See, it's the cougars for me.

I'm weirdly ok with bears - even grizzlies - cause they're predictable. Don't be between them and their food or anywhere fucking near their kids.

Cougars - like all cats - are fickle as hell. They'll stalk and even attack someone just to hear the screams then back off. They're just having fun.

My camping trips lost their appeal when I started spending time in the backcountry with this crotchety old hunting guide. His claim to fame was that he could smell cougars. Yep, sounds like bullshit, but... But. Almost every trip at some point he'd start snarfing away, stop walking, start staring around, and I swear nine times out of ten point to the cougar up on a branch or behind a rock up the hill that's having a look at us.

Toss up between what was scariest: him smelling a cougar at night and eventually finding the eyes with our flashlights or the times he'd smell a cougar but not be able to figure out where it was.