so difficult to kill by fair still-hunting as
the cougar--that beast of many names, known in the East as panther and
painter, in the West as mountain lion, in the Southwest as Mexican lion,
and in the southern continent as lion and puma.

Without hounds its pursuit is so uncertain that from the still-hunter's
standpoint it hardly deserves to rank as game at all--though, by the
way, it is itself a more skilful still-hunter than any human rival. It
prefers to move abroad by night or at dusk; and in the daytime usually
lies hid in some cave or tangled thicket where it is absolutely
impossible even to stumble on it by chance. It is a beast of stealth and
rapine; its great, velvet paws never make a sound, and it is always
on the watch whether for prey or for enemies, while it rarely leaves
shelter even when it thinks itself safe. Its soft, leisurely movements
and uniformity of color make it difficult to discover at best, and its
extreme watchfulness helps it; but it is the cougar's reluctance to
leave cover at any time, its habit of slinking off through the brush,
instead of running in the open, when startled, and the way in which it
lies motionless in its lair even when a man is within twenty yards, that
render it so difficult to still-hunt.

In fact it is next to impossible with any hope of success regularly to
hunt the cougar without dogs or bait. Most cougars that are killed by
still-hunters are shot by accident while the man is after other game.
This has been my own experience. Although not common, cougars are found
near my ranch, where the ground is peculiarly favorable for the solitary
rifleman; and for ten years I have, off and on, devoted a day or two to
their pursuit; but never successfully. One December a large cougar took
up his abode on a densely wooded bottom two miles above the ranch house.
I did not discover his existence until I went there one evening to kill
a deer, and found that he had driven all the deer off the bottom, having
killed several, as well as a young heifer. Snow was falling at the time,
but the storm was evidently almost over; the leaves were all off the
trees and bushes; and I felt that next day there would be such a chance
to follow the cougar as fate rarely offered. In the morning by dawn I
was at the bottom, and speedily found his trail. Following it I came
across his bed, among some cedars in a dark, steep gorge, where the
buttes bordered the bottom. He had evidently just left it, and I