Funny, only cougar I've ever seen in real life was when I was a small child. The local pet shop/supply house had a cougar locked up in a plastic cage in the basement. Everyone was allowed to go down and see it. Don't know if they caught it or bought it. It just sat there and didn't do much of anything, poor animal. Anyways, I do believe (maybe I just like to believe in things like this) that there are wild mtn lions roaming around the eastern half of the country. There are so many areas, hundreds of miles of area that humans rarely ever enter. These areas, such as mountains(drrrr) would be where the mtn lions would continue to thrive. That being said, if the mtn lions go unaffected by humans there, so does their prey. Meaning, the mtn lions would never have a reason to leave their current hunting grounds because theyre doing just fine. The explanation as to why some mtn lions leave these areas would be, they chased a deer for quite some time and go lost and couldnt find its way back. Or they just wandered out and found some new area to hunt in, by accident.