CHEYENNE - Hugh Faust just wanted to sneak in some bird watching before the post-graduation parties at the University of Wyoming earlier this month.

He parked his SUV by the side of the road in the Snowy Range and began a slow plod up a well-worn game trail at Sheep Mountain near Woods Landing. By the time Faust saw the mountain lion - crouching and staring him in the eye - he was just 30 feet from the big cat.

"I honestly believed every second could be my last," Faust, 22, said in a written account of the incident that was e-mailed to the Casper Star-Tribune.

The mountains near Woods Landing are a popular destination for hunters, antler collectors, bird watchers and hikers. The area also is heavily populated with game, thanks in large part to a controlled burn a few years ago to improve wildlife habitat.

By extension, the area is prime mountain lion country, said Chuck Anderson, a large carnivore biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

"There's lions that live right there not far from where people live," Anderson said. "They always have."

Faust's response to the lion was by the book.

He used his jacket to make himself look larger. He yelled, threw his binoculars and lunged forward a few steps.

The undeterred lion also lunged, swatting the tip of Faust's left ring finger with its claw.

"I kept yelling at the top of my lungs, swinging my jacket and hitting it with sticks and rocks," wrote Faust, who estimated the cat weighed between 110 and 130 pounds, about normal for an adult.

Originally from Tennessee, Faust has been in Wyoming the better part of a decade, including summers as a mountaineering and fishing guide in the Wind River Mountains. He also knows something about predators, having spent the summer of 2004 studying big cats in South Africa.

"I believe I almost walked into an ambush, and if I had not seen the cat it would have blindsided me from behind or the side as I walked by," Faust wrote in his e-mail.

Faust estimated that he was 300 yards from his truck when he met the mountain lion, and he knew the cat probably would pounce if he ran.

"He stayed 5 to 8 feet from me this whole time, completely focused on me and in a very low crouch," Faust said.

He decided to back away from the cat, taking one cautious step at a time.

Each time Faust moved backward, the cat matched his step - the start of a long, slow tango toward his truck.

Close encounters with mountain lions are rare in Wyoming. They're generally not confrontational animals, Anderson said.

Game warden Bill Haley investigated Faust's cat encounter and said there are a number of reasons why the lion might have behaved so aggressively.

"But after looking at the country and spending as much time up there as I did, I think it was probably a cat waiting for its next meal to walk by," said Haley, a game warden for 28 years in the state.

Faust's retreat off the mountain hit another snag when he reached a small gully. He couldn't cross it backward, and he didn't dare show his back to the lion.

"So while I was yelling and flailing my arms, I picked up two baseball-sized rocks," Faust said. "I hit him as hard as I could in the head with the first one, and immediately turned and jumped the ditch. Upon landing, I spun around yelling and hit him with the second rock."

The lion didn't retreat until Faust reached his car, and then it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

The whole encounter lasted about 10 minutes, Faust said.

Faust alerted Haley, who spent several hours scouring the mountain for a sick or injured lion.

"I didn't want anyone to get hurt if there was a problem with a cat," Haley said.

Anderson said the encounter was probably an isolated incident; it's rare for the same lion to behave aggressively toward humans more than once.

He said Faust probably chanced upon a young adult that was trying to stake out a territory. An adolescent cat might not know to avoid humans, Anderson said.

Haley said the tangle was probably a matter of poor timing.

"I think it was just an encounter that could have happened at any time in Wyoming or anywhere mountain lions and humans exist," he said.

Faust said he returned to the area a couple of days later and retrieved his binoculars, seeing no sign of the cat other than its tracks.

While he was likely relieved to not see the mountain lion again, Faust hopes to see a big cat on his next excursion. In a few weeks he leaves for western Mongolia and eastern Russia, where he'll research the rare snow leopard.

Reach Star-Tribune capital bureau reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at jared.miller@casperstartribune.net.