Proceedings of the Seventh Mountain Lion Workshop

look bigger, but the cat continued to
advance. One of the women snarled like a
dog and “mock lunged,” and the puma ran
into some bushes. A nearby rancher
approached on horseback, accompanied by 2
dogs. When they directed their attention
toward where the girls thought the puma
was, it bounded off (Linda Lewis, web site:
, citing personal communications
with Jessie Dickson, April 18-19, 2001).
In probably the most dramatic example
demonstrating puma behavior following
human aggressiveness, a deer hunter and a
puma were stalking the same deer when the
deer detected the puma and fled. From 27
m (30 yards) away, the puma transferred its
stalk to the hunter. The hunter hid behind a
tree while the puma approached, crouching.
As the puma got close the hunter jumped out
and yelled. That puma left running (Ford
1994). The puma obviously knew the hunter
was behind the tree, but the hunter’s actions
probably appeared to the puma as an attack
coming from a hidden (ambush) position.
The action successfully interrupted the
predatory stalking behavior and instigated a
flight behavior.
Is It Safer to Hike in Groups?
Solitary people are 3 times as likely to
be attacked or to have an encounter as
people in pairs or larger groups (Figure 5).
However, only groups of 5 or more seem
fairly secure against attack. We were much
less likely to find data on non-attack
encounters than on attacks. Thus, the
relative levels of the paired bars in Figure 5
cannot be used to compare attack and nonattack
encounters. We assumed that the
reporting rates for attacks and non-attacks
are different but are not affected differently
by group size. Figure 5 shows that the
relationship (but not absolute proportions) of
attack and non-attack encounters is similar,
regardless of group size. The similar
percentages within group size categories
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEVENTH MOUNTAIN LION WORKSHOP
REDUCING PUMA ATTACKS · Fitzhugh et al. 99
Figure 5. Relationship of human group size
and age composition with type of encounter
(n = 379).
and the consistent pattern among them
indicates to us that the tendency of a puma
to approach humans (or for humans to come
close to pumas) is related to group size and
is independent of whether an attack occurs.
It seems to indicate that once a puma is in
close proximity to humans, whether an
attack occurs or not may be explained,
statistically speaking, as a random or
systematic decision, affecting all group sizes
to the same extent once the initial approach
is made. Such a mechanism could be
created either by the
physiological/behavioral state of the puma
or size and behavior of the human(s), or
both interacting. If we could detect and
record non-attack encounters as thoroughly
as we do attack encounters, we might be
able to create more hypotheses based on the
ratios and timing of one to the other. Data
presented by Sweanor et al., at the Seventh
Mountain Lion Workshop, help
considerably in this direction. We
encourage all who study radio collared
pumas to record and publish similar data.
In Figure 5, adults strongly predominate
in the single person attack and non-attack