Tails from the Outdoors with Blake McAllister

This episode is a cougar encounter and hunting safety story rolled into one. Eli interviews Blake McAllister about a failure in the outdoors, his hunting experience, and his story of a big cat stalking him, or was it?

Related: failed outdoors adventures.

The Scotch Broom That Wasn’t a Cougar

Hiking through heavy fog on a ridge they now call Cougar Ridge (after multiple actual sightings there), Blake and a buddy froze on fresh cat scat, then spotted what looked exactly like a crouched mountain lion in the brush. Flashlight beams bouncing through fog made it impossible to confirm, until it turned out to be a scotch broom bush. Fog plus fresh predator sign is a legitimately unsettling combination, even when the outcome is harmless.

Caliber Talk: 30-06 vs. 6.5

The friendly debate landed on track record over theory: a 6.5 Creedmoor (Thompson Center and Ruger) in the family has accounted for more deer and an elk than the 30-06 has, including a 400-yard elk shot. Caliber arguments matter less than practice time and confidence behind whatever you’re actually carrying.

Never Point a Rifle at a Person to “Look Closer”

Two hunters in orange aimed their rifles at Blake and a buddy, also in full orange, for a solid five minutes trying to figure out what they were looking at. A rifle scope is never an acceptable substitute for binoculars when identifying something in the field, loaded or not.

FAQ: Predator Encounters and Firearm Safety

Why does fog make predator encounters feel scarier?

Limited visibility makes shapes harder to confirm and removes the ability to track movement clearly, so ambiguous shapes (brush, stumps, scotch broom) can easily be misread as an animal, especially with fresh tracking sign nearby.

Is it ever okay to use a rifle scope to identify a distant object?

No. Pointing a firearm at anything you haven’t positively identified, including other hunters, is a serious safety violation. Always use binoculars or a spotting scope for identification.

Thanks for joining us, Blake, and thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time.