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(the story-Mods, feel free to delete if not acceptable to post)

This will be a long one.

First off, I apologize for not posting more pictures lately on Facebook and Instagram, we have been a little busy with the June 20, 2018 grand opening of our “Hand of Man” museum of Natural History, Cultural Arts and Conservation www.handofman.org The website is now live. Hopefully everyone reading this will make the journey to Vancouver Island for a visit. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Now for the real reason for this post.

I want to thank everyone who has been calling and emailing me to find out if I am ok after the cougar attack. Yes I am fine. It was a very close call, too close actually, but thankfully for my cameraman Taylor Smith and me, it was the cougar that ended up being dinner, not us.

In case you have not heard about the attack, it happened just a few days ago, while I was out hunting black bear in our Vancouver Island outfitting territory. Taylor and I were returning to camp in the mid afternoon, when a cougar crossed the little used logging road in front of us. Here on Vancouver Island, the regulations allow for two cougars to be taken per hunter per year and the season runs nearly year round. Only the summer months are off limits. I always carry two valid cougar tags and this last spring season we have seen more cougars than anytime since the late 1990’s, when we had a similar spate of cougar sightings and several documented attacks on humans.

Taylor and I continued walking towards where the cougar crossed the logging road and as we passed the spot where it crossed, it attacked us from behind. It had obviously crouched down and hid in the thick undergrowth beside the road and waited for us. I whirled and shot from the hip, disabling the big male cougar as it leapt at me. Taylor captured the attack on camera and you are looking at a video screen grab from an instant after I fired.

An examination of the full grown male cougar showed that it was emaciated, starving, which probably was the reason for the attack. There was a single hole through the paw, which could have been a bite from another cougar, or could have been my Nosler bullet passing through the cougar’s paw, shoulder and back hip. When the cougar crossed the road, it did not seem to be limping.

Hunger was likely the motivation for the cougar attacking me. The bigger question is why was this mature male cat starving? That question will have to be left to the biologists to determine officially, but my “feet on the ground” opinion is pretty simple and logical. There are too many wolves and those too many wolves, as they have done in Saskatchewan and many other places, have eaten most of the deer. They run the roads, roads that we humans made, which essentially gives them “uber” wolf predation powers. The effect of too many predators is never pretty. All predators, like this poor cougar, will starve.

It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences. Sadly our human hearts are often in the right place, but reality is reality. All animal populations need to be managed. Wild or domestic.

Sorry but I have to add one more thing, a bit of a soapbox speech that you can feel free to ignore. It’s my “feet on the ground” greater concern. A cougar starving and attacking a human is one thing...but a starving grizzly bear is another matter. Grizzly bear hunting was banned in British Columbia recently, for 100% political reasons against sound scientific wildlife management advice. Biologists have monitored Grizzly bears have proven that a single grizzly bear will kill and eat up to 30 new born calf caribou and moose every spring during the birthing season. Here in British Columbia, the health of the large ungulate population is already of concern, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict the future. Grizzlies here in British Columbia, like the wolves here on Vancouver Island, will soon eat themselves out of house and home...and when they have eaten all the baby caribou, moose, elk and deer as they are being born...what (who) do you think they will look upon as dinner next?

Mark these words.

Doom and gloom aside and to end on a lighter note, I guess if there is a bright side to this unfortunate event, it’s that even at 60-years of age...cougars are still attracted to me!!

It’s kind of crazy when you look at the odds, with that said incidents are on the rise for sure.

When I was in Alberta two years ago they had two blk bear attacks in two weeks.

CO has had an explosion in ML and bear recruitment last few years.

that pic is amazing

Good plug for nosler bullets

Shockey loves him some Nosler, that's for sure.

Did that cat a favor. Glad he is OK.

Interesting story. starvation is sad. Planning a wolf trip this fall in Ontario to do my part.

So we have another celebrity here on this forum with Jim shockey being qsyb?

Personally, I’d prefer to be attacked by the OTHER kind of cougar......

Glad you are okay. Starvation is sad, but it is the way of nature. Nature will balance out on its own. That is the way that it works. The cat may have been emaciated for numerous reasons. Lack of food is one option, disease, old again, injury are several more possibilities that happen even in healthy populations.

Thank you for sharing, I'm glad you and your camera guy came out uninjuried. Curious how old the Tom was!

amazing Pictures, wow look at the face on that big cat. it was coming for the kill.

I'm not Jim Shockey.

I saw similar findings while hunting mountain lions in Montana a few years ago. We were hunting west of Kalispel in an area where there were lots of wolves and the deer herds had been reduced by 2/3 to 3/4 according to the local I was hunting with. We had to be extremely careful not to hunt the areas where there was any fresh wolf sign as they would kill the dogs in a matter of seconds. We treed three lions on that hunt, a mature male, a huge mature female and a yearling. The male and female were in very poor body condition and the only lion in good shape was the youngster.
I asked my friend who was raised there what the reason for the poor conditions of mature lions? He said that it was because when they made a kill, the wolves could smell the blood and come in and take the kill away from the lion. The reason that the youngster was in good condition was that we treed him very close to a ranch house where he had no doubt been living. The wolves were somewhat afraid to get to close to the ranch house as the rancher had most likely done his best to keep them away.
We drove by a ranch where a few month earlier, a pack of wolves moved in on a field of several hundred 800 pound yearling heifers and killed 8 one night. The rancher found them in the field and killed four before they made their escape. He called the Game Dept. and they brought in a chopper and killed 28 more wolves that day.
Adios,
Gary

Choctaw I was replying to QuitShootinYoungBucks post of the encounter below your original post! You guys don't even look alike to mistake identity!

Everyone thinks I'm better looking than Shockey. Well, probably now everyone. Anyway, QuitShootinYoungBucks' post was a cut and paste of Shockey's story. The cat picked the wrong victim. lol

Hell, everybody is better looking than Shockey...
Adios,
Gary

You do have a point there.

Thank God Eva is OK!

Sure your not, I suppose we are supposed to believe your Elvis then

While it might be interesting to let that rumor go on a while (not that it would be believed), I'm not Shockey, I'm JAG. I thought I would post the transcript in case people didn't want to go read it on FB.

Everyone knows Elvis died years ago. Or did I? I mean or did he?

That was my overriding concern too.