Skip to content

Cougar kills dog at Lakelse Lake

Man out walking his dog near the picnic site followed by cougar

A man escaped a cougar attack but lost his dog to the big cat out at Lakelse Lake last weekend.

He had been walking it (chocolate lab) in the picnic site there along the beach,” said conservation officer Gareth Scrivner Dec. 1.

He turned around and saw four feet behind his dog a full-sized cougar pretty much tailing them the whole way. He got pretty much halfway back to his vehicle and he couldn't scare it off and it wasn't really showing any signs of fear. It took down his dog right in front of him, a full grown 10-year-old lab.”

The big cat had carried the dog back where it came from to the far side of the parking lot and into the trees.

About 150 yards off into the trees, Scrivner found the cougar feeding on the dog and he put the big cat down.

Given the number of people who use the picnic area at the lake, you don't want a predator thinking of it as a good place to go hunting, he added.

The cougar was a full grown male, about four or five-years-old, very healthy, a full-size 130 lbs, almost seven feet long from the tip of its tail to the nose but hadn't fed for a while so there was very little in its stomach, he said.

Ordinarily, you expect it to feed on deer. That's pretty much what they take and mountain goats in this area this time of year as well. A deer once a week would be enough to sustain it,” he said.

There's not many cougars or deer around and to find enough to eat, the cougars need a large territory to find food so it's not terribly common to see them around here, he added.