There is a difference between, for example, a frequent outdoorsman seeing something in an open field, and a city person seeing something in the shade in dense woods. People misreport things all the time.
Of course there is a difference. At the same time, you cannot inject that overarching bias against every sighting in the east. There are a lot of people that are just as familiar with wildlife as “trained field biologist”. I grew up with a community of such people. If they saw comething, you could be assured it wasn’t a feral dog, coyote, or wolf. I suspect there are similar people on the east coast.