Consult with your local wildlife officials about the presence of wolves in your area, and about the best way to keep your dogs safe while hunting. The best way may be simply to avoid areas with concentrated wolf use.
Chapter 4
Mountain Lions
It was January 8, 2004, in Orange County, California. Mark Reynolds had stopped his mountain bike on a trail in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park—more than 4,000 glorious acres of oak woodlands, canyons, and rolling hills, with steep slopes covered in coastal sage scrub and chaparral. Reynolds was an avid cyclist, even, on occasion, hitting up fellow riders for donations to help provide bicycles to kids whose families couldn’t afford them. Reynolds was bent at the waist trying to put a broken chain back on the bike when the mountain lion hit him. The attack left thirty-five-year-old Reynolds dead. The lion then dragged the man’s body into the brush. After consuming part of his victim’s body, the lion partially covered the remains before turning back to the trail for his next victim.
Anne Hjelle, a thirty-year-old former Marine, was enjoying a bike ride with a friend when the lion sprang from the brush alongside the trail and landed on Hjelle’s back. Knocking her to the ground, the lion grabbed Hjelle’s head in its mouth and began dragging her off the trail and into the brush. But her friend, Debi Nicholls, wasn’t far behind, and Nicholls wasn’t going to give Hjelle up without a fight. Nicholls grabbed hold of one of Hjelle’s legs and began a tugof-war with the lion in an attempt to save her friend, screaming all the while. Two other cyclists had found Mark Reynolds’s disabled bike along the trail when they heard the screams of a woman nearby. Discarding the bike, the men ran to help Nicholls in her fight to save Hjelle and were able to pelt the lion with numerous rocks, convincing the lion to release its hold and move away into the brush.
Hjelle survived the brutal mauling, and the resulting 200 stitches and five operations that were part of her recovery. She has written a book about her recovery and is now an inspirational speaker. The mountain lion that attacked Hjelle—a 122-pound adult male in good condition—later returned to the attack site and was shot and killed by wildlife officials. It was only after the investigation began on the attack on Hjelle that the body of Mark Reynolds was discovered, where the big cat had cached it off the trail near the disabled bike.
The killing or hunting of mountain lions is illegal in California, and has been for years. These large predators have little reason to fear humans, and this lion had begun to treat humans as prey. It’s a pattern that is repeated across the countryside.
Ten years after the fatal attack in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, on a sunny day on the last weekend in March 2014, Madison Smith and her two children were walking on a trail in the park when Smith saw a mountain lion racing forward from the brush, fixated on her five-year-old son. Another hiker arrived and helped to scare the animal away by yelling and brandishing a tree branch, placing himself between the small children and the predator. But the lion was persistent, approaching the group repeatedly—at times just a few feet away. A passing group of mountain bikers stopped to help, and the larger group—numbering about twenty-five people by the time the ordeal was over—was able to chase the lion back into the brush. When deputies and wardens arrived on the scene, the yearling male mountain lion began to approach the group and was shot and killed. This well-used trail is located near an elementary school.
Adult mountain lions are large, powerful predators at the top of the food chain, weighing in at 85 to 120 pounds for females, and 120 to 180 pounds for males. They can be as long as 8 feet from nose tip to tail tip. Preying mainly on deer and elk, mountain lions also hunt and kill a variety of small prey, including rabbits, mice, birds, and domestic pets and livestock.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife receives hundreds of reports and complaints about mountain lions every year. And every year, between three and a dozen mountain lions are determined to pose an imminent threat to human safety and are subsequently killed in that state.
Increased Risk of Attack
In 1991, after a series of lion attacks on humans in California, Texas, and Colorado, wildlife ecology professor Paul Beier took on the task of tallying the number of verified mountain lion attacks on humans in the United States and Canada, discovering nine attacks invo
lving ten human fatalities, and at least forty-four nonfatal attacks, from 1890 to 1990. Beier reported there were more fatal attacks in the later twenty years than in the previous eighty years.
Most of the victims documented in the Beier study were children, and these children were with other people when the attacks took place. Researchers learned that even captive mountain lions show a heightened interest in children.
Beier found that not all of the attacks took place in the great outdoors; in some cases, mountain lions came into buildings after their victims. In one case, a mountain lion crashed through a window after a person. In another case, a lion came into a Colorado garage to attack a small child.
Mountain lion attacks on humans in California have increased in recent years, with nine attacks in that state from 1985 to 1995. Researchers have discovered a pattern of lion behavior that indicates attacks may be imminent. There is an increased risk of attack on humans when these things happen:
High mountain lion populations are located close to urban areas.
An increase in lion sightings occurs.
Lions demonstrate little or no fear of humans.
Lions attack pets.
Other patterns of close encounters with humans are noted.
Lee Fitzhugh of the University of California, Davis, points out that prey recognition is a learned behavior in cats. For example, one mountain lion could learn from another mountain lion that a strange animal is prey if the two are together at the time of a successful attack. In addition, mountain lions could be stimulated to attack if the strange animal (such as a human) behaves in a way similar to the lion’s normal prey species. Such behavior includes running and quick movements.
[Mountain lions] have evolved over thousands of years to hunt for prey that moves on four legs. They go after prey that represents the greatest opportunity for the least amount of risk.
—Colorado Parks and Wildlife
Since learned behavior can influence prey selection, mountain lions can learn to select humans and their pets as a food source. Again focusing on learned behavior, mountain lions can learn to avoid areas where they are harassed.
An increased pattern of mountain lion sightings or close encounters between humans and lions is cause for concern, according to Fitzhugh, and “should elicit management action to prevent an attack.”
The public must be warned that close encounters with mountain lions are extremely dangerous. “Warnings should be direct and severe. Mountain lions are no animal to consider lightly, and people should be told forcefully that lions are dangerous,” Fitzhugh wrote in a paper presented at a mountain lion management workshop. “We must inform the public that mountain lions can be dangerous to people. There seems to be a public impression that they are not.”
That impression is one that requires continued attention. When mountain lions were spotted roaming in Santa Barbara, California, in 2012, the Santa Barbara Independent ran a column titled “Talking to the Mountain Lion.” It was written by Laura Stinchfield, a self-proclaimed pet psychic and animal communicator, or as she says, “I can telepathically talk to animals.”
Her June 1, 2012, column noted that a mountain lion had been hanging around a nearby school, and she talked to that mountain lion. The lion proclaimed it was in the area to eat bunnies, adding, “I do not prey on people.” The conversation concluded with this piece from the lion: “It’s getting harder to live in peace with humans close, and your species is harming the environment. A natural state is becoming hard to achieve. I’m sorry that people cannot read my body language. I am no harm to them. Humans seem to have no eye for balance. All other animals can read my intentions.”
Behavioral Patterns
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) 2006 Oregon Cougar Management Plan lists specific “behavior pattern criteria” that prompt agency concern for human safety. When practical, ODFW will attempt to remove offending cougars if one or more of the criteria are met. According to the plan, all animals contacted under these circumstances will be humanely euthanized.
The plan’s behavior pattern criteria include:
Aggressive actions directed toward a person or persons, including but not limited to charging, false charging, growling, teeth popping, and snarling
Breaking into, or attempting to break into, a residence
Attacking a pet or domestic animal
Loss of wariness of humans, displayed through repeated sightings of the animal during the day near a permanent structure, permanent corral, or mobile dwelling used by humans at an agricultural, timber-management, ranching, or construction site.
Where a cougar is causing damage, being a public nuisance, or posing a public health risk, and ODFW personnel or its agents are called to respond, the animal will be humanely euthanized. Under no circumstances will consideration be given to relocation of cougars.
The plan explains: “All opportunities to explain and educate the public about the rationale behind lethal removal shall be utilized. These include not only the potential for future danger, but also cougar population biology (particularly territoriality and intra-specific competition and mortality), legal liability, and our policy of not moving a potential problem animal to another location where someone else’s pets, livestock, or family could be put at risk.”
Lion expert Lee Fitzhugh recommends that, once a lion has attacked a person, the animal has exhibited behavior that recognizes humans as prey, and that animal must be removed from the population.
“Even though removal may not eliminate the possibility of another attack, failure to do so almost certainly will increase the probability of another attack because of learned predator identification behavior,” Fitzhugh said.
LION BEHAVIOR
There are several elements of mountain lion behavior outlined by lion expert Lee Fitzhugh and predator control specialist David Fjelline that are relevant to how humans should react when encountering the animals:
Most mountain lion attacks on humans are predatory in nature. Fighting back is the best response. In no cases has “playing dead” been effective at ending an attack.
Mountain lions are threatened and intimidated by large, strange objects approaching rapidly and from above. Thus, appearing larger is advised. Positions above the cat are positions of dominance, and positions below the cat are subordinate.
Mountain lions are stimulated to attack by small objects that move rapidly across or away from their line of travel. Do not run, and fight back in a physical encounter to disrupt the animal’s prey drive. Throwing an object at the cat can provide enough disruption to end the encounter.
Attacks across the Continent
Of the more than forty mountain lion attacks on humans in North America cited by Daryll Herbert and Dan Lay in a 1997 paper titled “Cougar–Human Interactions in British Columbia,” about half occurred in British Columbia, and, more specifically, on Vancouver Island. It is likely that hunting of mountain lions has helped to significantly reduce interactions between mountain lions and people, but restrictive mountain lion hunting regulations, combined with increasing mountain lion populations and increases in prey populations, have resulted in an increase in attacks on humans in these areas. In addition, many areas and parks set aside for human recreational use around the country restrict or prohibit hunting.
There have been numerous attacks over the years involving mountain lions pouncing on adult humans, and they occur across the country and in a variety of situations. In 2001, a thirty-year-old ballet dancer was killed while cross-country skiing in Banff National Park. The mountain lion had hidden behind a tree, and when the woman passed by, the lion leapt upon her back, killing her. A wildlife warden killed the large male mountain lion as it fed on her body. This appeared to be a predatory attack—but it was one of three incidents involving at least two different mountain lions in the Banff area that day. Earlier that morning, a pet dog was mauled by a mountain lion while in its backyard, but the pet owner was able to scare the lion away and the pe
t survived the attack. A few hours later, another woman walking her dog was stalked by a mountain lion. A neighbor heard her screams for help and opened his door to the woman, allowing her to escape. Officials expressed confidence that the mountain lion involved in the pet attack, and in the stalking of the second woman, was not the same animal that killed the woman earlier in the day. Banff National Park is closed to the hunting of wild predators (or other animals), and wildlife is accustomed to human presence. Prey species such as elk move into residential areas to graze, and the wild predators follow.
While out for a run in a state recreational area east of Sacramento, California, in April 1994, forty-year-old Barbara Schoener was attacked and killed by a female mountain lion. Evidence indicated the lion attacked the woman from a ledge, and that she fought back before being killed. The female lion fed on her body and buried it in debris before bringing her cub to the site to feed again. About a week after Schoener’s remains were discovered, the female mountain lion was killed just feet from the attack site, and her cub was captured and placed in a zoo.
In December 1994, a 130-pound male mountain lion killed fifty-eight-year-old high school teacher and bird-watcher Iris Kenna in California’s Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, about 50 miles from San Diego. It appeared the woman had survived the initial attack, but the cat caught her from behind and killed her. The lion was shot in the area the same day. This state park has a history of conflicts between mountain lions and people. In 1993, the year prior to Iris Kenna’s fatal encounter, a mountain lion chased two horseback riders, and later attacked a girl and her dog. The lion was later shot and killed.