NM Girl Shoots Mountain Lion in Self Defense

Alyssa Caldwell and her father had been hunting all day. The weather had been nasty; cloudy skies with snow and rain alternating. They had seen a few elk, much too far away to take a shot. They left their makeshift blind to see if they could spot another elk before the end of the day. It was the middle of the afternoon. At 12, Alyssa was already an experienced huntress. She had started shooting at 5, and had a new rifle, a stainless Howa 1500, as her elk gun. They had only gone a few hundred yards when her father remembered that he had left the shooting sticks back at the blind. He told Alyssa to wait while he went back to retrieve them. It sounds like the start of a horror movie. A young blond girl, left alone in the wilderness by circumstance, the weather cloudy and rainy and cold, darkness only a couple of hours away. Less than a minute later, she saw it. A cat. A big cat, stalking her, only a car length away. The cat crouched, ready to spring. Alyssa shouldered the rifle and fired point blank. It was too close to use the scope. She worked the bolt, ready to fire again. One shot from the 30-06 had been enough. The 165 grain Accubond Nosler projectile had skinned the cheek, hitting the lion facing her at the junction of neck and shoulder, traveling the length of its body, killing it instantly.  Mountain lion attacks have been on the rise in recent decades, as lion populations have grown and hunting has been curtailed.  There is only one documented case of a 12 year-old girl shooting a lion in self defense, and that is Alyssa.  It happened on October 19th of this year, 2014.  The lion appears to have been in classic predatory mode, stalking the smaller prey in the opportune moment that the larger animal had left the young unprotected.  The big cat did not know how deadly an armed human girl could be.   Joshua Caldwell returned to Alyssa at the shot, thinking his daughter had downed an elk.    The mountain lion demanded immediate action, so they returned to their family to report it.  The shooting sticks remained behind.  It took a day for the New Mexico officials to reach the remote hunting spot on San Antonio Mountain.  It is a rugged area north of Albuquerque near the Colorado border.  Once there, the officials investigated and ruled the shooting a case of self defense.   They took the cat and left the family to continue their hunt...more