I read a little piece in the paper today. Apparantly there has been an study of mountain lion
movements down near San Diego. They had something like 7 lions fitted out with radio collars and
they tracked their movements. What amazed the researchers was how often the lions went "close" to
human occupied areas and how very "close" they went. The release did not define "close" but I would
suspect that wild lions often go very near to people's back yards (like just over the fence) and I
bet they take short cuts through any areas with cover including back yards. Lions tend to be
nocturnal and they are very stealthy. They can do this sort of thing without being seen about
99.9999% of the time.
I live in central Florida and black bears end up in people's yards around here pretty often. I
figure for every time a black bear is seen, others have slipped through without being seen. A friend
of mine said he saw a black bear in his neighbor's yard and that is about 1 mile from my house.
Black bears are not nearly as stealthy as mountain lions.