A man who was hunting near Mount Hood last weekend killed a cougar after three of the big cats approached him aggressively, KGW reported.

Bill Nylund, a resident of Rhododendron, was hunting for deer near Badger Lake when he saw the first of the three animals.

"[They] jumped on a log probably 120 feet from me and the minute they got on the log, they immediately turned to me and pinned their ears back, pulled their teeth out and started growling at me," Nylund told KGW.

He said the cats began coming toward him with no apparent fear.

"I figured I'm going to have to take one of these out of the game," Nylund he told KGW. He shot and killed one of them, a female, from approximately 50 to 60 feet away.

In September, a cougar killed a hiker on Mount Hood, the first fatal attack by a wild mountain lion in Oregon, but the second in the Pacific Northwest this year. Wildlife experts maintain that humans generally have nothing to fear from the animals, of which there are thought to be more than 6,000 roaming the state.

Nylund, who has a hunting tag for cougars, brought the animal to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, standard procedure when one of the big cats is killed.

"We're sharing the woods with some critters," he told KGW. "Some of them have attitudes."

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048