Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
The precautions are exaggerated. These animals are extremely reclusive. Adult humans are outside their prey schema and will be avoided except in extremely unusual circumstances. From Wikipedia : Fatal cougar attacks are extremely rare and occur much less frequently than fatal dog attacks, fatal snake bites, fatal lightning strikes, or fatal bee stings. [...] Exaggerating the threat to the animal through intense eye contact, loud shouting, and any other action to appear larger and more menacing, may make the animal retreat. Fighting back with sticks and rocks, or even bare hands, is often effective in persuading an attacking cougar to disengage. Personally, I'd still avoid solo backpacking...
Full answer by Michael Borgwardt: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/8271 (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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