A Mississippi man was living out a dream when he went to Utah to hunt elk with his bow, but that dream almost turned into a nightmare when he encountered a mountain lion that charged him.
"When I first saw it, I thought, 'This is cool,'" said Ben Malloy of Shelby, a small town in Bolivar County . "When it came toward me, I said, 'This is not cool.'
"At that point, you're pretty much looking at death. You're either going to win or lose and there's no in between."
Malloy is an avid bow hunter and harvested his first white-tailed deer at the age of nine. Since then, he'd always wanted to go elk hunting. When a friend, Spencer Burrows of Scott City, Missouri, suggested they both go to Utah, he jumped at the opportunity.
"He called me last year and said, 'Let's go try to shoot an elk,'" Malloy said. "Getting to do that was a dream come true for me."
Mississippi hunter makes trip to Utah
The two planned the trip for about a year and decided to hunt public land about an hour outside Roosevelt, Utah. It would be a 2-week adventure that began in late August.
The area is remote and hunting required miles of hiking through rocky and mountainous terrain. It was so rough, the clip holding Malloy's holster and pistol on his belt broke. So, he put his pistol in his pack. It was so remote that cellular phone service basically didn't exist.
A few days into the hunt, Malloy and Burrows set up a camp near where they had spotted some elk. It was about 10 miles away from their truck and base camp. It was also an area where they'd seen some bones from what Malloy thought was a deer or possibly a small elk.
"We really didn't pay too much attention to them," Malloy said. "We weren't thinking about a cat."
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Hunter encounters a mountain lion that won't leave
Malloy had hunted all day and hadn't seen any elk. He was sitting at the base of a tree near a trail and night was coming. He saw some movement and initially thought it was a mule deer, but then he saw the tail and realized it was a mountain lion. He figured it would be a brief encounter because the big cat was downwind of him.
"I honestly thought when it got my wind it would go away," Malloy said. "When it got my wind, it came towards me. At this point, he was at 22, 23 yards."
Malloy reached for his pistol, but it wasn't on his hip. It was in his pack back at camp, so he grabbed his bow. He yelled at the mountain lion, but it didn't run away. He threw rocks at it and even hit one of the cat's legs with a rock, but it didn't leave.
"It didn't care what I did," Malloy said. "It was not intimidated by anything I did.
"That's what bothered me. Here, you see a coyote or a bobcat and they're scared and don't want anything to do with you. There, they see me as easy pickings. The only thing I was thinking was how to get out of that situation. How do I make this change or go away?"
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Mountain lion tries to attack hunter
Malloy said he was reluctant to shoot the lion because he wasn't familiar with Utah's laws. As it turned out, it was legal for him to shoot it, but Malloy didn't know it at the time. The question would soon be moot, though.
Malloy was about 20 minutes into the encounter and it was almost dark. He took two small steps backwards and the mountain lion responded by stepping forward. Malloy took a big step backward and that's when the situation escalated.
"When I took the big step back, he broke and ran at me and that's when I shot," Malloy said. "If I missed, it would kill me. I knew I was in a bad spot. When I shot, it was at about 7 yards."
Malloy said his arrow hit the lion in the neck between a shoulder and head and it stopped charging. Malloy said he began stepping backwards until he saw the the cat turn and run away. At that point, Malloy did the same.
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Hunter was terrified by charging mountain lion
While this was happening, Burrows was at their designated meeting spot and Malloy was late. Burrows said he was initially somewhat irritated because they were miles into the wilderness without reliable cellular service, so deviating from the plan was not a good idea. His feelings then changed from irritation to concern.
"My mind was racing," Burrows said.
Burrows soon saw light from Malloy's headlamp and it was approaching quickly. When Malloy got near, it was apparent something was very wrong.
"He was trying to spit out what happened," Burrows said. "It's hard to explain the emotion he had.
"He was scared for his life. It was as if he'd seen a ghost, but a ghost that was going to harm him. Nobody told us there were going to be mountain lions the size of lions. Unless somebody was in a life-or-death car wreck, I've never seen anybody shaken up like that. When we got back to camp, he was quiet the whole evening. He was in shock."
The night was sleepless for Malloy.
"I was terrified," Malloy said. "I may have slept 30 minutes that night."
Hunters try to find dead mountain lion
The following morning, they tried to recover the cat. They found a blood trail, but it was difficult to follow. Even so, they managed to track the mountain lion to a cave a few hundred yards away.
"It was a nasty, cavy area that was not conducive to looking for wounded mountain lions," Burrows said.
Malloy said he thought the shot was fatal, but he decided to pass on pursuing the cat any farther.
"You can't make yourself go into a hole not knowing 100% if its dead or not," Malloy said.
Malloy didn't leave Utah empty handed though. That afternoon he harvested a bull elk.
Mountain lion attacks are unusual events
According to the Mountain Lion Foundation, mountain lion attacks are unusual events and fatal attacks are even more rare. According to the foundation, there have been 29 fatal attacks between 1868 and April 2024, but not all of those are confirmed.
Also, according to the foundation, people who do things like yell or throw things at a mountain lion are likely to avoid an attack entirely. The foundation also states that most attacks on humans come from young or unhealthy mountain lions. Malloy said this cat was a large adult and appeared healthy.
So, how Malloy found himself in that situation is unknown, but he's not letting it deter him from future hunts.
"I plan to go every year," Malloy said. "That style of hunting; I really, really enjoyed that."
Do you have a story idea? Contact Brian Broom at 601-961-7225 or bbroom@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: 'I was terrified.' Mississippi hunter shoots charging mountain lion. See what happened next
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