US jogger on life or death struggle with big cat

Colorado: When a young mountain lion clamped its jaws onto Travis Kauffman's wrist and clawed at his face, he screamed a "barbarian yell," jammed his foot onto the animal's neck and held it there until the cat quit thrashing and died.

After a couple of minutes, Kauffmann recalled Thursday, "it finally stopped moving and then the jaws opened and I was able to kind of scramble back up the hill and get the heck out of Dodge."

Through it all, the 31-year-old trail runner said, the cat remained eerily silent.

It was the first time Kauffman publicly recounted the Feb. 4 ordeal that left him with 28 stitches and a reputation for toughness and bravery that overshadows his wiry frame.

Kauffman said he was running a trail in the mountains west of Fort Collins, Colorado, when he heard pine needles rustle behind him. He turned to see the mountain lion about 10 feet (3 meters) away.

That cat lunged, and Kauffman raised his hands and screamed.

The animal locked its teeth onto his wrist and they tumbled off the side of the trail.

A wave of fear rolled over him, he said, and he worried that the animal's full-grown mother would join the attack to defend her offspring, but no other cat appeared.

Fear then gave way to the fighting instinct, he said.

Kauffman grabbed a rock with his free hand and beat the cat on the back of the head. He also tried stabbing it with twigs, but nothing worked.

"I knew with two pretty good blows to the back of the head (and) it didn't release, that I was probably going to have to do something a little more drastic," he said. "I was able to kind of shift my weight and get a foot on its neck" until it succumbed.

Bleeding from his face and wrist, he jogged back down the trail, where he met other runners who got him to a hospital.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers retrieved the dead cat. They said their investigation and a necropsy confirmed Kauffman's account.

(With inputs from APTN)