What's your go to Bobcat bait?

beaver first then deer scraps

homemade bait loaded with valerian, caster and rat glands

Deer scraps

up here and with a 1 cat limit,i'll watch for a big track in an area and target it.-we have a lot of cats.then i'll hook a rope to a fresh beaver and drag it from the road in to where i'll be settin,make 2 cubbies with big chunks of beaver and drag the rest back to the truck for the next stop if need be.

be careful with big baits in PA as they must be totally concealed from the air/above.

good luck,mine from last yr.

Nice cat. I will be setting as soon as it opens.

Agreed BEAVER w/ feathers or better yet junker beaver w/ fur still attached and murdered

They like most parts of a deer up here.

Osky

Game bird or duck wings . Been my favorite for awhile . Exposed traps and visual stuff .

generally jut catch them with my cat meat bait. This morning had one on a big piece of flank meat off a deer i killed this weekend. I do notice that cats and fox prefer fresh bait while coyotes like it better a little tainted. But either or will work.

beaver works good but RABBITworks the best put a rabbit on a leanning pole if cats are in the area ,you are golden.

We can't have visible bait or use any animal or bird parts for flagging.
Thanks for all the replies. Nice cat pcr!

My daughter and i each have a Wi cat tag. We have been getting some picture on the cameras and are going to set this weekend.
Has anyone very used the cleaning from rabbit pens to keep them around a set or to draw them in? My kids raise rabbits and the crap and urine mix that they clean from the pens is very strong smelling. And around here i notice the most cat sign in or near the thickest brush were we find rabbits. Seems like they would come to or spend some time checking out a gallon or two of the rabbit pen cleaning? Has anyone used this?

I think the rabbit stuff could be attractive to a cat but remember,one of the most important principles is to be right on location,then use your best attractants to try to get the cat to commit.Good luck to you both.

We will be using for tinsel and goose wings too, and have the location figured out from the camera pictures. But was thinking the rabbit pen stuff would just keep them working the set a little longer and i cant see how the smell wouldn't help to draw them in. Plus we have barrels of the stuff.

Carp, chicken, jackrabbit, beaver.

Check the regs on the goose wings.

Domestic geese should be fine just make sure you use a bird that you can prove is not a wild one like a white one.

"Valerian, Castor and Rat Glands"

Wouldn't that make it a lure?

ML

you can call it anything you like. i call it a prepared bait. critters like it. i catch more using a prepared bait, or lure if you prefer, than i do a straight bait with nothing added. rabbit fur, feathers etc are good too. probably have some odor value as well but i think primarily sight value. people always talk about visual attracters for bobcats, a good idea imo, but you rarely hear about visuals dealing with coyotes. visuals at coyote sets are a good idea to. just more subtle than a lot of the stuff people use at cat sets.

Beaver waterfowl upland game birds and deer up here Taximan is right location is the most important part of bobcat trapping

I think I catch more cats at walk thru the flat sets lured than any type of baited cubby or dirt hole. I completely agree with location being the biggest thing when I am successful, so I set travel ways, choke points, and other places that I know draw cats. A pond dam would be a place I always set.
Good luck.

If you have a fair cat population I cant imagine you not doing well. It is so easy K Miller can do it LOL

Here's an idea I heard once that I never tried, but I was told it is great bait. It will probably only be practical for guys who live on the coast though.

The guy would cook his dungeness crabs whole, then he'd peal the back shell off, clean the crab, put the guts in the shell (shell acting as a bowl) and that would be his bait. He swore by it.

That's been my way of doing it. An old timer told me the only thing you had to remember was a bob cat is just a cat.

I think I agree. Bobcats can fall to the most random of things just like a barn cat

A cotton ball hung on a string was his thing for bobcats, I don't think I have ever tried it though.

Thx for the replies

It was beaver and violator 7

Crab has a very loud smell. I hear people do well on coyotes with crab.

Me and my daughter each have a tag for the wisconsin season. She had an early season and me a late season tag. While i don't claim to be an expert, we used rabbit pen cleanings for both bait and lure. We used tinsel as flagging and made sort of a walk through cubby with rabbit pen cleanings on both sides of the walk through. In 3 days her tag was filled with a 21 pound female. Looking forward to trying this set later this week when my season opens, and use it for fox and coyote. Might try some hay sets with these rabbit pen cleanings. They smell so strong like rabbit urine i would think any K-9 could smell it 100 yards away. Not sure if they check it out. Has anyone else ever tried this? I have heard of mouse nests, kind of a magnum version of that.
Here are pictures of the first cat, a 21 pound female, going to try to find a larger tom to work on in a few days.

Love your daughters pink trap and chain!!

Awesome cat Rudydog. It's great that your daughter is trapping with you!

Great looking cats guys!

Every land trap we use for coyotes, fox, and now bobcats are painted pink. I have done this for years, even before she was born. There are lots of deer and they always snap traps. And we check most of our traps from a distance with binoculars. You can see painted traps, cant see brown or black ones if the deer snapped them unless you get real close, and we try to stay away.. I have trapped for about 40 years and have still to hear why you want a black or brown trap for land trapping k-9's, white, pink, or green have always worked with zero negative effects.

Bossman Pauls Bait solution for the past few years.

Best coyote trappers I knew in my area painted all his traps bright blue. Said he rarely lost one or had one stolen. He was the county sheriff too.

Hello,
New member here, first post.....I just purchased the book "Extreme Northern Bobcat" and setup a line in northern Minnesota a few weeks ago and caught three cats in the first week, thanks Rick! The book was a wealth of information, but I have a question. If I was to hang a whole deer slightly out of reach in a cedar or blowdown to keep away from the wolves (which are devouring my bait stations) would a cat go up the tree or blow down and work the set? I am using snares now that fisher season is done, and using whole road killed deer for bait, working well. But the wolves are really tearing up the sets.

Thanks for any help!

if you hang it high enough wolves cant reach it, a cat may never find it. I have had hounds that could and would climb trees if they could first get up in the lower limbs. I have seen lots of photos of red fox and coyotes in fruit trees. I bet wolves can climb good too

Should work.

Guess that makes Appleroad bait a lure......Maybe should start putting it in smaller containers

Don't do that, I buy it by the gallon.

Billy nice pic I have been thinking about buying some of the Boss’s bait solution. What meat do you mix it with?

For the last several years an exact mix of 50/50 bobcat and beaver with all the glands.

I’m shocked so few mentioned bobcat meat for bait I thought it would of been more popular.

I use beaver or venison because with a one cat limit the meat is harder to come by. I also use Dobbins bait solution but I add to it a bit. I find I get better results with honey added for early and Castor and skunk later in the season. I did save bobcat meat this year to make some up. I like a variety.

I went to Mississippi trapping for 6 weeks last year.I asked the guy that invited me to go along if he ever used DPs down their.He said no but someone else had and not to waste my time.So I`m hard headed and I took a dozen just to try.I figured they didn`t try the same bait I would be using.I use canned carp with some honey and just a little vanilla.I catch a lot of coon on this at home.Well the coon would walk right by but the bobcat sure put tracks all around the DPs.This year I decided to try the fish bait for bobcat at home to see how it would work.I put 12 sets out and caught 2 bobcats the fourth night and had to release one.

This is a PA cat ??