AP Photo/David Zalubowski On February 4, Travis Kauffman was jogging in Horsetooth Mountain Park in Colorado when he was attacked by a mountain lion. Kauffman managed to kill the animal by jamming his foot into the lion's neck, suffocating it, then hiked out to a nearby hospital. The mountain lion Kauffman encountered appears to have been just a year old, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and weighed 35-40 pounds. Human-mountain lion interactions are rare, but tend to occur when a lion is orphaned or gets pushed into the margins of its habitat by other adult males. When 31-year-old Travis Kauffman went to Horseshoe Mountain Park for a run on February 4, he didn't expect to fight for his life with one of the region's most elusive predators.