Interesting discussion on black bear - I personally attack them with rocks and wave my arms and run them off.

Anyway I live with cougars in a deer rich area east of the Cascade Range. As I recall, when there are 30 cat/human encounters per year, the cat season is opened. The do gooders in the big cty decided that its not fair to hunt the kitties with dogs so it was outlawed and now no one hunts cougars because its a waste of time. Instead we shoot them when they have the audacity to show their faces around peoples homes.

On the news last week was an announcement to keep pets and children indoors after dark and to watch out for a pair of cougars. We normally get this once a year here. Well it seems the cougar sighting was in my friends back yard as one cougar came over her fence and attacked her billy goat. They were probably yearling cougars as larger ones have territories further away from people, so figure 250 pound billy and 80 pound kitty. My friend said the billy did damage to the cat "injured it". Well Fish and Game did bait the cats and shoot them, they also are taking my friends goat. Its very aggressive and they discovered that its like a "wolf dog" its a mountain goat hybrid and has a real attitude about kitties, and children, but he let me come up to him and rub his ears.

I have ran off two cougars in the Sierras. You just go ballistic on them, bare your fangs, wave you arms and jump at them screaming "I'm gonn eat you" and they just vanish as quickly as they appear.
Jim
Disclaimer - unless you have the right attitude, do not charge a cougar unarmed and frothing at the mouth. Frankly my backyard which borders Newberry National Monument, is wilderness enough at night to carry my .44 just walking out to my deck in the lava flow.

Jim, I do that to the deer in my yard. I have scared off at least two bears here. One I shot some birdshot at its feet as it was hauling as_ away, the other just hollering at it made it leave. That one, I had my garbage cans in my pickup a few days before a bp trip, hauling it to town so I wouldn't have any issues while away on my trip. Gotta be bigger and badder than they are for sure.

We're getting a lot more cougars here in Northern California, although the terrain is so rugged they can hide well. We're seeing a lot more kills on out ranch though. In California, hunting cougars is outright illegal... so instead of leaving the Fish & Game the power to manage them, the voters decided they knew what was best... of course most of them live in San Fransisco, LA, and Sacramento.

I think it's time for another "State of Jefferson" push.

actually the California voters pay Fish and Game a huge amount of money to "manage" the mountain lions - which means that government hunters kill them - ya see that way theres no hunting season on them and they are "protected" and "managed".

Here in bend if a lion kills your animal or hangs out around your house, you can get a free predator tag and shoot it on your own property. However if I am walking on my own property and a cougar approaches me, I can shoot it as well as to defending my pet, family or livestock from attack.
Jim

Here in Ca. if a cougar is actually threatening a human or your animals, you can shoot it. A good friend of mune is a warden and I have seen the photos of a dead cougar a guy shot up in central Ca that wason his deck trying to get to his dog. The local sheriffs here killed one earlier this year that was hanging around an area where cats and dogs were starting to go missing.

Now darn.. this weekend being my 22nd wedding anniversary I saw the topic of this post and was completely in the wrong context.

" living with cougars..."