I used to buy cougars and wolves and other things mostly in Wisconsin but reallyall over. There are plenty of roadside zoos all over North America including Ontario. There are supposed to be 10,000 tigers in the USA, mostly in roadside zoos, and there are only about 1,400 wild ones in India.
The only black cougars I have ever seen have been purposely dyed black to create black panthers for the movies. I do not believe there are any black ones in the wild but I have been wrong before. People commonly report seeing them but they are never shot anywhere within the cougar range.
I once caught a spotted cougar or "onca" in South America by treeing it with dogs and darting it with SCC. They are really just adult cougars with spots. In hot climates they do not grow and shed their hair with the change of the seasons so they keep their hair and spots well into young adult hood and that is really what the so-called spotted onca of tropical Mexico really is.
Cougars in the far north need either deer or snowshoe hares to survive the winter and the hares are cyclical so they are sometimes unavailable. The deer yard up where the snow is deep and if there are any cougars around they will be near the deer yards in winter.
At one time there was supposed to be a pair near Powasson which is near the Golden Valley deer yard. But there was a guy who had somepet cougars in the area and I suspect he released the ones he could not afford to feed. Its happens all the time. That is how Florida got so full of Asian pythons - pet owners released them.
