Cougar encounter while hiking on Fish Creek trail, Lochsa.

Hiked 10 miles round trip up Fish Creek this morning with my friend Dustin looking for Bears and getting some exercise. On the way out Dustin was a couple hundred yards ahead of me, and as I rounded a corner I saw what at first I thought was some ones dog, about 15 yards away, but it lifted its head and I could see it was a lion. The lion was walking away from me, and could not hear me over the sound of the creek. It rounded a corner, so I unsnapped my holster just in case, and ran up around the corner to get some more photos. When I rounded the corner, it was still in the trail walking in Dustin's direction, like it was stalking him. I shouted "hey" to get it to look at me for a photo, and took a couple pics as it stared back. The lion then started to walk towards me. I then decided to draw my pistol and at the same time the cougar turned and ran up the bank, so I shot a couple times into the dirt just to put some fear of humans into it, since it didn't seem to be very afraid, and may have even been stalking my buddy. It was a medium sized cat, a little bigger than my Lab. Not too often you get to be that close to a cougar in the wild.

Willow RidgeObia Cabin (shack) Bridge over Fish creek past Obia's Cabin.