Mike McVey and a friend stood on an abandoned skid road, peering through binoculars over the Ramsay Canyon hillsides in search of black-tailed deer when the pair heard a rustling on the bank above them.

Two small cougars peered at them out of the brush, then one jumped into the roadway and turned toward them, ears pinned, just 10 yards away.

"He looked at us, we looked at it," says McVey, 23, of Central Point. "It gave a growl, and that was enough for me."

McVey fired his deer rifle, killing the cougar Oct. 12 in what has become a rare but regular event of October — the shooting of cougars for personal safety.

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Twice this month, Jackson County hunters shot and killed cougars that surprised or even stalked them while deer or elk hunting.

In a separate case Oct. 22 near Butte Falls, an elk hunter shot and killed a 7-foot-long cougar that was apparently stalking him from behind, 20 yards away.

In both cases, the killings were done by hunters without cougar tags. Both shooters followed state law requiring that they report to the Oregon State Police or the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife within 24 hours. Also under state law, both carcasses were confiscated.

Oredson says the incidents are the offshoot of more hunters in the woods stalking the same game as cougars, during a time when big-game animals are moving out of high-elevation terrain and closer to people.

ODFW biologist Vince Oredson says the cougars likely see hunters as "a target of opportunity" in the woods.

"Cougars apparently don’t consider humans a prey animal," Oredson says. "If they did, we’d have a lot more attacks than we do."

No human has been attacked and killed in Oregon by a cougar in more than a century. However, recent attacks have occurred in Washington, California and Utah.

"They are dangerous," Oredson says. "People need to be cautious."

In the past three years, Oregon averages about two dozen incidents annually in which people kill cougars during encounters deemed a danger to people, says Anne Pressentin Young, an ODFW spokeswoman in Salem.

The lowest number of cases was three in 1992, and the highest was 35 in 1999, she says.

Last year, hunters killed and tagged 230 cougars statewide, while another 110 were killed for property damage and 22 were killed for personal safety. Of those, just one was in Jackson County.

Animal-rights activist Sally Mackler says the incidents boost her argument that Oregon does not need any relaxing of rules about shooting threatening animals.

"It shows you can still do what you always could do — defend yourself from a threatening animal," Mackler says. "That’s a good thing."

In McVey’s incident, the cougar weighed just 34 pounds and measured about 4½ -feet long — indicating they were young cougars likely looking for hunting territory, Oredson says.

In the Oct. 22 case, Doug Snow of Eagle Point shot a 118-pound cougar he says was stalking him, according to ODFW reports. The cougar was underweight and likely desperate for food when he spied Snow, who shot him in the face, Oredson says.

"You could tell by the wounds his story was legit," Oredson says.

Snow declined to discuss the incident.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com