Cougar?

My youngest daughter, youngest brother, and I went hiking yesterday. We started at Hidden Valley Park and walked along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail to the Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge. I posted about this adventure on Instagram. Instagram crops pictures and limits the pictures-per-post to ten, so here are more.

After the bridge, we walked down Ralph's Trail, along the Aqueduct Trail, and back to the park using the Hidden Valley Single Track. 

Along these paths, there are "cougar country" warning signs everywhere there is a trail sign. Cougars have been seen in this area, though I'm not sure how recently.

We'd just passed one of the signs, and were walking through dense forest, when something big moved in the brush above us. 

Then we heard a few very large "waaaak" vocalizations. I thought the sounds might be a coming from a very large bird, like maybe a magpie, but they seemed deeper and bigger than a bird could make. Could it be a cougar? It wasn't like a growl or a hiss, but I really had no idea. 

My brother was convinced it was a cougar. 

"Should we run or hold still?" he asked. He sounded a little worried, but not panicky.

"I think it's a bird," I said. "Let's just keep walking and making a lot of noise."

Not long after, a deer darted through the bushes. We all felt a little relief, but was it running down the mountain toward us and away from something?

"Could that sound have come from the deer?" I asked. "If a cougar is after anything, it would probably be a deer."

Then mostly to reassure myself I said, "Besides, together, we're bigger than a cougar. Like a spider, it would probably be more scared of us than we'd be of it. Let's just keep making noise and focus on the cute little birds." 

So we did that.

Even with all the signs, I have to admit that until that moment, it didn't occur to me there could really be a cougar nearby. For the rest of our hike, I kept looking for possible escape routes to nearby homes through the trees below. Fortunately, it wasn't long before we came across other hikers and then reached the park. We were fine.

Today, I searched for deer sounds on the internet. Now I'm sure what we heard was a bellowing deer. 

I have also learned if a cougar is nearby, DO NOT RUN! Otherwise, you're inviting it to chase. Instead, you can back away slowly, look as big as possible, yell, and otherwise seem not worth the effort of an attack.

There's a cougar encounter in the book I wrote. This experience makes me want to go back and see if I wrote about that situation in a believable way.