Having hunted mountain lions for more than a dozen years, Brian Williams of Pagosa Springs, Colo., knows that most cats look big when you first glimpse them at a distance but end up “shrinking” to normal proportions as you close in. This wasn’t so, however, with the cougar he hunted last winter in southwestern Colorado.
“As we got closer, he just kept getting bigger,” Williams says
. Big enough to top the old Colorado state record, which had stood since 1901 and was held by none other than President Theodore Roosevelt. Williams’s 220-pound lion scored 16 Boone & Crockett points, edging out Roosevelt’s 1512/16 B&C; cougar.