With still-healing cuts on his face and arm, the trail runner who killed a mountain lion on February 4 at Horsetooth Mountain Park near Fort Collins, Colorado, finally revealed himself on Thursday afternoon, February 14, at a press conference facilitated by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and the Larimer County Department of Natural Resources.

Travis Kauffman, a 31-year-old environmental consultant, said he was midway through what he thought would be a 12- to 15-mile training run between Lory State Park and Horsetooth Mountain Park when he heard rustling behind him.

“I turned around and was pretty bummed out to see a mountain lion,” Kaufmann said, wearing the same blue, long-sleeve shirt he ran in that day. “I threw my hands up in the air and started shouting. It lunged at me. It was going toward my face so I threw up my hands to block. It grabbed onto my hand and wrist.

“I tried to throw it off me, and we took a little tumble down the south side of the trail and down there had a little wrestling match. At which point, I was able to get on top of it, and pin its back legs.”

Kauffman, who stands 5-foot-10 and weighs 150 pounds, hit the cat with sticks and a rock, but neither forced the cat to release his wrist. Finally he was able to shift his weight and get a foot on its neck to choke it.

“Slowly after a few minutes, I thought I was getting close, then it would start thrashing again. Then after a couple of minutes, it stopped moving and its jaws opened and I was able scramble back up the hill and get the heck out of Dodge.”

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He left the animal on the trail, ran two miles to the trailhead, and got a ride to a hospital. He was treated for cuts, puncture wounds, and lacerations to his face, arms, and legs, and was released the next day. He suffered no broken bones or tendon damage, but did require 20 stitches to his face and wrist.

Wildlife officials later found the carcass and identified the animal as a juvenile mountain lion.

More information about the lion was released later, after a necropsy was performed on the animal. On February 28, officials shared results from the report, which supported Kauffman’s description of the events, and estimated the animal to be between three and four months old, according to the Denver Post. Because scavengers had eaten portions of the animal’s body after its death, it was difficult to determine how much the animal actually weighed. The remains weighed in at 24 pounds, and veterinarians estimate the cat probably weighed between 35 and 40 pounds in life, NBC News reports.

Kauffman said one of his biggest fears throughout the tussle was that a larger, mother cat would show up and attack to protect its young.

“At that point, the fight would have been over quickly,” he said. “There was a point where I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to make it out of it. I had that wave of fear roll over me that I would end up [staying] there. Luckily that wasn’t the case, and I am able to spend Valentine’s Day 2019 with my girlfriend, Annie.”



Despite the harrowing experience, Kauffman kept a light tone throughout the press conference. Upon sitting down, he asked the assembled media, “Who all is disappointed that I'm not in fact Chuck Norris?”

And after mentioning Valentine’s Day, he looked across the room to his girlfriend, Annie Bierbower, and asked, “What do you think, mac and cheese?”

Kauffman said he feels a bit strange getting so much attention for something that was an act of happenstance. He considered not revealing himself to the public but knew his name would get out eventually, once the investigation was over. He said he has thought about the cat since the incident, but not in a remorseful way.

“It was one of those unfortunate situations where we were both in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

“The hardest part is that I’ll never be able to live up to the reputation. The story is bigger than my puny form.”

Following Kauffman’s opening line, one reporter asked what Chuck Norris would think. Kauffman replied, “Chuck would have come out without a scratch, [mountain lion] slung over his shoulders.”

And responding to a question on whether he had martial arts or wrestling training, he said, “[My] only martial arts experience is I sometimes do Insanity workout tapes and do power jabs.”

Bierbower, a communications coordinator for the city of Fort Collins, also spoke, and said she was in a work meeting when Kauffman started texting about the incident.

“He started with, ‘I’m okay, but I got attacked by a mountain lion on my run and am in the ER,'” she said. “One of the scariest parts of that day was getting to the hospital. I ran and found the room they said he was in, and you have all of this buildup in your mind of what you’re going to see, and I turned into the room and it was empty, except for his blue long-sleeve running top that had blood on it. When I finally saw him being wheeled down the hallway in a wheelchair, I was thankful that he had his eyes and fingers and parts, and that it didn’t look as bad as I thought it might.”

Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesperson Rebecca Ferrell said Kauffman responded properly for a mountain lion encounter. Kauffman yelled and waved his arms at the animal, making himself appear as larger has he could.

Kauffman, originally from Mountain Home, Arkansas, is an avid skier, mountain biker, and trail runner who has lived in Fort Collins for five years. He had ridden the trails around Horsetooth, but it was his first time running them. He has been training for his first race—the 50K event at the Golden Gate Dirty 30 on June 1, near Golden, Colorado.



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Mountain lion sightings are not uncommon along Colorado’s Front Range, an area that includes Fort Collins, Boulder, Golden, and Colorado Springs. Mountain lion attacks on humans, however, are very rare in Colorado. In the past 30 years, there have been two fatal incidents. A 10-year-old boy was killed by a mountain lion while hiking near Grand Lake in 1997, and a runner was killed in Idaho Springs in 1991.

Officials set up cameras and bait stations to try to catch other cats in the area and eventually did capture two other young lions, but not a large female. The cats were taken into a recovery lab and will be released back into the wild.

Many local runners are undeterred. “People have been talking about it for sure,” said Nate Grimm, a manager of Altitude Running, a running specialty store in Fort Collins. “Horsetooth Park is a great place to run, lots of space, lots of great routes to run. I’ve never seen a mountain lion. I’ve seen lots and lots of deer and one bear, but never a mountain lion. I think they kind of keep themselves hidden.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated since its original publication on February 14 to include information from the necropsy report on the animal released on February 28.

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