A B.C. RCMP officer shot and killed a cougar displaying stalking behaviour in a residential Princeton neighbourhood Tuesday afternoon (June 2), after being followed himself by the animal.
Sergeant Rob Hughes said the detachment got a call around 10 a.m. about an adult cougar near some homes, with photos to confirm the sighting. It was in the same area of a previous sighting last week, when a man told police a cougar had stalked him from the Deerview Motel on his way home.
Conservation officers were called, but because they are located in Merritt, Hughes and another officer searched the area themselves for a few hours while they waited for the backup.
Around 2 p.m., the conservation officer had arrived and he and Hughes were discussing what to do when another call came in: The cougar had been spotted again.
"Just given the time of day, and what we know about cougars, an adult cougar shouldn't be seen in the daytime, you shouldn't be seeing them in a residential area," Hughes said.
At the scene, the conservation officer and another RCMP member went one direction while Hughes went the other to search for signs of the cat.
Hughes hiked about three quarters of a kilometre along a ridge with no signs of the animal, but on his way back, his spine began to tingle.
"I turned around and started hiking back towards the truck and got halfway back when something didn't feel right," Hughes said.
"I went back along my tracks, and the cougar was about 40 metres behind me, skulking along, following my footsteps."
Hughes expected the animal to run away the second it realized it had been spotted, but it stood and watched him. So he took the shot and killed it.
"It's a beautiful animal, it was a healthy male, about two years old we figure. A really hard thing to do," Hughes said. "But I couldn't live with myself if I had the opportunity to have the shot, and if it hurt or killed somebody in the upcoming days."
Hughes said this animal's behaviour was clearly dangerous. He grew up in the Tulameen-Princeton area and knows cougars should be reclusive.
"I've spent thousands of hours and hundreds of miles on my boots in the backcountry here, and I've never seen a cougar," Hughes said.
"So to see an adult male cougar in a residential area, twice in one day in the middle of the day when kids are out of school, the risk to human life was just not worth it."
