80's (or earlier) post-apocalyptic novel with a sort of mountain man with a animal companion

Question

I read it in the early 80's and it might not have been new then. I think it was a Del Rey published paperback but not sure.

• It was mostly one man with a mountain lion or wolf or similar apex predator as a companion.
• It was set long after whatever happened to destroy modern society.
• He knew someone (maybe old gods) had been there long ago but were gone now.
• Vaguely similar to the beginning of Battlefield Earth, but is older than that.

Answer 1

Andre Norton's Star Man's Son, (sometimes called Daybreak 2250 A.D.)

It's post-apocalyptic, and the lone hero has a large cat companion. I read it first in the early 80s, so it immediately popped into my mind when I saw your question. It was published in 1980.

Fors was a mutant. He did not know what drove him to explore the empty lands to the north, where the great skeleton ruins of the old civilization rusted away in the wreckage of mankind's hopes.

But he could not resist the urging that led him through danger and adventure, to the place where he faced the menace of the Star Men.

Two centuries after an atomic war on earth, a silver-haired mutant sets out on a dangerous search for a lost city of the ruined civilization.