Mountain lions are surprisingly elusive, bloodthirsty, and cowardly around hunters.

Evidence

On Saturday the men shot a deer, and on going for it to-day they found nothing but the hind legs, and following a track which they expected would lead them to a beast’s hole, they came quite carelessly upon a large mountain lion, which, however, took itself out of their reach before they were sufficiently recovered from their surprise to fire at it. These lions, which are really a species of puma, are bloodthirsty as well as cowardly. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 236

Categorization

• SHARE: A niche, specific wildlife anecdote about a puma absconding while two armed hunters stood frozen — send to the friend who reads nature-writing and predator tales.
• XREF: Echoes the reader’s interest in encounters with pumas and grizzly bears; also resonates with predatory-animal lore in frontier literature.