Actually, that time frame was referenced by another poster. So if you have no statistics for people being killed in forests by another human, how can you then state it's the most likely cause? Since YOU made the statement, it's on YOU to back it up. We already KNOW and have PROVEN the nature of mountain lions in their habitats, which IS where this disappearance took place.
You really need to be more specific. It is a monumental task to uncover all the deaths of humans at the hands of other humans in all North American wilderness areas over an indeterminate time frame. I would never have time or resources to compile such a list. BTW humans are also inhabitants of that part of Idaho, so it is not just mountain lions that make it their habitat.
Maybe we can focus on just Idaho for a less daunting comparison. This list of fatal cougar on human attacks, which is quite comprehensive, does not mention a SINGLE human death caused by Cougars in all of Idaho throughout recorded history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_cougar_attacks_in_North_America
Here is a list of just the male murderers who killed in Idaho from 1896 to the present day. There are 22 names on the list, and a number of them were serial/multiple murderers. Since Idaho is mostly wooded to this day, and historically even more wooded, it is likely that a number of these murders occurred in wooded areas.
http://murderpedia.org/usa/idaho.htm
Amongst the killers:
"Claude Dallas is an infamous and controversial loner who killed two law enforcement officers in rural Idaho in 1981. "
These murders were committed in the woods by this "self-styled mountain man."
"In February 1896, two sheepherders, John Wilson and Daniel Cummings, were shot and killed at a sheep camp in present-day Twin Falls County, Idaho. Because he had been in the area at the time of the killings, and because he often bragged about shooting sheepherders, Diamondfield Jack was the prime suspect in the murders."
Sheep camps in Idaho in 1896 would have been located in rural areas, by default.
David Hall - "Prosecutors claimed Hall attacked Henneman, 38, on the city's Greenbelt along the Boise River, raped her and then strangled her with her sweater."
Greenbelts are wooded areas.
Dale Shackelford - "Forensic experts determined that Fontaine, 45, a Missouri lawyer, and Palahniuk, 59, a retired Newman Lake man, died of bullet and shotgun wounds at the wooded Latah County site where Fontaine and her family were building a house."
Sounds like a wooded area to me!
Charles Gillam - "Perhaps the first to die, Marie was bludgeoned with a rock, her body weighted down and dumped in a lake near Coeur D'Alene, Idaho."
In 1918, when this murder occurred, this Idaho lake would have been in a wooded area.
And finally, the sad story of Jeralee Underwood, age 11, who was kidnapped from her paper route and killed in the wilds of Idaho by James Edward Wood. She was murdered by the Snake River and her body dumped there.
Of course, this is only the Idaho murderers that were caught and brought to justice.
