EDITOR'S NOTE: Previous news releases had listed the mountain lion that attacked Kauffman as being in the 80100 pound range. The recentlyreleased necropsy on the cub determined it to be 2530 pounds.
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Travis Kauffman was on a run near Fort Collins, Colorado when he was attacked by a mountain lion. He survived a 10minute struggle with the big cat.
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I knew with two pretty good blows to the back of the head that it didn’t release that I was probably going to have to do something a little more drastic.

About a quarter mile into that run, hearing some pine needles rustle, a stick break and I turned around and just was pretty bummed out to see a mountain lion chasing after me.

The mountain lion weighed around 100 pounds.

It just kind of kept running and lunged at me, it was going toward my face so I threw up my hands to sort of block my face, at which point it grabbed onto my hand and wrist. From there, it started to claw at my face and neck and that’s when kind of my fear response turned into a fight response.

There was a point where I was concerned I wasn’t going to make it out of it.

I think it might have been a mix of me tussling with the cat and it still clawing at me and thinking about another cat potentially coming along.

It got a claw in my lip. I tried to throw it off me at that point and we took a little tumble down the south side of the trail. Down there, just kind of had a little wrestling match, at which point I was able to get on top of it, pin its back legs so I didn’t get any soft tissue scratched out in my nether regions.

I was grabbing around for sticks, I only had my left hand free. My right hand was still locked in its jaws. Tried to get at its neck to see if I could stab it in the neck to get it to release. That wasn’t working, the sticks were breaking, so then I picked up a rock that I’d seen kind of near us. It was pretty heavy and it was kind of hard to wield and I tried to give it a few bashes in the back of the head but unfortunately I had a tough time swinging it with my arm still locked into the cat’s jaws.

I stepped on its neck with my right foot and just slowly, after a few minutes, I thought I’d be getting close and then it’d start thrashing again, I have a few more scratches as a result of from those thrashes at that point. I’d say another couple minutes later it stopped moving. Jaws opened and I was able to kind of scramble back up the hill and get the heck out of dodge.

In my mind, I’ve replayed it, it seems like a long time but I’m thinking 10 minutes at most.

Officials applaud Kauffman’s reaction to the attack.

Ty Petersburg – Colorado Parks & Wildlife
He did all the right things. He put his hands up, he yelled at it, and it still came after him.