I do realize running is ALMOST the worst thing you can do. the only thing worse is just letting the cat get on top of you. Here's what happened.
It has been absolutely pouring rain in MT for the past 4 days. Yesterday at about 5:30 the weather finally broke. I live on a ranch and decided to go look for elk on some public that borders the ranch. The spot where this all happened is on a new chunk of property, and there really aren't many elk there, but the public it borders and a neighbors place have a pile of elk there! Only reason I'm saying this is to explain why I had a 4 wheeler there. So…. I park the 4 wheeler on a hill and start walking. I go about 400 yards down the hill and there is a creek, I cross the creek and climb up the bank- the creek was in a small ravine-- and then glass. I see elk and take a few steps forward and then a stinkin lion sits up in the grass right on the little two track and looks at me, 30 yards in front of me. I stop and start talking to it, and it gets up and walks-not runs, walks- to the left about 40 yards off the two track and stops under a tree, lays down and watches me pass. I get up to where it was and see it was eating on a yearling elk.
I pass, leave everything alone, do my own thing and head back before it gets too dark, but look for some kind of walking stick because there aren't hardly any branches anywhere on the ground before I make my way back. on my way back i make a 100 yard half circle around where the dead elk was to leave the cat alone. I get up to the ravine where the creek is and look back towards the dead elk, and the cat is on it. So cool, I passed it. I take a couple steps toward the edge of the ravine and all of a sudden 2 more lions take up the other side of the ravine on a trot about 20 yards in front of me. One stops at the edge of a patch of young dog-hair thick pines, turns around towards me and lays down watching me, about 40 yards away. The other one went up the two track I was headed for and went off of it to the left, uphill of the road. last i saw him he was 100+ yards and still leaving, but slowly. So at this point i have to head downstream, but stay on my side of the ravine. I go straight away from the two cats, to my right about 70 yards, just past the one eating on the dead elk still, who is behind me now and doesn't know I'm even there. I cross the creek where I thought the trail i saw was an elk trail… turns out it was just a heavily used wetland spot where there was nothing but cats crossing. Cat tracks freakin everywhere. I head up the final big hill where the 4 wheeler is parked, find the only other stick on the ground, and I get about 100 yards up thru the open trees and up from the creek and make a quarter circle hitting the two track. I stopped to look around for a bit and watch and listen and everything is fine. So I start walking on the two track and after somewhere around 30 seconds pass I just stopped, don't know why or what made me at that exact second stop and turn around, but I just did. when I looked over my shoulder I saw a freaking lion flying thru the air, not leaping at me, but all 4 feet off the ground on a run. I threw the sticks up in the air and waved them around and yelled at it. When it hit the ground it just stopped dead in its tracks and wasn't more than 10 steps away. I backed up slowly, really slowly, still talking to the cat. I got to around 30 yards away from the cat with it just laying there looking at me when another fricking cat came down off the hill and stood by the one that I just saw running at me. I was like "no F***ing way this is happening right now" I took literally 2 steps backwards, still talking and my arms in the air with the sticks, when they both started trotting at me. I freaked out and yelled at them and slapped the sticks together, and the one freakin stick in my right hand freaking broke. When it broke they stopped, I backed up again and they started walking my way, so I thru the broken stick at them. It bounced and hit the second cat that came down, which was the biggest of all 4, in the right leg. That stopped them, and that cat just kind of sat down like a dog, looked at me for a second and then got up and walked back up the hill it came from. So I backed away again, and actually took 2 pictures with my phone of the first cat that was still on the road….. I figured ok good, they finally had their fun and are gonna leave, might as well try and get a pic before they both disappear. I was wrong, that cat put its head down and tail up and started trotting at me. I stumbled over a rock backing up, about messed my drawers when that happened, then picked up the rock and threw it at the cat. It also bounced in front of it, then rolled to the cats right side and rolled behind it. That damn lion turned around, pounced and went rolling with that damn rock, and when it did that I started walking quickly up the road looking behind me the whole time. I got to the 2nd to last corner before my 4 wheeler (a switchback) and was somewhere around 75 yards away from the cat, about 110 from the 4 wheeler, when the cat finally looked back my direction. It saw me and took off up the road at me at a trot, I went around the corner looked between some trees and it was now loping below me on the road. I just said "F*** it" and dropped my pack and took off at a dead sprint the last about 100 yards. (I said about 70 last night but went up there today to get my pack and it was almost 110 yards from that corner where I dropped my pack and the 4 wheeler.) I probably wouldn't have ran but right at the corner the short pines turned into dog hair again and you couldn't see thru them at all. when I hit the 4 wheeler my ass wasn't even touching the seat when i had the key turned, and as soon as it landed the 4 wheeler was started, and I looked behind me and to my left where I came around the last corner which was 20 yards away and that damn lion came sliding around the corner on a run, stopped, sat down, watched me turn the 4 wheeler and when i was pointed at straight at it about to give the ol Honda the onion and run the mother trucker over it slowly walked into the thick dog hair hardly concerned.
Some people who heard the story from a friend of mine say "you dumbass, running away from a predator, thats the worst thing you could do". Well I didn't run right away, this whole debacle took probably somewhere between 2 and a half and 3 minutes. all those cats saw me heard me and smelled me, they knew exactly what i was. I've held my bow back on a few bulls for 30 seconds and its felt like forever, but this was worse. I had the only 2 sticks anywhere on the ground in my hands, and the one broke. The second one wasn't much better, so I wasn't going to let the cat get any closer than it was when I first got it stopped. I threw the only rock I could find and it distracted it enough to get a little distance between us. It was supposed to take me an hour to get in and out, and the weather broke so fast I just threw on some merino base layers and my rain gear over the top of that and headed out, really spur of the moment…. never even grabbed a knife or my pistol, just my pack which only had fire starter, a headlamp, another jacket and a digital camera. I was SOL on anything except for my feet, so yeah, I booked it like a little sissy, as fast as this white kid could move. Stupid yeah, but not as stupid as standing there with my thumb up my butt waiting for a lion to chomp on me. I've been up there 20+ times this summer and nothing before, but I guarantee I'm packing my pistol when i'm on foot and my lever gun when I"m riding horse from now on.