New Hampshire’s 402 groundhog records include a sighting as recent as July 2026, and not a single one falls between November and February.
Open ground, not deep forest
A groundhog digs its burrow in well-drained, open soil, pasture, roadside cuts, field edges, rather than the dense, shaded interior of a mature forest. New Hampshire’s Merrimack Valley farmland and the cleared, sunny margins around the White Mountains’ towns and ski areas fit that description far better than the closed conifer canopy deeper in the mountains, which is why records lean toward the state’s open and edge habitat rather than its deep woods.
A record gap that matches true hibernation
The complete absence of records from November through February isn’t a reporting gap, it’s the animal itself: a groundhog is one of the few true hibernators in New Hampshire, dropping its body temperature and slowing its heartbeat for months rather than staying active like most of the state’s other mammals. Records pick back up fast in March as animals emerge, then peak in late spring and early summer during mating and active foraging.
Status in New Hampshire
The groundhog is native to New Hampshire, and NatureServe ranks it S5, secure. Its preference for open, sunny ground over deep forest keeps its records concentrated in the state’s farmland and forest-edge country rather than the interior White Mountains.
