Cougar surprises man in Clarkston barn

Matt Chinchinian walked into a Clarkston barn early Thursday looking for Gus, his father’s Norwich terrier, when he found himself in close proximity with something he didn’t expect.

“Within 2 feet of me, face to face, was a full-grown cougar looking at me,” he said. “I calmly just backed out and kept eye contact with it.”

Once at a safe distance from the predator, he quick-footed it to his father’s house, grabbed a shotgun and returned to the barn. Chinchinian shouldered the gun, put a bead on the cat and waited.

“I just held that gun. I wasn’t going to let it get out of that barn,” he said. “I had to sit there for half an hour. I didn’t want to shoot it or kill it until the fish and game guy got there.”

Gus, the beloved dog owned by his parents, didn’t come home the previous evening. Chinchinian stopped by their home above Chief Timothy Island about 6 a.m. on his way to Brundage Mountain near McCall, Idaho, for a few days of skiing. His dad asked him to look for Gus before he left.

Chinchinian hadn’t heard that some residents in the area and on the edge of the Clarkston Heights had been seeing a cougar for the past few days. So encountering the predator was the last thing on his mind.

“That was a pretty scary experience,” he said. “I didn’t really see it (at first.) It kind of blended in. All I saw was those yellow eyes. The thing never snarled at me. It just looked at me and stayed calm.”

Eventually, Sgt. Paul Mosman with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife arrived and determined the best course of action was to dispatch the cougar. With Chinchinian holding his shotgun on the cat, Mosman shot it with his rifle.

Sadly, the cougar wasn’t the only casualty. Chinchinian said they later found Gus dead.

“His whole underbelly was ripped,” he said. “That little dog thought he was tougher than (expletive). That dog tried to take that cougar on, but it didn’t last very long.”

Paul Wik, district biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Department at Clarkston, said the cougar was a young male, likely between 16 and 18 months old. Young cougars, particularly males, sometimes get themselves in trouble when they leave their mothers and seek new territory too close to human civilization.

“It is common for them to try to find a vacant territory to establish their own territory, and that can be challenging,” he said.

Wildlife officials often elect to euthanize cougars when they are found close to towns and people. Wik said relocating cougars to remote locations is rarely successful.

“You are placing a cat inside an occupied territory, and if you place a cat inside an occupied territory, the male occupying that territory may kill that animal or the animal is going to quickly leave and try to find a vacant territory,” he said.

The cougar was taken to Washington State University to be used as a teaching aid in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Wik said.