Inspired by the recent thread where someone actually recognised an issue of a girls annual!
So this was a typical teen girl book from at least 40 years ago. Protagonist was a teenager (Judy? Susan?) who lived in the country. There was a plan to hold a paper chase through the nearby hills, except it can't have been paper because the plot revolved around it being a trail of meat.
The trail setter was running through the bracken (I remember this specifically as I had to look it up; our local area had gorse not bracken) throwing out the meat for the runners to follow. Hmmm surely it would have been dogs scenting out the trail rather than people? Also, would they normally just toss out chunks of raw meat randomly on the hillside?!
Anyway, the twist is that there was a LION loose (abandoned? escaped?), finding the meat chunks, and planning to pounce on the hounds/runners as they came by later on. The heroine (Kate? Pamela?) somehow saves the day, avoids getting mauled by the lion and everyone goes home for tea & biscuits (and possibly barbecued meat)
Hope someone remembers - now I think about it, it seems wildly unlikely that they would be throwing bits of meat all over the place, even if there wasn't an escaped lion crouching in the bushes.