College student killed cougar that may have chased bikers on trail
By Rachel Schleif

The Wenatchee World

LEAVENWORTH — Esmerelda the hog was saved from an attacking cougar Aug. 15 by a 20-year-old man shooting a broken .22-caliber rifle from 100 yards.

Hayden Winkler, in his boxers, had just sat down with a cup of coffee, when he heard the pig's screams around 8 a.m.

An hour before, he had been feeding the cows, pigs and chickens on Gibbs Organic Farm, near the Freund Canyon trailhead — and not far from where mountain bikers had recently reported being chased by a mountain lion.

A college student from Colorado, Winkler spent the past three months as an apprentice in sustainable farming. His pants were soaked from the morning dew and irrigation, so he left them outside.

Winkler saw through a sliding-glass door the 200-pound cat attacking Esmerelda in an alfalfa field, about 100 yards away.

The cougar had dragged the 1-year-old pig out of its pen and chased it more than a football field's length, Winkler said.

He grabbed a rifle they typically use to scare birds from the cherry orchard. The stock was broken, so he steadied the gun on a plastic box. He cracked the door open and took aim.

"I was nervous. My hands were shaking," said Winkler, who says he's not a skilled shooter. "I thought if I hit the pig, it would be put out of its misery. I aimed for the cat's head so if I hit it, it wouldn't suffer either."

Winkler fired. The cougar jumped three feet in the air, he said. The pig ran toward an orchard next to the kitchen. Winkler reloaded the gun, but when he looked up, the cat was gone.

He called his boss, Ivan Gibbs, who told him about another .22 in the pottery barn, a few dozen feet from the kitchen. Winkler carefully stepped outside.

A co-worker pulling vegetables in the garden saw Winkler walking out of the barn, still in his underwear, with a rifle in each hand.

"She said, 'What are you doing?' " Winkler said, slowly emphasizing each word. He explained the situation, and they drove Winkler's Toyota Yaris around the orchard, looking for the cougar.

Cougarless, they put the pigs away and carried guns whenever they had to work outside. Winkler found the cougar later that evening, shot through the head.

Winkler called the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which took away the cougar's body last Monday.

Rich Beausoleil, bear and cougar specialist for Fish and Wildlife, said it was a 2- to 3-year-old male. It had been dead too long to determine whether it was sick or hungry.

He suspects it was the same cougar that chased at least five mountain bikers on the Freund Canyon Trail during the past two weeks. He said the department had decided the cat had to be killed if it turned up.

"I was disappointed about what had to happen to this beautiful animal," Winkler said. "But, it had to be done."

On Thursday, Esmerelda rooted for vegetables and rolled in mud in her pen. The attack left a small tooth mark on her cheek and a scratch on her side.