The last mountain lion in New Hampshire was killed in Lee in 1853 — at least, that’s if you believe the state’s Fish and Game department. And plenty of people don’t.
Despite a lack of any conclusive evidence for the past 150 years, people across the state have been swearing for decades that mountain lions still roam New Hampshire.
But why? Why — despite the absence of any verified photo, irrefutable nature camera footage, roadkill carcass, or other solid proof — do so many Granite Staters persist in the belief that New Hampshire still harbors mountain lions?
To answer that, I started on Facebook.
There are multiple local Facebook groups where amateur mountain lion enthusiasts post about potential sightings. “NH Mountain Lion Discovery,” with more than 11,000 members, is among the largest.
“This group was made to be an organized attempt at proving the existence of mountain lions (Puma concolor), also known by other names including catamount, cougar, panther, and puma, in the state of NH,” reads the group’s description.
Some members are adamant that they’ve seen one.
“I am sure I saw one but could not get a picture. I know it was not a bobcat,” wrote one commenter, Maureen Sowa.
Others, less so.
“Basically people got bored with hunting sasquatch, so they pretend there are cougars in New England,” posted Leland Lance Wood.
Mountain lions once stalked New Hampshire’s wilds, but unregulated human development razed much of the state’s native forest. This irrevocably changed delicate ecosystems and led to the extinction of the eastern mountain lion.
Now, North American mountain lions’ habitat range is limited to the western half of the continent. They usually only come as far east as South Dakota, but dozens of people still file mountain lion sighting reports in New Hampshire every year.
Believers debate whether a small population of eastern mountain lions survived or if western mountain lions are making their way to New England. A confirmed western mountain lion was killed in Connecticut in 2011, traveling over 1,000 miles from South Dakota.
In New Hampshire, each mountain lion report ends up on one man’s desk: Patrick Tate, a Fish and Game biologist. At his office in Durham, he is the keeper of a thick stack of files, full of sighting reports dating back to the 1980s.
For each report — whether they include photographs, paw prints, or scat samples — Tate’s conclusion has been the same for years: Nope, not a mountain lion. Instead, he often tells people they probably saw a bobcat or even a large housecat.
“Some members in the public would tell me that I'm completely wrong, and that I don't know what a mountain lion looks like,” he said.
For Tate to confirm a sighting, he would need definitive evidence — like a DNA sample. But he's been in the role since 2007, and that has never happened.
But, Tate says many people refuse to take no for an answer. Tate thinks a lot of this stubbornness has to do with the state’s libertarian flair — and skepticism of public officials like himself.
“I don't want to say we're anti-government, but I will say we are low trust as a human population of government,” he said.
In this spirit, some private citizens have taken up the mantle of finding proof. That includes Karac St. Laurent, an amateur cryptozoologist from Exeter. He defines cryptozoology as the study of “animals who are not supposed to exist.”
St. Laurent has conducted numerous cryptozoological investigations around New England, looking into the Danville Devil Monkey in New Hampshire and Lake Champlain’s supposed monster, Champy.
But he said he was drawn to the mountain lion mystery because the species did definitely live in New Hampshire, at least at some point.
“Out of all the urban legends and things that I investigate, I found mountain lions interesting because they're not like a made-up thing,” he said.
Three years ago, St. Laurent and some friends heard rumblings about mountain lion sightings around Hampton Falls, so they decided to investigate themselves. Along the banks of the Taylor River, they heard a mysterious screech.
“We've been looking through local wildlife, and I can't find anything that matches nearly as well as a mountain lion,” St. Laurent said.
They recorded the expedition and put the results on YouTube.
St Laurent never sent that tape to Fish and Game, so he never got an official state response to that question. But he thinks maybe constantly getting told “no” has only made believers more unwavering.
“No one likes to have their experience written off,” he said. “So that brings an emotional charge into this kind of interaction.”
Today, St. Laurent is still working to get to the bottom of the mountain lion mystery, and is working on another YouTube documentary on the topic.
But here’s the thing. Patrick Tate at Fish and Game hopes one day St. Laurent or another amateur mountain lion enthusiast brings him the definitive proof he needs.
“As wildlife biologists, it would be the best day of our lives to be able to say, there's a mountain lion in this state,” he said “There would be nothing for us to hide.
Until then, the hunt continues.
