A Reddit user said the encounter happened years ago when he and a buddy were hiking in a wilderness area in California. According to his comment in the thread, they had hiked about four miles into the mountains, which he said translated to roughly two or three hours back to the parking lot because neither of them were exactly powerhouse hikers.
He made a point of saying they were deep enough in that there was no cell service and no easy way to get quick help if something went bad. By the time night settled in, they were on their own out there.
Then the mountain lion showed up.
He wrote that the cat did not come charging out of the dark in one wild burst. It came in the way cats do, one step at a time, slow and deliberate, edging closer to the tent. From the way he described it, that was part of what made the whole thing so unnerving. It was not panicked or random. It was interested, focused, and taking its time.
He and his friend did what people are always told to do in that kind of situation. They made noise. They tried to look big. They threw things. They did all the standard stuff meant to convince a predator that this was not worth the trouble. According to him, none of it worked. The lion kept coming.
At that point, he said he decided he was not willing to get mauled just because he was trying too hard not to escalate. At the same time, he did not want his first move to be putting a bullet directly into the animal if there was still another way to break the encounter. So he made a split decision. He fired a round into the dirt, hoping the noise and impact would finally change the cat’s mind. According to his comment, it did. The lion backed off, and they did not see it again that night.
He did not tell the story like a guy bragging about shooting at wildlife for the fun of it. He told it like someone who had tried every softer option he could think of while a mountain lion kept closing the distance anyway.
The way he laid it out, the gunshot into the dirt was the last thing he tried before the whole encounter could slide from terrifying to catastrophic. They were miles from the trailhead, out of cell range, late at night, and staring at a predator that was not impressed by shouting or thrown objects. That was the whole situation in a nutshell.
What do you think — if a mountain lion kept stalking closer to your tent after all the usual deterrents failed, would you have done the same thing and fired into the dirt first, or skipped straight to treating it like a lethal threat?
Original Reddit post: Has anyone used their weapon in self defense… on an animal?
