Here in North Carolina you go on line to NC Wildlife and fill in a form requesting CITES tags. You can request however many bobcat and otter tags. A week or so later you get them in an envelope in the mail. So let's say I order 10 bobcat tags. I get the tags and only catch 2 bobcats. I put a tag on each one as required.

What happens next? The fur buyer doesn't even look at the tag closely, just makes sure it has one. Each tag has a serial number on it. At any point in the travels of my two bobcat pelts does anyone check that serial number and reference it back to North Carolina and hence to me ordering that tag. Next year I still have 8 tags so don't need to order any more.

At any point is any record made of those tags on the bobcats? Or is it all just a normal government BS program?

If/when those bobcat/otter pelts cross the border - say going to the FH sale in Canada or a fur dresser in Cambodia - the numbers are checked by USF&W . And they check every single one very carefully. The exporter will have supplied USF&W with an itemized list of all the numbers. If a number is wrong - digits transposed - that cat is seized.

Every state I have got bobcats in they are supposed to attach the CITES tag to them. I have often done it myself so the ladies in the office don't have to get their hands all bloody and catty, but they watch and make sure you clip the tag. Different states have different requirements but usually they are something along the lines of "they have to be tagged within 10 days of the close of season". But technically you can't legally cross state lines with anything that requires a CITES tag without having it tagged. I have however hunted places where the only access in and out of there is through another state and you have to travel through another state to get to a Fish and Game office in the state where I harvested the cats. The people I dealt with had common sense and never hassled me about it. I do know a guy who was hunting one of those areas and got stopped in the adjoining state with an untagged Bobcat and ended up having to go to court over it though.

Our cats have to be tagged at Game and parks offices here. They would never ship or hand them out that I am aware of.
Every cat I’ve taken to our local office gets tagged there. They take down some of my into. (Name, etc) and some info on the cat too (what county taken, how it was taken hunted or by trapping, and gender of the cat).
Jim

In Michigan we have to check our cats in at a DNR office in order to receive the CITES tag. Only one cat allowed per year in Lower Peninsula, short season, and if you’re successful then you have to check it in within like 3 weeks of close of season. The DNR employee keeps the skull for genetic testing (sucks, you’ll never see it again) and they supply the CITES tag during the visit. They have to watch you place the tag.

So even though your fur isn’t leaving the country, some of them still needs a CITES permit state to state?

In VA you can check them online and request a CITES tag. Eric

It’s nationwide on certain species, a federally required program, and the way it is implemented varies incredibly between states. Its implementation varies from fur buyers having the tags and doing a little paperwork, to some states requiring you to jump through all kinds of hoops. Most young game wardens don’t realize the program isn’t about protecting the states otter or bobcats. It’s a pitiful attempt to protect “look alike species”. Endangered spotted cats and endangered species of otter. Ocelots, amazon river otters, etc.

We check and register deer and turkey over the phone or the computer. An otter or bobcat requires a face to face, a list of questions, and the physical seal attached to the varmint by a game warden, many of whom will try to tag the animal around the leg because they don’t know any better.
It’s stupid, as most federally required wildlife programs are.

What a bloody gong show!

I always wondered about this as some states toss a pile of cities tags at you over the counter and others, like here in MN, will seize your animal if you don't you don't have everything aligned just right throughout the entire process. But when asked, nobody knows why or how or when, or....

But then if you get your fur tanned, you can toss the tag in the trash.

Seems Clay's post (especially the last sentence) has summed it up for me as to what I suspected to be the case all along.

Thanks for chiming in, Clay.

If I understand to correctly, it is an international thing, not even federal except in the sense that the federal government signed onto the treaty. You can't export any spotted cats, or otters from country to country without a tag and the feds passed it on to the states to implement as they see fit. In Oregon you have to turn in the lower jaw in order to get it tagged, no jaw, no tag, no exceptions. (I once chopped off an upper jaw and turned it in when my dog ate the lower jaw when I had my back turned, but I'm not sure that I informed the person doing the tagging it was an upper jaw). Idaho recently decided they wanted lower jaws, but it is not a requirement, they will however pay you ten dollars per lower jaw if you turn them in when you get your cats tagged. Wyoming most game wardens have Cites tags and can tag your cats for you, Idaho, Oregon, Washington you have to go to a Fish and Game office during business hours to get them tagged, Utah and Colorado I think the same. To make it more confusing here in Idaho bobcats have to be tagged within ten days of the close of season, but otters have to be tagged within seven days of being caught and while you can tag bobcats from anywhere in the state at any regional office, otters must be tagged at the regional office in the region they are taken. A real pain since I live less than ten miles from the region boundary, and while the regional office for one region is less than an hour from me, the other one is two hours away in a direction I never go.

And yes, once they are tanned they no longer need a tag, it is only required for raw furs. I was once tagging my bobcats in Oregon and a guy brought in an already mounted bobcat he had gotten that season and mounted himself, they looked at it (this was at Jewel the one place I know of in Oregon that is not a regional office, but is allowed to tag bobcats, and the one place where you will get a biologist rather than the secretary running the front desk to do the tagging) and told him he didn't need the tag but they filled out the info on their paperwork and snapped a tag together and cut it in half (I'm assuming so he couldn't put it on another bobcat) and handed it to him.

Here on cats you give them the carcass or the lower jaw to get a cat tagged.

FYI ALL wild cats are the list it has nothing to do with the bobcat being endangered.

And at least 1 state (Illinois) CHARGES you for Cites tags. I think like $7 or $10?

If those officials in the know, don’t know a Missouri bobcat from an ocelot or a cheetah……………….
DOGE needs to get ahold of this program lol.

Idaho also charges, a per cat price and a per visit. I think it is up to $3 per cat now and like $2 per visit, so if you come in once at the end of the season it doesn't matter if you have one cat or forty cats, you get charged $2 plus $3 per cat, if you come in every time you catch a cat and get it tagged immediately you are charged $2 each time plus $3 per cat.

I've heard a few people claim it isn't legal for them to charge for tags, but they have been doing it forever, so I very much doubt it is illegal or someone would have challenged it in court.

Also a few years ago Colorado didn't have tags and was giving out IOUs to hunters and trappers to bring their cats back in later to get tagged. I don't believe they got tags until after most of the fur auctions were over that year, so anybody who harvested a cat in Colorado wasn't able to sell them at auction that year.

So some states just take the CITES guidelines and run with it for staying in country but crossing state borders?
Yikes, sure makes things easier having a direct number to the permit desk & legal lady here!
https://cites.org/eng/app/appendices.php

Yeah, Illinois tags are $5 and a $2.50 issuing fee at whatever store that sells hunting licenses. So, $7.50. Just another way Illinois generates revenue to waste on Chicago.

In Oregon we pay $35 per card for cites critters. 15 otters per card or 15 west side bobcats or 5 east side (all-state) cats. Biologists record the info from the card and seal the tag. Another biologist in. Corvallis ages the teeth to determine critters age at some later date.

With the data we have the antis have a hard time arguing that the populations are being harmed.

Here in Pa, you need a $6.97 permit to take a bobcat or otter. Limit is one each. When you get one of them, you need to contact the PGC within 48 hours and report where, what and when you caught them. ( or shot, bobcat ). The PGC then mails you a CITES tag to affix to the pelt. You normally get them within 5-7 days.