Solo hiker authorities believe he was Killed by a mountain lion On a backcountry Colorado road on New Year’s Day, he wasn’t the first person to encounter one of the area’s predators in recent weeks.
Gary Messina said he was jogging the same trail on a dark November morning when his headlamp highlighted two eyes in the nearby brush. Messina used his phone to take a quick photo before a mountain lion lunged at him.
Messina said he threw the phone at the animal, and it kicked the dirt and screamed as the lion kept trying to circle behind it. He added that after a few horrific minutes, he broke a bat-sized stick from a tree trunk, hit the lion on the head with it, and then fled.
The woman whose body was found Thursday on the same trail as Crocier Mountain had “injuries consistent with a mountain lion attack,” said Kara Van Hoose of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. An autopsy is scheduled for next week, said Rafael Moreno with the Larimer County Coroner’s Office.
Wildlife officials late Thursday tracked down two mountain lions in the area and killed them — one at the scene and one nearby. The autopsy will help determine whether one or both of these animals attacked the woman and whether they were infected with neurological diseases such as rabies or bird flu.
The search for a third mountain lion reported in the area was continuing Friday, Van Hoose said. Nearby lanes remained closed while the search continued. Van Hoose said circumstances will determine whether this lion will be killed as well.
Based on the aggressiveness of the animal that attacked him on November 11, Messina suspects it may be the same one that killed the woman on New Year’s Day.
“I had to fight him because he was basically trying to destroy me,” Messina told the Associated Press. “I was afraid for my life and I couldn’t escape. I tried to turn back and he would try to lunge at me.”
The 32-year-old from nearby Glen Haven, Colorado, reported the encounter days later to wildlife officials, who posted signs warning people about the animal along trails in the Crosier Mountain area northeast of Estes Park, Van Hoose said. She added that the signs were later removed.
Mountain lion sightings in that area east of Rocky Mountain National Park are common, Van Hoose said, because it provides good habitat for the animals: It’s a remote area with dense forests, rocky outcroppings and lots of elevation changes.
However, attacks on humans by animals are rare, and the last suspected fatal encounter in Colorado was in 1999, when a 3-year-old boy disappeared in the wild and his tattered clothes were found more than three years later. In 1997, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a lion and dragged away while hiking with his family in Rocky Mountain National Park.
On Thursday, two hikers saw the victim’s body on the trail around noon from about 100 yards away, Van Hoose said. There was a mountain lion nearby, so they threw stones to scare it away. One of the hikers, a doctor, attended to the victim but found no pulse, Van Hoose said.
The victim will be publicly identified after an autopsy by the coroner, who is also expected to provide a cause of death.
Mountain lions — also known as cougars, pumas, or catamounts — can weigh 130 pounds (60 kilograms) and grow to be more than 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. They eat primarily deer.
Colorado has an estimated 3,800 to 4,400 of these animals, which are classified as the state’s big game species and can be hunted.
Thursday’s kill would be the fourth fatal mountain lion attack in North America in the past decade, and the 30th since 1868, according to information from the California-based Mountain Lion Foundation. Not all of these deaths have been confirmed as mountain lion attacks.
Most attacks occur during the day and when humans are active in lion territories, indicating that the animals are not searching for victims, according to the advocacy group. About 15% of attacks are fatal.
“As more people live, work and recreate in areas that overlap with wildlife habitat, interactions could increase, not because mountain lions are becoming more aggressive, but because the overlap is increasing,” said Byron Wickworth, the foundation’s chief conservation officer.
To reduce the risk of traveling in groups, keep children close and avoid dawn and dusk when lions are most active, Wickworth said. During the confrontation, maintain eye contact with the lion, make yourself appear larger and move away slowly; He said: Don’t run away.
last year In Northern CaliforniaTwo brothers were chased and attacked by a lion that they tried to fight. One of the brothers was killed.