At the time, more years ago than I care to remember, that particular place in La Pampa Province looked all brown. The rain was forgotten for three years and a fine dust covered our clothes, firearms and had a way of penetrating the cars and tents. Of course the wind from the West blew the full day, 20 mph. without a pause. The nights were cold but the days were sunny and we had to take off our coats due to the heat. During these innocent eras, people allowed visitors to hunt their properties for free and the foreigners reduced the numbers of hogs and pumas, including a red stag if possible. The Provincial Government put a bounty on pumas because the big cats killed too many sheep and the gauchos trapped them with passion. Thus a fine morning I joined our host, a young but lazy gaucho named Angel in a walk for checking his line of traps. I was told that the pumas were soft customers and being caught soon abandoned all fight.
Two or three hundred meters from the camp we found one of the traps lacking and some tracks of a smallish puma. Our artillery was just an old GECO carbine in 22 L.R., a single shot, because I didn´t thought of walking too much or finding a trapped puma., so I left my heavy rifle behind.
In fact, these traps were rather crude, a couple of hooks made with wire and without teeth, a chain fastened to an iron buried (or so I hoped) in the sand. Angel had several skinny dogs but no one was useful so we were alone.
Both had our knives and he assured me that he´ll kill this small puma with his Arbolito, worn in his back, gaucho style.
Well, we found and entirely different scene: the spike was not buried, the cat was wild as a wet hen and jumped all over the place, making strange and menacing noises and Angel thought that the better part of hunting is cowardice, so he fled the scene. She was somewhat bigger than a domestic cat (too much bigger for me) and looked dangerous, so when opportunity arouses I put a Yellow Jacket trough his neck, a kind of skeet I was not used to (I was a fair hand with a shotgun, it should be noted).
That was that and seemed the end of this stupid tale, but it was not to be. Angel, who returned after the sound of silence used some spines from a nearby “alpataco†(a tree with dangerous thorns) and extended the pelt over a board for two days to dry.
I returned to Buenos Aires with it and gave the miserable trophy to a tannery...where it was robbed, a fortunate happening which allowed me to appear like a puma hunter without too much loss of face....to this day.

This is the sort of experiences we love to hear (and tell) over the campfires....

Thanks Ricardo!