They claim they are not east of the Mississippi, they are wrong.
I saw one in the open in West Virginia.
Years ago on Sideling Hill, a hunter was crouched by a stream, hunting deer.
He kept feeling like he was being watched.
Finally, he turned around to find a huge mountain lion *also* crouched and hunting...on the tree branch right above and behind him.
No one believed him back then and the DNR viciously defended the non-existence of them *here*.
Last year, on the local rural grocery store front window, there was a big, dire WARNING! sign telling us all it was illegal to shoot the not-here lions and we would be fined $10,000 and face jail time if we did shoot any not-here cats.
At the bottom, there was a 24/7 “Mountain Lion Spotting Hotline” number we could call.
I reckon we were supposed to call periodically to report that we hadn’t see any....just to verify that there weren’t any here and we weren’t shooting them.
[the truth came out later...they *brought* them here on purpose to “control the deer poulation”...which they didn’t. Calves and lambs are so much slower and tastier]
Many years ago when I was a kid, there were “cat-a-mounts” here but farmers and hunters took care of that problem.
They’re baaa-aaack.
They’re in northern Alabama too.