We recently captured this rare footage of a mountain lion killing a deer fawn in front of one of our remote cameras. Notice that the puma is holding the neck of the fawn and the fawn occasionally tries to wriggle free.
This appears to be the strategy by which pumas kill their prey (at least deer). Namely that they bite on to the trachea (breathing tube) and kill the prey by suffocating it to death. A quick search on youtube reveals two more videos. In this first video, the puma jumps on the deer’s back and then eventually kills it be biting and holding on the trachea.
In this second video, the puma has already felled the deer and again finally kills the deer by holding on to its trachea.