Phantom Prowler

The Series

StatusUnder Development

Go and look. Properly.

Phantom Prowler: The Hunt for the Eastern Cougar is an unscripted documentary series, under development, that takes one question into the woods: are there cougars in New Brunswick?

With Ryan Groom, host and producer. A Trekkit Studios Ltd. production.

From the producers of Trekkit ATV comes the next adventure.

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The premise

The United States has ruled the eastern cougar extinct. Canada’s official answer is “data deficient”.

The New Brunswick Museum has received “hundreds, if not thousands” of cougar reports it has been unable to confirm. Its curator has said some of them “do seem quite credible”.

The host of this series says he has seen one twice. The second time was in June 2025.

Two records, and they do not agree. Phantom Prowler will go into the New Brunswick woods to test one against the other. It is led by a producer with a stake in the answer, and designed to be checked by people qualified to say what the evidence is.

The record, with sources Ryan’s own account

At a glance

Title
Phantom Prowler: The Hunt for the Eastern Cougar
Genre
Unscripted documentary series
Status
Under Development
Setting
New Brunswick, Canada
Host and producer
Ryan Groom
Production company
Trekkit Studios Ltd.
Format
Episode count and running time to be set with a commissioning partner.
Looking for
A commissioning broadcaster and funding partners.
Pitch deck
Available on request.
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In development with the support of Trekkit Studios and the Government of New Brunswick. Pitch deck available on request.

Trailer

Nothing on camera yet. Trailer coming soon.

How the series works

This is the design of the show, not a progress report. Three threads run through every episode.

The field investigation

The search is designed to work one region of New Brunswick at a time, with trail cameras, hair traps and ground surveys, alongside trackers and scientists. Much of the work will be patience, and the series lets it be. The forest will be filmed from the ground and from the air, as a character and not a backdrop.

The human story

People who have seen a cougar in this province will tell what they saw, in their own words, and be heard out. Beside them the series means to put former wildlife officers and scientists on both sides of the question.

The science

Whatever the field turns up will go to people who can say what it is: DNA analysis, track casts, scat. The result will go on screen whichever way it falls. DNA tests on two suspected New Brunswick cougar sightings found bobcat, CBC News reported in January 2017. A series that wants to be believed has to be ready to report an answer like that.

The tone

Grounded, intelligent and personal. It has the rigour of a natural-history documentary, and it is carried by a host with his own reason for asking.

It is not:

  • a monster hunt;
  • believers and sceptics shouting at each other in the woods;
  • a foregone conclusion. The series cannot promise what it will find. If it finds nothing, it will say so.
A dark sky full of stars above a black horizon, with the faint band of the Milky Way rising from a glow at the skyline.
The night sky from Mount Carleton, late June 2025.

Two ways in

If you commission or fund television

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If you have seen one

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