Video: See young mountain lion hunt a deer and its fawn near Atascadero High School
Mark Ouano was in his backyard Monday evening near Atascadero High School when he heard a strange sound coming from outside his fence.
“I heard a cry, just a weird cry,” Ouano said. “So, I investigated.”
After exiting the fence, he saw what looked to be a juvenile mountain lion hunting a fawn about 60 feet from where he was standing in what he said looked like a scene out of a National Geographic documentary. He pulled out his phone and started recording the incident, which happened around 7:30 p.m. on Monday.
While mountain lions are known predators, what was most surprising to Ouano was seeing the adult doe attack the juvenile mountain lion to defend her fawn.
“I really got surprised,” Ouano said. “(The doe) decided to attack the the lion and then the lion attacked the mama deer and then that’s when it happened.”
In the video, the doe kicks the juvenile mountain lion, and the mountain lion lays on the ground for some time. After kicking the mountain lion, the doe exits the video frame.
He thought it was likely maternal instinct kicking in to protect her baby.
“I saw that the lion got hurt from the tree trunk when he when he landed,” Ouano said.
The video ends with the mountain lion on the ground and the fawn in the woods to the left.
After posting the video to the Everything Atascadero Facebook page, Ouano got a lot of questions about what happened next.
“I have a lot of comments ‘so what happened to the fawn’ and ‘what happened to the fawn?’” Ouano said. “It’s kind of sad.”
After the video ended, Ouano saw the fawn start to try to sneak past the mountain lion. But the mountain lion recuperated from his collision with the doe and tree trunk and attacked the fawn again.
Ouano was heading back to his home when he heard the fawn cry again. He doesn’t know whether it survived.
The encounter happened near the back of Atascadero High School. Ouano said he shared to video to raise awareness, because so many kids walk along the creek near where the mountain lion was spotted.
“It was kind of scary as well, because, you know, the lion went to look back at me,” he said. “I think he was pretty focused on the fawn.”
This is the latest case of a mountain lion being spotted in residential areas in San Luis Obispo County.
A video captured around 1 a.m. Monday in Cambria showed a mountain lion strolling through a backyard on the North Coast.
This story was originally published August 2, 2023 at 10:56 AM.
