According to AI, my chances of encountering a mountain lion in the wild are “quite slim.” I’m encouraged by those odds since my record is really “o-fer.” As in never.

That’s not to say I haven’t been close. Once, I had a cougar cross my path behind me; I saw their two-minute old tracks in the dust when I returned from a viewpoint. When I used to do spotted owl surveys in the canyons and forests of the Southwest, there were some nights I would swear I was being stalked by one of these big cats. Spidey sense tingled but there was nothing there when I’d turn around. But sightings? As rare as snow during the heat of a Canyon Country summer.

Of course, that didn’t stop park visitors when I was a ranger at Arches National Park from asking me about seeing “some big cat with a long tail” cross in front of their car near Balanced Rock. They thought it might be a mountain lion, but since they had never seen one, they weren’t so sure.

Mountain lions go by various names — puma, cougar, painter, panther — but they are all still just Puma concolor. In Utah, there is an estimated 1,200–2,300 individuals but that’s just a small slice of their distribution which covers from the Canadian Yukon to the Andes Mountains.

A male mountain lion’s home range is over 100 square miles, sometimes up to 400 square miles. His range overlaps those of several females whose home ranges are 25 to 60 square miles. Of course, this depends on numerous factors including prey availability, terrain, and other lions.

Mule deer are a common prey item for cougars, although they’ve been known to take elk, pronghorn, porcupines, small mammals such as jackrabbits, and even birds such as wild turkeys. They may cover the prey with leaf litter or dirt to hide it from predators and scavengers or drag it to the base of a tree. Unlike their African cousins the leopards, cougars rarely cache their prey in a tree.

In 2022, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources captured and placed a radio collar on a two-year old cougar dubbed F66. Her 1000-mile journey to a new territory crossed multiple busy highways including I-80 and I-70, saw her swim a quarter mile stretch across Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and then travel through three states: Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Researchers believe that F66 was killed in Colorado by another cougar perhaps protecting their own home territory.

Bobcats are a smaller cousin of the mountain lion that also occurs in Utah (bobcats are more closely related to lynx). These bobbed-tailed felines inhabit rocky areas, timbered areas, canyons, and even residential areas where they hunt for smaller game such as rabbits, hares, rodents, birds, and even reptiles. Though mainly nocturnal, you have a better chance of encountering a bobcat during the day than a cougar.

Both of these species have somewhat similar track patterns, which might be the best way to determine their presence. Unlike canid prints which show the claws, cats can withdraw their claws as they walk, thus they rarely show in a print. Plus, cat pads have a cleft on the leading edge of the pad and two on their rear end of the pad which looks like two bumps and three bumps, respectively, on the pad. Also, bobcat tracks are surprisingly small and cougar prints are quite large, and they both have a gait where the hindfoot and front foot almost overlap each other as the feline is walking.

Another good sign to look for when tracking cats is that both the bobcat and the cougar cover their scat with dirt and debris, so keep an eye out for scratch marks on the ground.

So even though your chances are encountering a mountain lion in the wild are also “quite slim,” UDWR offers several tips if you feel threatened: make noise, try to make yourself look bigger by raising and waving your arms and standing tall, pick up children and control pets, and either stand your ground or back up slowly but don’t turn and run as this may kick in their prey drive. If you feel safe, try to embrace the moment knowing that you’ve experienced a very rare wildlife encounter.