Living in the middle of the food chain

[ergophobe]

Someone (Trav?) asked what it was like running in the woods knowing you are not the apex predator.

A couple months ago, a friend and I were running and saw signs of a deer kill and it turned out we were thirty feet from the mountain lion on the kill and spooked him.

A couple days ago this guy sauntered through our yard. We first saw him when he was only 20 feet away (but with a nice strong window between us) and then he bedded down at the house next door.

[ergophobe]

A bear came through the yard a few hours earlier. The day before, a friend 150m away had a big rattler outside his shop door.

Big boom in fox and coyote howls. Martens captured on another neighbors cam.

As reported on The Core, the belief is that the mild 23/24 winter led to a boom in rodents and deer which two years on has led to a boom in things that eat them.

[littleman]

That's a beautiful mountain lion.  Good thing ML attacks on humans are uncommon.  Honestly, I think you are lucky to be able to see one so clearly like that.  I saw one years back on the campus of UCSC.  I was hanging out with some friends on the grass in the evening and one just crossed right in front of us.  The closest distance was maybe 35-40 feet away.  There are deer all over that campus, so it would make sense that they would be hanging out there too. 

[ergophobe]

I have probably seen tracks at least a few times a year over these last 23 years. So conservatively 60-75 times.

This is the first good view I ever got.

It makes me nervous, but I have always wanted a close encounter with solid glass between me and the cat and I finally got it. A nice 3-4 minute observation. Maybe longer. I'm not sure how long it sat like that.

And yes, Dep of Fish and Wildlife says the main thing is to avoid looking or acting like a deer. There have been 6 confirmed human fatalities from cats in the last 120 years in California.

But encounters are rising. 100-120 years ago they had been hunted to near extinction and you could still collect a bounty for killing one.

[rcjordan]

Man stalked by a mountain lion saved by a Glock 27 : r/interesting

https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1uxktug/man_stalked_by_a_mountain_lion_saved_by_a_glock_27/

[ergophobe]

This is cool recent research. They took an area in SoCal with 36 radio-collared mountain lions and overlayed their activity with Strava data from hikers, runners and bikers and conflicts data from hundreds of encounters.

Basically they find that mountain lions in high-use areas learn to avoid people while staying relatively close.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982226006421