There are two types of cougar stalkings.

The first occurs at La Parada on a Sunday, and usually involves a few glasses of chardonnay and a shooter or two.

The second, and far less common, cougar stalking occurs in the great outdoors, with this pretty incredible footage coming out of Slate Canyon, near Provo, in the US state of Utah.

Filmed by Kyle Burgess, who then uploaded it to his Instagram account, the video shows the hiker being followed by a cougar (or mountain lion) for a full six minutes.

Burgess said he first saw four small animals, which he thought were bobcats, and began filming.

It wasn’t long before a cougar appeared, and he realised it was a mother looking to protect its young cubs.

Here’s the footage he captured:

In an interview with Deseret News, he spoke about what was running through his mind:

The 26-year-old from Orem did everything he could think of to ward the mother cougar off. He knew not to turn his back to her. He knew to back away — but not too fast. He cursed, yelled, growled and grunted while she continued to follow him, flashing her teeth at him, her ears pinned, her tail swishing…

Burgess said every time he took his eyes off her or tried to stoop down for a rock to throw at her, the mountain lion lunged at him, hissing. With each pounce, her front paws and claws flared. Her powerful hind legs kicked up dust and gravel.

Around the 5:30 mark, Burgess grabbed a rock and threw it, which he says caused the cougar to finally run away.

He has come in for some criticism regarding how he handled the encounter, but officials with Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources said he handled the situation very well:

“You did great,” Scott Root, DWR’s conservation outreach manager for central Utah, told Burgess on Monday, where they met at the Slate Canyon trailhead. “You did awesome.”

…Root said Burgess did almost everything right. “He backed away. He didn’t go toward the mountain lion or her kittens. He made a lot of noise. … He stayed large, he stayed loud and he backed away from the area for quite a while. I think he did everything really well.”

You can read the rest of that story here.

In the end, both the cougar and Burgess emerged unscathed, and the hiker now has a wild story to tell for the rest of his life.

[source:deseretnews]