Copperopolis, California - An outdoorsman has been hiking and fishing for years, but recently had a wild animal encounter that took his breath away.

Chris Bashaw from Modesto, California, detailed a scary moment in a recent TikTok video, in which he points his camera directly at a mountain lion staring at him from a bush in the Goodwin Dam Recreational Area, where he was fishing.

"This son of a b**ch is huge!" Bashaw says in the clip.

"Get!" the Californian says in the direction of the predator.

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Yet, the animal doesn't even bat an eyelid at the request. Quite the opposite: after a few seconds, it moves towards Bashaw, and the video ends abruptly.

Fortunately, the woodsman escaped with a scare, but has left viewers in suspense. The clip has gone viral, and been viewed over 3 million times.

In the video's caption, he admits: "This mountain lion was tracking me all morning back to my car."

But how was the man able to escape the wild encounter in the first place?

In an interview with Newsweek, the 39-year-old revealed that this encounter was actually not his first with a mountain lion, and not even the first that week.

"Though I have seen mountain lions from far away a few times, I've never had this close of an encounter before," Bashaw explained.

Because of this, he has since taken bear spray and a gun with him when fishing, and no longer brings his three kids along.

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"He was trying to sneak up on me, but I spotted him first," he explained of the animal. "I started to record the video because I figured nobody would believe that I saw a mountain lion two times in one week."

Californian scientists believe that there are between 3,200 and 4,500 mountain lions currently living in California.

Anyone who encounters one of these predators should follow these tips: maintain eye contact, appear as intimidating as possible, and slowly but surely move away.