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We received this email today from a good friend of ours who works at Slingsby-Wright Eye Clinic in Rapid City. Thought you might find it of some interest.

Subject: Mountain Lion Attack
Good Morning,
FYI! I had received a phone call from my co-worker/friend, Ryan last evening around 8pm. Ryan is one of our ophthalmology techs at work. He explained to me that he had gone ice fishing out at Sheridan Lake for the day by himself. Caught five perch and had an encounter with a mountain lion! Yeah... a mountain lion! Turns out he had to let go of some soda pop, so he decided to get off the lake to step into the edge of the forest to proceed. The soda had just departed and the zipper just returned to 12 o'clock and upon turning back to his path a mountain lion pounced into his chest. Ryan stated it went straight for his face and he tried to block the advance with his right forearm. The ensuing struggle went on for a couple of minutes when the cat reluctantly removed itself from Ryan's upper torso and face and picked up what Ryan thinks was dead red fox and ran off into the forest. Attached are a couple of pictures of Ryan and his battle wounds after he had returned home from the ER. The bite you see on his cheek went all the way through!
Thank God, he wasn't hurt any worse.

Wow..I'd say he was a Lucky Dude to come out of that encounter in that shape, I bet they could really chew you up good if they wanted to.
What an experience!
Franc

Very lucky guy! If he was ice fishing, he probably had on some good heavy clothes, which probably helped protect him some from claws.

A co-worker from the project I'm on, from Grand Rapids, Minn and I are in Denver this week for work. He was telling me about the attack yesterday. Evidently he heard or read about it on the news.

I saw a recent news item in American Hunter describing an 80+ year old Rapid City woman's encounter with a mountain lion in her back yard. Her dog and the cat were in a noisy standoff, and she came out with a rifle and killed it.

The growing population of mountain lions in the Black Hills and increasing encounters like these lead to resumption of very limited mountain lion hunting there in the past year or so. I think the kill was capped at 5 or 6 cats.

My wife and I have a few acres of land in the southern hills west of Hot Springs that will probably be our retirement home. Our 35 lb. springers would make a nice lunch for a hungry cat, so I'm interested in mountain lion management there. Several years ago in March we found prominent cat spoor in the snow across our prospective homesite. We're encroaching, but they're also expanding their range.

A very lucky man that he came away with fairly minor injuries. I bet next time he needs to pee he will find the middle of the lake to be just fine.

Just shows that dispite our high opinion of our species, there are times when we are decidedly NOT at the top of the food chain!

My friend Michael has just got back from a mountain lion hunt - he tracked it for hours in three feet of snow and shot it with a bow and arrow!

Man, better hope the greenies don't see this post.

Why would stick-em caps object to this post? I don't get it.

Far as I'm concerned there is no closed season on lions. They're really becoming a serious problem in northern New Mexico.