Idaho couple films viral video of mountain lion, deer locked in life-or-death battle

A local couple got a surprise while driving home recently. They came face-to-face with a life and death struggle between a predator and its prey.

Michele and Twain Hayden, of Arbon, were headed home from an Idaho State University basketball game on Mink Creek Road, south of Pocatello, around 9 p.m. on Monday when they noticed something odd on the road. As they got closer they saw a deer thrashing around. Then they saw why it was thrashing around.

“All of a sudden we saw this big buck and we couldn’t figure out what on earth it was doing. Finally, we just stopped to see because it kept darting out into the road and then going off on to the bank. So we just kind of slowed down and it didn’t take us long after we had stopped to realize what it had dangling from its neck,” Michele told EastIdahoNews.com.

A mountain lion had latched onto the deer and the two were in a fight for their lives.

“It was just quite unnerving. You just don’t know, is this cat going to succeed? Are we going to sit and watch it eat this deer? What are we going to do?” Michele said.

After a couple of minutes, Michele said Twain started to get nervous someone would come around the corner where they were parked so he turned on their car’s emergency lights.

In the video, it appears the flashing lights distracted the mountain lion just enough for the deer to get away. Michele said they were only there watching for two or three minutes before the deer escaped, but she believes the fight went on for some time before they arrived.

“I would dare bet, three to four times that deer and cat went back and forth across the road,” Michele said.

After getting home she and her husband decided to post the video to Facebook and YouTube. It has since been viewed almost 176,000 times shared nearly 2,000 times and has more than 300 comments and reactions.

“It was interesting seeing some people were all pro kitty and some people were pro buck and it varied greatly,” Michele said about the comments the video has received.

This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 12:04 PM.