A mountain lion attack left one California man dead and another injured on Saturday afternoon, in the area's first incident of its kind in decades.
The victim, 21, and his brother, 18, were antler shed hunting in Georgetown, California - a small town in the northeastern part of the state - when the mountain lion attacked at around 1:15 p.m., according to KTXL.
The younger man called for help, and emergency crews began to search the area, eventually finding the mountain lion still crouched near the 21-year-old. The mountain lion fled after officers fired a shot at it, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The older man did not survive his wounds. The younger man was transferred to the hospital for treatment, while Fish and Wildlife officials began working to find the animal. Two game wardens and an El Dorado county trapper discovered the cat near the scene. They shot and killed the animal, then took its body for examination, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Last month, a Washington woman narrowly survived a similar incident, when a mountain lion attacked her during a biking trip. Her friends fought the animal for nearly an hour before Fish and Wildlife Police shot and killed the cat.
Mountain lions - also known as cougars, pumas or catamounts - rarely kill humans. The last incident of this kind in California was in 2004 and the last killing specifically in El Dorado County was in 1994.
"Mountain lion attacks are extremely rare," the head of the National Wildlife Federation's #SaveLACougars campaign, Beth Pratt, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
"Mountain lions have killed four people since 1986, in a state with a population of 40 million. These statistics don't diminish the tragedy when a person is killed or injured by a lion, but it puts the risk in perspective. Automobiles, by contrast, cause on average 3,000-4,000 deaths each year in California."
