A man killed a mountain lion with a shovel. He says it was to protect his dog

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Louise Thomas

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A man beat a mountain lion to death in Colorado, later telling authorities he did it to protect his dog.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife received a report on September 26 that an unidentified man killed an “aggressive” mountain lion with a shovel in Cañon City, the agency said in a statement. An officer then found the man with the dead lion – a female weighing 95lb – on the hood of his Jeep.

The man explained that he was near his car with his dog, a husky, the previous night when the lion approached.

He said the husky growled at the lion and eventually lunged at it. The man then grabbed a shovel and beat the lion in the head, killing it, the statement said. The officer who found the man said the lion was hurt on its front right paw and had scratches along its back.

It’s illegal to kill a lion in Colorado outside of regulated hunting, unless it is to protect a person or livestock from death or injury.

This incident also does not qualify as a lion attack because the lion didn’t hurt or touch the man, the agency said. There have been just over two dozen lion attacks in Colorado in the last 34 years.

However, the man feared for his life and acted in self-defense when he killed the lion, which was acting aggressively, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer reported in his preliminary investigation. The agency will continue to investigate and has sent the lion’s body for a necropsy.

Cañon City is a home rule municipality with just over 17,000 residents in central Colorado.

There are thought to be about 20,000 to 40,000 mountain lions in the US.