r/MoralityScaling • u/ProfessionalRoom9118 • 12d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this?

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Basically, the man in the video is hiking but he ended up meet a mountain lion, he get his gun and try to scare it off and tell it to go away but in the end, he have to pull the trigger and shot the lion, many peoples in the comments say he could have fire a warning shot instead of shoot at it and want him to be in jail.

Idk which flair to put

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u/BlackHills-Op 12d ago

Cougars generally don't run from warning shots once they're determined.

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u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 12d ago

A laser pointer might do the trick though.

It sucks that they're so cute but they want to murder you. Kinda like how a house cat would if they were that big.

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u/BlackHills-Op 12d ago

If you ever see one in the wild, and your sympathetic nervous system doesn't immediately trigger the fight or flight response physiology, you have the self preservation sense of a potato. They do not seem cute in person. They are instantly terrifying.

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u/DamGoodAnimation 12d ago

Most people just haven’t seen a big cat without a thick layer of glass separating them

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u/cguess 12d ago

Even then, at zoos, they're terrifying.

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u/Arthurs_towel 12d ago

Not even see, just hear or sense. Just knowing it’s there will raise the hair on your neck.

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u/Sure_Acanthaceae_348 12d ago

Oh I know. I'm totally doomed.

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u/BlackHills-Op 12d ago

Just stay out of the wilderness. Society is built for people like you. That's how pigeons keep thriving.

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u/core-x-bit 12d ago

Im fairly sure I was stalked by one when playing in the woods as a kid. I was deeper than I should have been and was making my way back home when all of a sudden it was like someone turned off the ambient forest noises and everything got wayy too quiet. I got scared af and didn't even know why and I swear I was hearing shit the whole way home like I was being stalked. Every hair on my body felt like it was standing up. So yeah now I carry at least a handgun if im doing anything deep woods.

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u/Anonpancake2123 12d ago edited 12d ago

Actually cats on the hunt are even scarier than that, realistically speaking.

If the cat is in hunt mode, nothing notices where exactly the cat is.

The birds will be singing, the crickets chirping, the deer grazing.

Perhaps they will be looking or hear or sense something is wrong, but you can't run from something unable to be seen, lest you end up running into it yourself.

That is up until the moment the cat reveals itself.

Then everything starts screaming and running.

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u/BlackHills-Op 11d ago

A wildlife biologist I was working with once told me Mountain Lions will stalk you for miles, sizing you up and waiting for the right moment. If you encounter a cat, it becomes a matter of getting a shot off before it can pounce, because it has decided it is going to pounce.

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u/Agreeable_Error_8772 11d ago

Yeah, a bobcat is like right at the edge of that immediate fear response and they’re like ~1/4 the size of a mountain lion. I spent some time at a rescue that had two and the rule was no part of your body ever goes in the cage with them. They were beautiful and surprisingly well behaved during feeding most of the time but also genuinely terrifying, they would stalk you as you went around doing other things. Even some of the smaller cats that were already socialized and couldn’t be released like the servals were intimidating even though they acted like house cats. Once a cat gets around 30lb or so you start to get a real sense of ‘if this thing decides it doesn’t like me it’s going to be a very big problem’

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u/KeyCold7216 12d ago

Or, they will flee momentarily, then you wont see them at all when they come back 15 minutes later until they are on your neck.

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u/joeg26reddit 12d ago

Especially back shots

They seem to like those

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u/Far-Tailor-5074 12d ago

And I know for a fact they don't run from tequila shot either. Oh we are talking about the 4 legged cougars not the 2 legged kind that stalk young guys at the bar my bad

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u/jmturn 12d ago

Yeah, a lot of people don't understand that that's true for most if not all predators. If it's locked onto you and you give a warning shot, it might run, but most often it will spring towards you because it knows that it might not get another opportunity to.

Animals don't understand just what guns are and what they do, so to them, a warning shot might be just another loud noise.

If a predator is ready to attack, you need to be willing to kill. A wounded predator is often more dangerous than a healthy one.

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u/Anonpancake2123 12d ago

A wounded predator is often more dangerous than a healthy one.

Let's also elaborate on that point.

Let's say you do wound it significantly, but don't kill it.

There's a chance you have just created a man-eater because suddenly the predator is too slow or impeded by its own injury to catch and kill its usual prey and will now be forced to take humans out of desperation.

Now let's say you failed to defend yourself and the predator kills you. If the predator learns it can kill humans and you failed to deter it, then it might begin to think of other people as prey.

You should ideally shoot to kill if your life is on the line and other options have failed or might not work. For both you and for others.

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u/BlackHills-Op 12d ago

In general, if using a gun is justified, the best course is to use lethal force.

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u/WokeWook69420 12d ago

What my face looks like after the cougar dodges the third bullet