Talk about having a trail camera in the perfect spot.
High atop the short list of the scariest predators a deer can face off against is the mountain lion. It’s not a great matchup for a rather defenseless deer. And oftentimes for mountain lions, chasing down a deer is like you or me going into a supermarket to get a rotisserie chicken from the deli.
The only defense that a deer really has is its speed and shiftiness. Deer can typically top out at around 40 miles per hour, though they can usually only sustain a speed of 30 miles per hour for long distances. They are fast in short distance scenarios, but predators can often outlast them in the long run.
The bad news for deer, especially the ones targeted by big cats out in the wild, is that the top speed of a mountain lion is around 5o miles per hour. That obviously means that if it’s a straight line race, the cat is going to catch up eventually. However, deer do have the element of surprise on their side.
In the video below, which was captured on a perfectly and fortunately placed trail camera, a couple of deer are fleeing from a mountain lion. One of the deer is getting closed in on by the big cat, while the other deer seems to be following the “I don’t have to outrun the mountain lion, I just have to outrun you” guideline.
As the deer come crashing through the woods right in front of the camera, another flash of brown fur comes across the screen. It appears that just as the deer jolted to the right as an evasive maneuver, the mountain lion had gone for a diving tackle, and unfortunately didn’t account for the deer to change directions.
That sent the wild cat tumbling violently through the short trees and shrubbery, uprooting anything and everything it touched as it barrel rolled at top speed through the middle of the woods. It was such a brutal fall that the mountain lion had no choice but to regroup, and both deer eventually got away.
You only find that out (after the slow-motion replay) when the end of the video shows the cougar shamefully walking back through that exact same area with no deer in tow. Going through all that trouble just to walk away empty handed is tough, but it did make for quite the entertaining trail camera footage:
