A colleague of mine claims to be friends with some game officials. He also claims that they will privately acknowledge that there’s a small native population of cougars in areas south and east of the Great Lakes. They are strongly dis-incentivized to acknowledge this publicly for a number of reasons.

1. Cougars in Ohio? That probably means that they’re some sort of sub-species with endangered status.
2. Scary for locals? Sure. But the odds of an attack on human by a privacy-liking predator (who have plenty of tasty deer to eat) are vanishingly small.

Basically, it just means a lot of paperwork and hassle for them with little to no positive effect.

In the unlikely event one is killed and the carcass can’t be denied, it’s always a “rogue male who wandered out of their native habitat in the UP or Canada somewhere.” (Somehow swimming solo across lakes Michigan and Eerie, or maybe hitching a ride on a ferryboat seems more reasonable than the obvious conclusion that there is a small breeding population).

ETA - On one hiking trip in Ohio we found a deer’s spine and pelvis up in a tree, about 8 feet off the ground. Maybe a human put it there, but I can’t think of any animal (that’s supposed to be here) that would have. Weird shit.