A hiker in Colorado walking in Puma country stupidly put his Labradoodle pet in danger.....................No reason to take a small dog with you when hiking where wolves, bears and pumas are present...............You are unwittingly baiting these Carnivores and then when they do attack and kill your pet, you and the media make the bear, wolf and puma out to be a monster....................Wise up urban hikers and leave your pets at home when going into the outdoors

Colo. hiker encounters mountain lion, records instead of running as he stares death in face

nydailynews.com

Cary Leppert, of Denver, was hiking with a friend and his Labradoodle, Tieg, on Sunday along Three Mile Creek Trail when the pet narrowly avoided an attack by the cougar. Instead of retreating, the fearless — and perhaps foolhardy — Leppert climbed a tree and filmed the beast.

CARY LEPPERT

The mountain lion is hardly the first predator Leppert has encountered: The frequent hiker recalls brushes with other big cats and bears.

An avid hiker put his camera — rather than his legs — to work when he came face-to-face with a massive mountain lion.

Cary Leppert, 43, of Denver, was hiking with his friend and pet Labradoodle, Tieg, in the Mount Evans Wilderness of Colorado on Sunday when he heard a cougar's ferocious roar.

"Instantaneously, I knew what it was," Leppert told the Daily News on Thursday. "I saw a 150-pound-plus lion chasing down Tieg through the trees."

CARY LEPPERT

Tieg ran wildly with the mountain lion a foot or 2 behind.

Tieg, at 65 pounds, weaved in and out of trees at full speed with the lion a mere foot or 2 behind him, Leppert said.

"I just yelled 'Tieg' at the top of my lungs! Right when I yelled, (the lion) turned and stopped," Leppert said. Tieg finally ran up to his owner's feet.

The lion crouched down low to the ground about 20 feet away and locked eyes with Leppert. It hissed and growled but did not move.

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CARY LEPPERT

'I saw a 150-pound-plus lion chasing down Tieg through the trees,' Leppert said of the frightening encounter.

"At that moment, I gave my dog to my friend and thought 'I'm going to get some pictures,'" Leppert said.

He took out his iPhone at first and recorded some footage. Then he got his SLR camera and climbed a tree, where he shot pictures of the big cat for about 10 minutes.

"He wasn't happy," Leppert said, "and he was really big. ... Some of the pictures you can't quite tell, because you can't get a frame of reference."

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CARY LEPPERT

Cary Leppert said he knew immediately he had encountered a mountain lion when he heard its roar.

Leppert, who works in environmental consulting, said he has scaled about half of Colorado's fourteeners, a mountaineering term for a mountain that exceeds 14,000 feet. But he has not come this close to losing his dog before. He shared the encounter with a friend who in turn alerted local CBS affiliate KCNC, the first station to report the story.

Leppert thinks the lion was stalking Tieg as they hiked along Three Mile Creek Trail, was waiting for an opportunity to strike when the dog separated from the group, or just saw Tieg running and got nervous when he saw him join two adult humans.

The lion likely saw Leppert and his friend as an annoyance but was not in "attack mode," he said. Leppert, who goes backpacking or hiking nearly every weekend, has had several run-ins with predators, including other big cats and even grizzly bears, and says he can tell whether or not an animal is aggressive.

But later on the trail, Leppert started reviewing the day's events in his mind and realized just how close to danger he came.

"Tieg was a foot to 2 feet away from being dead," he said. "If the mountain lion caught him, I would have run over there, and there would have been a big incident at that point."