I keep seeing a lot of videos of Americans encountering mountain lions in urban settings. Have you seen one? Are they common? What precautions do you take if you see one?

34 comments

  1. No, it’s rare, people just have 4K cameras in their pockets and we’re increasingly building stuff in their habitats.

    Precautions? Make noise and be aware that they’re in the area, if one wants a piece of you, you are fucked.

  2. Yes.

    Often enough I guess, yearly.

    I see them in the actual mountains though lol. I am always armed, but mountain kitties don’t really worry me. I’d rather see a mountain lion than a moose.

  3. I have not, but my parents had a mountain lion in their yard a couple months ago. This was in a small town, not a city, but still a developed residential neighborhood not immediately adjacent to wildland.

  4. I’ve seen mountain lions twice. Only ever saw a Florida panther on a game cam though, they’re a lot more skittish.

    You treat mountain lion country the same way you treat bear country. Make noise as you hike or camp, don’t leave food out, keep an eye out for cubs and get the hell away if you see them, and keep one in the chamber.

    Honestly those rules apply to just about every predator except gators, which you’re ***significantly*** more likely to run into around here.

    Making your presence known and avoiding babies also applies to non-predators like moose, bison, or hogs, which are equally dangerous. If not moreso due to people underestimating them or not respecting how badly they’ll fuck you up rather than any fault of the animal itself.

  5. I have seen one while hunting in Texas. And was only seen for 30 to 45 seconds and it was back in the cover again.

  6. I have spent approximately 9 months over here he past 30 years hiking and camping in remote wilderness in California. Last year I finally saw a mountain lion – crossing the dirt Forest Service road, lit up by the car headlights. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t seen me. They are highly skilled at avoiding being seen. Fortunately, I don’t look or smell like deer, the favorite food of mountain lions.

    But that’s the backcountry. More and more homes are being built on the edges between suburbs and the wilderness. Combined with the perennial droughts, lions are forced to come in closer to human habitats in search of food. While they would prefer a nice haunch of venison, hunger will motivate them to take a taste of family pets and eventually…

  7. I drove past one that was prowling along the side of I-70 just east of Topeka at about 3:00am
    It was unmistakable.

    A coworker of mine has pictures somewhere of one he encountered in town here. It was pretty late at night and was near the edge of town. It must have wandered in while hunting.

  8. Like once while camping as a kid. Heard them a couple other times. They spook easy, the one I actually laid eyes on GTFO without me doing anything in particular.

  9. When I was about seven, my cousin and I were stalked by a cougar at a family reunion in Montana while we played a little ways away from the main gathering. I never saw it, but a relative spotted it and several adult family members scared it off.

  10. No. But my dad shot one at some point. I’m not 100% on the story there.

  12. I did see one once in a place where they are not generally supposed to be. People tried to convince me I had mistaken a bobcat (small, no tail, a slightly more frequent sight) for a mountain lion (big, tail, very strange to see).

  13. I have not personally seen one, but they are common in the area where I live. People catch video of them on their ring cameras strolling around their yards — usually at night. They’ve also been photographed on trails walking distance from my home.

    The biggest precautions we take are keeping pets in at night. No outdoor cats around here — if the mountain lions don’t get them, the coyotes will. I also avoid hiking alone around dusk.

    I live in a suburb in an area that has been built up since the 1950s/1960s, but we are surrounded by green space. Forest fires of the last few years seem to have driven more predators into inhabited areas, or maybe the ubiquitous security cameras have just made us more aware of their presence.

  15. I grew up near a fair number of bears and mountain lions, and I’ve seen more bears in person than mountain lions. Mountain lions don’t seem to walk around in the daytime that often. I have, however, heard mountain lion screams and those are terrifying.

  16. Not in a true urban setting. When I lived in Utah I saw a couple when I was in a car late at night on the highway.

  17. For 95% of Americans, not common at all.

    There are none where the majority of people live.

  18. I have never “officially” encountered one. However, I took my daughter on a hike back in 2016 (she was 4). I got a creepy crawly feeling up my spine and literally stuck her in my backpack and double timed it out of those woods. A week a later the local elementary school was reporting a mountain Lion stalking kids on the playground. [Mountain Lion near school](https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2017/05/15/Prowling-cougar-caught-on-camera-near-Oregon-elementary-school/4961494861725/)

    I also saw one back in 2002 when I was deer hunting with my dad (as a teen) back in Missouri. I was sitting on his deaf side and he didn’t understand why I was trying to not freak out at 13.

  19. No mountain lions here, but bobcats and black bears sometimes get close to people’s houses

  20. Not outside of zoos, but one shows up every year or two and kills peoples goats and dogs in the neighborhood

  21. They’ve been spotted on trail cameras in my area but they tend to stay away from populated areas, coyotes tend to be a much bigger concern

  22. I’ve always heard that if you see a mountain Lion you’re fine, it’s the ones you don’t see that you have be worried about. I also have a mountain Lion conspiracy theory but that is outside the scope of this question.

  23. I have never seen one in the wild. They are supposedly extinct in Virginia and Tennessee, and Georgia has only had three credible sightings in 25 years. It’s sad really. I prefer that both the mountain lion and myself keep our distance from each other. It’s unusual to come across one in urban settings.

  24. North Carolina has listed mountain lions as an extirpated species as far back as the 19th century. However, there have been alleged firsthand sightings of mountain lions in the western part of the state over recent years; yet none of those sightings have been officially confirmed.

    We do have bobcats here, and it is possible that larger specimens have been mistaken for mountain lions, especially from a distance.

  25. Round my parts there is a saying, “If you see a mountain lion, it’s because it already decided not to kill you.”

  26. I do a lot of hiking and camping in the Adirondacks in NY, and so do most if my friends and family. No one I know has seen a mountain lion. There are debates about whether they are in NY or not because people report sightings but there hasn’t been verifiable proof. I saw one dead on the side of the road in rural North Carolina once. We have a ton of coyotes. We can hear them at night in the woods behind our house, but we have never seen them. Black bears, bobcats, and foxes are also common and we’ve seen all of those.

  27. I’ve seen them at a distance several times in Wyoming. It’s when you don’t see them that’s scary. I backtracked to a cabin through snow one year and saw cat prints following mine. Never heard or saw that one.

  28. Yes. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and they were fairly common. When I was little they would run around the woods near my house at night. The sound they make is similar to human screams sometimes and I used to be so scared before I realized it was them. I have also had to run into my home with my dog after noticing one run up the hill towards us. It’s a good thing the dog was with me. It started freaking out which is why I realized it was there. If I didn’t have my dog with me I never would have noticed it until it was too close for me to escape

  29. Encountered a mountain lion on a hike in the Rocky Mountains. He stalked me for quite awhile before giving up. I stopped often, waved my arms and screamed. He seemed confused by a bipedal primate with a loud voice. Fortunately it worked.

  30. Why, yes. I did have an encounter.

    We bought land in a small town. Nothing had been there before. Building finished by late spring. In summer, we discovered that we could open the windows on either end of the house all night, the house stayed cool all the next day. So we did that every night.

    One night about 2 months after moving in, I was reading in the bedroom, windows all open, cat watching for new fun things out the window. Suddenly, the cat hisses and leaves at about Mach-4. Weird, I thought to myself. Must be something out there. Wonder what it is? Couldn’t see through the screen, so I shut off the light.

    Cougar. Right outside my window. Y’all my window was 5 full feet off the ground with nothing under it, but that didn’t prevent a whole cougar head and neck from being about 6 inches from my face.

    I very carefully slid out of bed and walked backward out of the room, staring at the cougar. I shut the door and went to pee. No shame in saying that scared me to peeing.

    We thinks she may have been after the steelhead.

  31. I live in area with them. It’s really rare to actually see them because of how elusive they are. Attacks are rare and if you see one it’s because they want you to see them.

  32. Never in person. Someone near my neighborhood caught one on their backyard camera a few months ago though

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