Yep, another cougar tale. What can I say? They just keep coming at me.

This latest report immediately piqued my interest for a few reasons: first, the southwestern New Hampshire location; second, an interesting photo; and third, I knew the man who wrote the front-page New Hampshire Sunday News story.

I was first alerted to the Aug. 19 lead story by an Ashfield friend who on Sunday emailed an Internet link to the online version accompanied by the vivid color photo shown below. Then, Tuesday afternoon on my Recorder desk, a reminder, this time the hardcopy Sunday News clipping sent from a Greenfield reader whose sister lives in Hooksett, N.H. The Greenfield sister learned of the story on the phone, requested it in the mail and relayed it to me.

To be honest, I was immediately leery of the photo, said to be shot in May in Alstead, N.H., by an upright 79-year-old citizen and outdoorsman who happened to have his camera along for a woodland search for shed antlers. The problem is that I’ve seen many similar photos that proved to be bogus. My suspicion didn’t fade after reading the article; it was vague, not enough detail about the witness, who was evasive, a red flag to me when evaluating a cougar tale. However, I respected the veteran reporter, longtime North Country outdoor scribe John Harrigan, a character I had met many years ago in his Coos County Democrat office in Lancaster, N.H., trusted his judgment and wanted to talk to him.

I had met Harrigan on a midday whim around 1990, when I happened to be passing through his paper’s upper Connecticut Valley town on vacation and stopped in to meet him, then the Democrat’s owner/publisher/editor, now “semi-retired” as a columnist in his 44th year as a newspaperman. I had spoken to him the previous fall, when he provided the details for an interesting story I was chasing about a Lancaster, N.H., Agway store owner who had been telling suspicious customers and coffee-shop chums about a wild boar he had seen from his tree stand during the archery deer season. Yes, it seems the fellas in town were having quite a time of it, ribbing ole Sonny Martin nonstop about his phantom Northwoods boar sighting, even going so far as to suggest his visions may have been LSD flashbacks, that perhaps he ought to have his head examined. Well, Martin fought back, putting an abrupt end to the incessant, insulting gossip when the animal made the fatal mistake of crossing his path during the rifle deer season. Martin promptly drew a bead and shot the critter dead before parading through town with it strapped to his vehicle, silencing the giggles and whispers once and for all.

This week I learned that Harrigan — the very man with whom I had laughed out loud in his upstairs Democrat office about the colorful boar story — has, like me, been a committed reporter of cougar sightings. “If it doesn’t happen in New Hampshire,” he quipped, “I don’t care about it.” Yet, a deeper probe does not bear him out. Fact is he did, like me, report last year’s Connecticut road-killed cougar and has, like me, referred many times to the laboratory-confirmed Quabbin-cougar scat samples collected in 1996 by an animal-tracking expert. So, I guess Harrigan sometimes does meander beyond his normal boundaries for stories about cougars, those elusive, long-tailed ghosts of the New England forest, and so do I.

Harrigan’s Sunday News piece created quite a stir throughout New England, went cybersapce viral, prompting him to return to his source for a follow-up. It was then that he discovered a troubling discrepancy: the photo had in fact taken at least five years ago, not this past May. Harrigan wrote the follow-up column to correct the error but is still confident his story will stand. The photo was taken by a respected professional man whose word many respected sources consider impeccable. One of the folks who swore to his credibility was none other than Ted Walski, the respected New Hampshire turkey biologist this space has worked with in the past. Harrigan believes the photo was indeed taken some 50 miles north of here, and he also believes that the man who shot it could, if pressed, find the negative to prove his claim.

A Recorder photographer who looked at the photo enlarged on a hi-def computer screen Wednesday afternoon said he could see no evidence of PhotoShop “doctoring.” True, the landscape looks like New England, but it could easily be Michigan or Illinois as well. Perhaps someone will recognize the photo as a hoax. If so, please let me know. I went through old email files and checked for Snopes.com, which has proven helpful with past photos I’ve received by email, and found nothing.