Yeah I should pay some attention to that. Drawing from concealment, and putting the first shot in the vital zone in under two seconds is my favorite, or "go to" drill, but I always have two hands on the pistol when I shoot. But yes, one doesn't always have both hands available in an emergency for any number of reasons. (but certainly not because I'd be holding a cell phone!!!!)
I had a very neat firearms instructor early on that explained you have your dominant hand and Smart Hand. Your dominant hand runs the gun and that it all it does. The Smart Hand does everything else, but also may be required to help run the gun or run the gun when the dominant hand gets hurt. Everything else includes fending off blows, finding car/door keys, staunching wounds, dragging another person to safety, opening doors, giving hand signals to other responders, driving a car, dialing a cell phone to get more help, etc. Cell phones really are emergency equipment, more so than a firearm in terms of frequency of use for emergencies, so the presence of a cell phone in a crisis isn't necessarily superfluous (not unless you are trying to be TikTok famous), but as with any of your gear, the timing and application of its use needs to be appropriate.
I doubt he even realized he was still recording it.
You can tell he doesn't know he is recording by how poorly he kept the mountain lion in frame while the cell phone out in front of him and how well he shot as a result. Oh wait, he did an excellent job of keeping the mountain lion in frame, often centered quite nicely, and a terrible job of shooting. He DEFINITELY was actively using the cell phone to video the event and did a good job with the videography in terms of tracking a moving object and keeping it fairly well centered in frame. So it was no coincidence that he managed to hold a cell phone in one hand while keeping a mountain lion in frame and mostly well centered while in Portrait mode (more difficult than Landscape mode for items moving on the landscape, lol). He got the proper shot, but not with his firearm.
My best guess there is he was filming it before it really started becoming a threat and got close.
And, given the opportunity, I would have been filming as well, until things went south.
Seems pretty strange that it the cat would just approach him right in the open like that. Was acting more like a dog then a cat.
LOL, it is a cat. Your family cat and a mountain lion have a LOT of behaviors in common, but a very different size scale. So what you consider to be behavior of your domestic cat is also the behavior of a mountain lion in many respects. They look similar because they are similar.
Here is a bear just following a 12 year old child, with some very dog-like behavior. My dogs used to follow my kids around like this when they had (and were dropping) food when they were very little. The scene almost seems cute, just a boy and his big, fuzzy pet, just having a good time in nature...