Within the past year, a father saved his young son from a cougar by stabbing it with a Spyderco pocketknife with about a three-inch blade. This was at a motel within a national park in west TX. The blade wasn't long enough to inflict a mortal wound, but his ferocity in defense of his son drove the animal away.
The really bad part was that the motel didn't want to warn others, lest it affect their business! I don'r recall if park rangers found and killed the cat.
Some years ago, I interviewed a man on Vancouver Island who was attacked by a female cougar as he walked near his home. He somehow kept her teeth away from his throat while drawing and opening his Schrade equivalent to a Buck Model 110 lockblade pocketknife. He successfully stabbed the cat, but she'd ripped him up badly. His scalp was hanging off and I think he lost an eye. He staggered into a logging camp, where someone thought he'd been in a fight. They called the RCMP and searchers found the dead cougar and confirmed his story.
Taken to hospital in Victoria, his scalp was reattached and he began a long and painful recovery. His wife at first wouldn't call him to the phone as they'd been plagued by mainstram media. I convinced her that I was writing for a knife magazine, meant her husband no disrespect, and that I in fact considered him a hero. Mr. Anderson finally took my call and very graciously answered my questions for about a half hour. The story appeared in, "Knife World." I hope some of you read it. He said that getting the knife open with two hands while keeping her teeth off of his throat was the single hardest part of his ordeal.
Later, I saw him and two other survivors of cougar attacks on a Discovery TV program. Their accounts were chilling.
Schrade was then still in business and I called their PR lady. She promised to offer this man a replacement for his knife, which was seized in a bloody state and held for evidence. He eventually got it back, but it was a mess. I believe that some custom knifemakers also offered him free knives.
I've mentioned here before that my son had to stab a big coydog that attacked him at night in his back yard in central Texas. He drew his Benchmade folder with a tanto blade and ripped the animal from stomach through the chest and it ran off howling, probably to die unfound. He mentioned the difficulty of keeping its teeth from his throat as he opened the knife one-handed. His wife was aghast when she saw his bloody (and expensive!) leather coat. Thankfully, most of the blood was the animal's. He now carries a gun in the yard at night.
I study animal attacks and have some books about them, and a book telling those in cougar country how to co-exist with the animals. I am well aware that attacks have been rising, especially since the 1970's. But there were always more than the cougar huggers wanted you to know about. The cougar or puma is a large wild cat, and it acts like one. This is especially true where laws preclude thinning them out so that there's enough range for them. As-is, in states like CA, where they can't be hunted except through a special license for specific stock killers, they overpopulate and bigger ones drive younger, smaller ones down into populated areas, where they have to take what food they find. If they can't kill a deer, they'll take your pet or your child...or you.
BTW, I once wrote an article on guns for protection in cougar country. A few people asked me how I Photoshopped the cover photo to have the cougar behind a line of suitable ctgs. The answer is that the cat is actually a ceramic one, very lifelike. It was just placed behind the ammo, not Photoshopped into it from a pic of a live cougar. And I have a ceramic falcon on my desk that is so lifelike that guests have asked me what I feed it! They keep looking at it, expecting it to move or fly at them. This amuses me. But real cougars are no joke.
