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Red Dead Online: Legendary Sapa Cougar Location

We show you how to hunt down the deadly Sapa Cougar and what you should do to it when you find it.

One of the more dangerous animals to hunt in Red Dead Online, the ferocious Sapa Cougar is a predatory big cat capable of killing a player in a couple of hits. We'll show you the legendary Sapa Cougar's location here, as well as how to hunt it and what you should do once it reveals itself.

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Legendary Sapa Cougar Location in Red Dead Online

The legendary Sapa Cougar is found in the South and West regions of New Austin, ranging from Ridgewood Farm to Southern Rio Bravo, as illustrated on the map below. However, it will not spawn on its own - you'll need to reach Naturalist level 5, and head to Harriet Davenport. One of the missions she might provide you is then to catch the legendary Sapa Cougar, and by accepting it, you'll go into a more structured mission where you'll be tasked to hunt it down from a location somewhere in the spawning area marked below. If you're having trouble getting to level 5, we've laid out the fastest ways to farm for exp here.

The Sapa Cougar lies somewhere in this area. | Joel Franey/USG, Rockstar North/Rockstar Games

There's no shortage of Red Dead guides to help you master the Wild West here at USG, whether it's in the single player campaign or online mode. You can find them all here at our Red Dead Guides Hub.

How to Hunt the Sapa Cougar

Being more of a structured mission, hunting the Sapa Cougar is more of a checklist than a random search (though there is some of that). For us, we were given a wide area of the New Austin desert to search, marked in yellow on the map. Scour it until you find a camp of poachers, a camp that might be easier to spot if you look for the telltale smoke. Once there, kill the poachers and use Eagle Eye to find a yellow clue. This will give you a trail that leads to the cougar, though there's a chance you'll encounter more poachers along the way or even firing on the big cat itself. Make sure to kill them before you fight the Cougar.

Once you do encounter it, be careful. This black-coated cat can kill you in one or two hits, and it's fast enough to make a killing shot difficult before it reaches you. The best thing to do is find some kind of high ground which it'll struggle to climb - a rock, a rooftop, a wagon and so on. It also has a lot of health - it could take ten or more shots from a sniper rifle to kill it, and easily twice that with a sedative gun. Shooting it from a distance will also give you more time to react and prepare before it's suddenly on you.

Cover image for YouTube videoRed Dead Online Frontier Pursuits

Sample or Skin the Sapa Cougar?

Aside from the fact that the process needed to find this thing would make anybody bloodthirsty, there's another good reason to shoot the Sapa Cougar - it's pelt makes for a pretty snazzy coat, a panther's head resting on top of your own, assuming you bring the pelt to Gus and pay him money to convert the cougar the couture. The downside is that this is pretty expensive - just under a thousand dollars - but if you have the money to spare and a distinct lack of panthers on your head, this could be ideal.

While you're out hunting, why not hunt down some of our prime Red Dead content? Check out how fans are reacting to a very unpopular character here, or see when the game had a sudden outbreak of clowns just here.

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Joel Franey

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