From the Rapid City Journal of January 8, 2008
80-year-old woman shoots mountain lion in her yard
Eighty-year-old Martha Smith admits she was a little nervous when she walked out of her house to shoot a mountain lion snarling at her in her ranch house yard.
It was about 4:30 p.m. last Thursday and the light was already fading when she heard her dog barking outside her house south of Fairburn. Smith looked outside and saw a mountain lion in her garden.
Worried about the dog’s safety, she grabbed her .22 rifle, walked outside and took a shot at the lion but missed.
She went back inside and called 911 but the dispatcher had trouble finding someone from Game, Fish & Parks.
So Smith, who learned to shoot as a girl on the family ranch, grabbed the rifle again, went back outside and walked to within about 20 feet of the mountain lion. She said she was a little nervous. “I didn’t know whether I had a small one or a big one,” Smith said. All I could see was three feet of tail and it was snarling and spitting at me.”
Smith aimed for the cat’s chest where she figured its heart would be and fired. The cat jumped up, ran a short distance and dropped dead.
A GF&P staffer showed up a few hours later and measured the cat, a 90-pound male.
Smith said she was worried whether the young lion’s mother was around.
But the young cat had been fitted with a collar, so GF&P was able to track its mother, which had been shot by a hunter.
“Thank God he was little because I don’t think my .22 would have killed the big one, Smith said.
She says she always keeps her .22 rifle loaded. “What good’s a gun if it’s not loaded?”
Further links:
80-year-old Black Hills woman shoots mountain lion
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