Puma/catamounts/<insert your favorite name here> are fairly rare, even out west. To see one up close might indeed be a buttoks-clenching experience, but it puts you in a very select group.
My experience was much more typical: I had shot a deer in Texas Hill Country, and, as deer are wont to do, it ran for a good mile or so through the brush before it accepted the fact that it was dead and dropped. I tracked it by the blood trail, to find a bobcat had already laid claim to the carcass. That's when I learned that bobcats are even harder to drop than deer -- four rounds from thirty yards and closing! (Allright -- three. I emptied the rest of the magazine -- four shots -- but only found three wounds on the bobcat. It's hard to maintain ones cool, let alone ones aim, in such circumstances.) |
