Skip to content

Eye to eye with a cougar: who blinks first?

\You don’t know whether to admire the cougar’s graceful stealth or be terrified of it. Adam Bartsch, who videoed the cougar in a forest north of Campbell River, sometimes felt that the “monster, monster tom” was sizing him up for dinner.
Cougar
A cougar in a forest north of Campbell River stares intently at Adam Bartsch.

\You don’t know whether to admire the cougar’s graceful stealth or be terrified of it.

Adam Bartsch, who videoed the cougar in a forest north of Campbell River, sometimes felt that the “monster, monster tom” was sizing him up for dinner. After an hour of being stalked by the large feline, Bartsch eventually decided that fear was the most prudent response.

He put down his camera and shouted, “Go on, get out of here! Psht!”

The cougar complies, its curiosity also apparently satiated.

Bartsch, a hunter and avid outdoorsman, was on the forested walking trail when he noticed the cougar watching him from a distance of about 20 metres.

“He is huge…. How cool is that,” you hear Bartsch say on the video that he intersperses with dramatic music.

" id="youtube_" src="https://www.timescolonist.com/gmg/img/icons/clearpixel.gif" style="display: block; border: 1px solid rgb(153, 153, 153); width: 50px; height: 50px;" title="YouTube Video ID: " />

While Bartsch never seems to be deeply scared by the experience, he provides a string of impressions of the encounter which he edited into a five-minute video.

“He might think I’m dinner…. I don’t trust him….This is one dangerous little kitty cat…. He just keeps slinking down like he wants to come and attack…. Just eyeing me up like a black-tailed deer.”

The video was posted on the She Hunts Productions YouTube channel which is dedicated to “hunting tips, conservation, stewardship, archery, taxidermy, firearms safety, hunting videos, trail cameras footage, hunting training.”

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks