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Density estimates are critical to proper population management and conservation, yet difficult to obtain for many wide‐ranging or cryptic species. One proven method used to quantify carnivore density, especially species difficult to individually identify from photos taken by camera traps, utilizes overlapping home ranges of individual animals in the study area. This method, however, may be particularly prone to residency and extrapolation biases. Residency bias occurs when the reference area for the density estimate is incorrect, and extrapolation bias occurs when scaling a density to a different spatial extent than that of the study area upon which the estimate was based. We used a simulation approach based on GPS locations to diagnose potential biases in published densities of pumas Puma concolor from Patagonia, where Franklin et al. 1999 (Biol. Conserv. 90: 33–40) reported ‘minimum’ densities of 6 and 30 …