By Pete Thomas
An Iowa teenager on Saturday shot and killed a mountain lion that surprised the hunter as he stalked deer near Akron.
“It made a jolt toward me, and I instantly pulled the trigger,” Jacob Altena, 17, told the Des Moines Register.
Mountain lion sightings are rare in Iowa. The 80-pound female cougar, dispatched with a shot to its shoulder, becomes only the sixth mountain lion killed in Iowa, according to records kept by the state Department of Natural Resources.
Altena, who was hunting with a shotgun at dusk along the Sioux River, said he first spotted the cat in fallen timer about 15 feet to his left. “It was pretty scary,” he said. “I was in shock.”
Mountain lions, also called pumas and cougars, are not protected in Iowa.
“This was the kill of a lifetime,” Altena said.
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