Nature Is Not Nice: Travis Kauffman explains how he killed a mountain lion with his bare hands

From the New York Post:

Travis Kauffman, 31, told a local radio station Thursday that he first noticed the beast during his run down a trail on Feb. 4 when he heard pine needles ruffle behind him. 

“I stopped and turned,” Kauffman told KUNC radio. “In the back of my mind I always wonder if it’s something dangerous like a bear or a bobcat or a mountain lion, and in this case it was in fact a mountain lion.” 

He said he tried to scare off the animal by putting up his arms and screaming at it, but the mountain lion charged at him and pounced. The big cat, which weighed about 80 pounds, sunk a tooth into his wrist and another into his thumb. It then scratched his back with its front claws and gouged his thighs with his hind legs. 

As he struggled with the animal, they both tumbled off the trail. “But during that fall, the cat ended up on its back and it still had my wrist this whole time in its mouth,” Kauffman told the radio station. 

He was able to pin the animal’s hind legs down with his body, then he picked up a rock and started hitting the cat in the head. Eventually, Kauffman decided his best plan of attack was to strangle the cat. ] 

“I got my right foot onto its neck,” he said. “And then I was able to get some weight onto its windpipe and that’s what eventually suffocated it.”