Scary moment female hunter comes face to face with hissing mountain lion before shooting beast dead to ‘save herself’

DRAMATIC footage shows the moment a young hunter came face to face with a hissing mountain lion before shooting and killing the predator to “save herself”.

The woman, who identified herself as McKenzie, was walking alone in the mountains of Gunnison, Colorado, earlier this month when she spotted the animal.

According to McKenzie, she had been separated from her father while on a hunting trip before she saw the mountain lion.

McKenzie explains in the video how she was following some deer tracks in a remote part of the woods when she looked up and saw the animal.

The predator was standing so close to her that she could see it had blue and green eyes.

She immediately began filming the encounter on her cellphone when she spotted the cougar as it growled and hissed aggressively at her.

In the video, McKenzie tries to intimidate the giant cat by shouting, snarling and waving her arms.

She can be heard yelling: "Get outta here, go away!”

However, the large predator stands there unfazed, until she pretends to charge at it and it begins to retreat.

The mountain lion turns around in the shadows of the trees and starts coming towards her again.

In that moment, McKenzie drops her phone and grabs her gun as the lion stands on a log eight yards away.

In captions on the video, she describes how the lion looks like it’s about to charge at her as it puts its ear back and flicks its tail, which resulted in McKenzie shooting the lion in self-defense.

The woman fired a shot at the lion as it jumps into the air and runs off.

“I had to shoot him. I was afraid he was going to pounce on me,” she said moments later.

“I’m shaking so bad. He ran away. I don’t know if he’s going to die or not. I’m not going to look for him. That was the craziest moment of my life.”

After shooting the wild cat, McKenzie said she ran off in the opposite direction to find her father.

“The mountain lion did ultimately die and I’m very sad about that. I wanted it to keep living, that’s why I tried so hard to scare it away. I didn’t want to shoot it.

“It was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen up close like that so I was very sad that it ended up dying,” she added.

“But I’m also very, very grateful that I was able to get through that situation.”