If you live around honey bees, dogs, or various insects.

If you live around other hazards the risk goes up for those.

Here is the bear researcher that just got munched by hanging around bears.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/anim...m=.a925374acfea

I liked the comment below about how she should have been carrying ANTI-bear spray. She just had bear spray, a common mistake.

I always go with the odds when planning.
Facts rather than fear.

I have only seen two myself. But have several friends who have been stalked. One in California, others in WA. Those cats are out there and they are thinking about you as possible pray, at least in passing.

I think wildlife management practices have changed and that has led to the increase in MT LIon incidents we see in WA state in the last 20 years. The numbers of cats has increased, the methods of take and number allowed to be taken have been reduced. Scientists tell us the population is self regulating as the excess cats are chased off by the others, which leaves them starving (like this cat that attacked the bikers) and roaming in populated areas.

Like hikemor mentioned, bees could get you first. With the honey bee die off and the cougar (and pit bull) populations on the rise, some of those hazards may switch places in the stats.

My favorite climbing area (Baboquivari Peak, SW of Tucson, AZ) is prime mountain lion country. I have observed cat tracks covering my ascending trail while on descent the same day (stalking or curious?). A rancher observed that he had never raised a colt to maturity in the 30+/- years he had been living there.

A local feature on the peak is named "Lion Ledge," for obvious reasons. Over the years I have made more than seventy ascents, many involving overnight camps.

I have never seen a kitty cat, although I am sure they have seen (or smelled!) me.. Babo was first climbed in the 1890s and is now a popular destination - one of the few Arizona peaks where a rope is required to reach the summit. Over the years there has been at least one climbing fatality, but none due to kitties (nor injuries, either, for that matter.

The Babo kitties must be well fed - lots of coatimundis, rabbits, and colts to feast on. Besides climbers are tough and stringy.

Times have changed since I was there. Many more problems with drug smuggling and other border issues than with cats.

Other ranges is S. AZ have populations of mountain lions and encounters are quite rare. No fatalities that I know of...

This is one reason I am somewhat blase about dealing with wild critters. I was active in SAR here for decades, and fatalities from falls and drownings were common. We lost seven in about twenty minutes one fine spring day due to a flash flood - took the rest of the week to find and recover their bodies.

I spent a couple of weeks in 1995 solo camping on the Eastern edge of the Grand Canyon National Park and had a mountain lion check me out every night. I had some borrowed night vision goggles and could see her sitting on the next hill looking at me. I found new tracks around the area every day. I did build a barrier of sorts with branches around my bed down area, but she never bothered me. Saw her once during daylight hours with a cub. There were so many mule deer, elk and antelope around that I did not present a more appetizing meal.

I got up close and personal with a lot of wildlife on that trip, it was excellent.

I'll bet your experience was more common than we realize. Cats are very unobtrusive. Cool!!

As my friend always says: "If you have not ever and unknowingly been stalked by a cougar, then you have not spent enough time in the outdoors."

Of course, this also depends on where you live as not all areas are cougar habitat.

A lot of us may be closer to cougar habitat than we think. There is a viable cougar population in the Santa Monica mountains, adjacent to metropolitan Los Angeles. In my own community, I have seen coyotes, the furry, four legged kind, roaming the city streets...

I remember a news story once that described a mountain lion being tracked in downtown LA.

Coyotes are fairly common in SOCAL. My dog and I have been shadowed in the neighborhood park (which sits at the edge of a wildlife sanctuary/ravine) on morning walks but the ‘yotes generally keep enough distance from the human (me). OTOH, given the opportunity, they’d take the dog in a heartbeat as they have taken other small dogs and neighborhood cats who thought to get back to nature by hunting rabbits... and the hunter becomes dinner.

A cougar here would get a wee bit more attention.