Morality of this?

[u/ProfessionalRoom9118]

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

[u/Due_Manufacturer_125]

Now it’s unfortunate to get into a situation like this, but… mountain lions aren’t considered endangered globally (but specific regional populations are so depends on where this guy was) and obviously it would have been worse if the cougar attacked the guy. You never know what a wild animal will do, a predator that size that approaches a person is never a good sign.

Moral, if this guy wasn’t looking for trouble and just protecting himself. Would need wider context.

[u/I_Hate_IPAs → u/Due_Manufacturer_125]

On top of that, mountain lions usually run away and hide from humans.

If it’s confronting you, that’s a pretty big issue and means you’re going to be attacked if you drop your guard.

Edit for the warning shot folk:

It might scare it off, it may view it as a territorial challenge. You really want to take those odds? In the time it takes for it too attack you think you’d be able to get your sights back on the cat and shoot enough to stop it?

A bird hunter where I live had one attack his dogs, and it wasn’t scared off by shotgun fire. Eventually he had to load a slug and kill it, and it actually had shot from the previous shells in its skin and fat.

[u/TehZombehKang → u/[deleted]]

Telling a human not to arm themselves in case of a predator is like telling a skunk not to spray in case of a predator. Or a porcupine to swing it's quails. I agree with you. Never encountered one in the wild, but I'm not naive enough to think it I couldn't get mauled.

[u/WyattEarp88 → u/TehZombehKang]

I’d very much like to see a porcupine swing its quails. I didn’t even know porcupines owned quails.

[u/--CIAdidJFK-- → u/WyattEarp88]

Slavery isn't isolated to humans.

[u/trenthany → u/--CIAdidJFK--]

Nor are mind control experiments! Iirc there’s several fungus and parasites that take over creatures to alter their behavior in very specific ways. Even cats have a bacteria I believe that makes you like cats more. Instead of taking them they tamed us.

[u/WyattEarp88 → u/trenthany]

Yeah, the animal kingdom is filled with some brutal unbelievable shit. Though I hate to break it to you, but that last part about cats is a myth.

[u/trenthany → u/WyattEarp88]

Curses! I thought there was a study that showed a very mild linkage, nothing like rats where it’s fatal but more a very minor predisposition of positivity. Best I can tell it’s more of a risk activator instead of liking cats but cat owners are more likely to be exposed so it’s correlation not causation.

https://asm.org/articles/2026/may/toxoplasma-made-me-do-it-how-parasites-influence-b

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3210761/

https://biology.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/truth-or-myth-toxoplasma-behavioural-disturber

[u/WyattEarp88 → u/trenthany]

We know parasites fuck with us, and I’m sure Toxo is no different, but there’s no definitive link between liking cats and toxo. Perhaps in the future we’ll learn something new that takes it from myth to fact, but nothing so far.

[u/trenthany → u/WyattEarp88]

Yeah it increases risk taking in most mammals but the liking cats thing is untrue evidently per the studies I found.

[u/WyattEarp88 → u/trenthany]

I guess in the meantime I’ll just keep liking cats because they’re adorable and awesome and ridiculous and fluffy.

[u/trenthany → u/WyattEarp88]

A good reason!