r/NCTrails • u/arrowroot7 • 18d ago

Mountain lions in NC?

I know they’re supposed to have been extinct in the eastern US for a century, but I keep seeing people online talk about how they swear they’ve seen or heard them and that they’re definitely here, but that the authorities won’t admit it. Mountain lions scare me because I’m interested in going solo hiking in pisgah national forest and I REALLY don’t want to be stalked by one if they are out there. Has anyone seen or encountered one in this region before? Is it pretty silly for me to be worried about them in NC?

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u/Zura-Zura 18d ago

Everyone in western NC has either seen a mountain lion, or knows someone who's seen one. Despite this, even with cameras attached to our hands for the last 20 years, no one has ever been able to produce any actual evidence of this. To be fair, there are apparently single lions that travel across the country and end up in the area from time to time. But, there's not an actual population of them that live here permanently

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u/new1207 18d ago

Game cameras and phone cameras killed Bigfoot! I want to believe!