Matt Smith brings a whole new angle to shooting from the hip, when his bullet found its mark and killed the mountain lion that was stalking him – Dirty Harry would be envious.

After bagging a nice mule deer buck and taking it to the truck, the 29 year-old hunter, his brother and father headed to an area on Crane Mountain south of Bigfork, Mont. where they had found elk sign in the past.

“I was in a heavily timbered area just off an old logging road,” Smith recalls. “I was leaning up against a tree right where there was fresh sign of elk that had gone through the area. I was using a cow call and I was bugling when I heard a twig snap behind me.”

It didn’t take long for Smith to know something was sneaking up on him. “I turned around and a little less than 10 [yards] behind me was a mountain lion, belly to the ground, crawling right toward me,” Smith says.

Without thinking, Smith brought his rifle to his hip and fired in the direction of the mountain lion, luckily striking the mountain lion in the head – killing it immediately.

“It was a pretty instantaneous response, it being that close and being in the attack position it was in,” says Smith.

An additional two shots followed alerting his father and brother that he was in need of help.

“Within five minutes they found me,” Smith says. “I was walking down the trail back to where the vehicles were at.”

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Nathan Reiner responded to the call of a dead lion. Reiner concluded Smith acted in self-defense and cleared him of any wrongdoing.

“There was a lot of fresh elk sign,” Reiner says. “I’m guessing the cat believed it was sneaking in on an elk.”