Handgun saves boy from Rabid Mountain Lion

Paul Schalow, a lucky 10 year old El Mirage AZ boy & other family members were saved from a rabid Mountain Lion attack in an Arizona National Forest near Cave Creek AZ on Saturday March 8th, thanks to the fact that his uncle was carrying a gun. Here are reports from the Arizona Republic, Fox, CNN, & NBC.

In this video interview Paul Schalow describes it as the Mountain Lion just sneaking up on them while they were on a lunch break after spending some time riding ATV's near Bloody Basin Road and Sheep Bridge, everyone yelled "don't move, don't move", the mountain lion took a swipe at the boy, his uncle shot it, the Mountain lion got "wobbly" - started to walk away, then turned to attack again. A 2nd shot then did the trick dropping the Mountain Lion. The family reported the incident to the Arizona Game & Fish Department. Testing confirmed that the Mountain Lion did in fact have Rabies.

As a side note here is a list of other confirmed Cougar attacks I found while looking for this news story.

It is interesting to note that if this had happened in a National Park instead of in a National Forest under current National Park regulations his uncle would not have been allowed to have a fully assembled, loaded, non trigger locked gun. By the time his Uncle would have had time to re-assemble or unlock his gun, load it, & shoot the Mountain lion, who knows how much carnage the Mountain Lion could have unleashed before his Uncle was ready to shoot the rabid Cougar.

I guess these National Park Retirees would have preferred that the boy fight back with his keys. "Place keys in between fingers - scratch at Mountain Lion's face"