What are your thoughts on coon and otter carcasses or fleshings for bobcat bait. I got a coon and otter yesterday and got to thinking I had never tried either for bobcat bait. I’ve used otter gland content on coyote sets for a change up and had great results. I never used the carcasses for bait though.

Down here nothing eats otter, not even the buzzards. The only thing we use them for is crab bait. Maybe you can use them up north, but down here its a no-go for bait.

Ive not heard they make good bait but ive heard cats are very interested in the otter glands

I know coyotes like otter gland. I used to have a property I trapped which took me next to a major river. Some of my coyote sets were within feet of the river. A friend had trapped it in previous years and told me how he would occasionally catch an otter in on of his coyote sets. He’d take the glands out right there and evacuate some of the juice in the catch circle and reset. He said is was great for coyotes.

Whenever I’d catch an otter in a coyote set I did the same thing and almost alway caught one or more coyotes on the otter remake.

Up here, put a coon on a carcass pile and it will still be there after everything else is gone. Crows may pick at it but nothing else seems too interested.

Like Tony said. Coon in these parts only the maggots and vultures eat

It's the same thing here, they'll lay there until they melt down. Now maybe if you used the back end with glands attached you might catch something. But that would be a curiousity response to the glands rather than a bait response.

The only thing I've seen eat a coon carcass was marsh hawks in weather like were having now...with days in the teens.

I've got Johnny Thorpe's Eastern Coyote DVD. He used to hang coon carcasses up in trees for a draw station. Probably more for the odor and eye appeal of buzzards, but he still put them to use.

I would say those are the worse things a person can use for bait, I know especially here.

In Ray Milligan's "Coyote Fever" book he will put a coon head down a badger hole or other existing large hole with success apparently. Like others suggested this might be a curiosity thing rather than a food-driven thing.

Coon carcasses certainly draw eagles. I’ve seen 11 at one gut pile I put out. And had them circling my truck when I dropped off the next days catch. On a good day, the pile would be gone. On a bad stretch, the site was completely picked clean in 2 days. What the eagles don’t take, the hawks, crows and smaller birds do.

Bobcat will feed on coon and fox carcasses, but beaver and muskrat are certainly preferred.

I have a few bobcats coming in my yard where I chuck some carcasses. They will cover the coon and fox with grass and munch on them a little. Smaller stuff gets dragged off. Beaver disappears super fast.

Otter doesn’t get eaten but you can see where they sink their teeth into it, probably like a curiosity sort of thing, the same way a house cat rubs again and bites stuff. They will rot though.

Only things I ever had eat otter carcasses was wolf and wolverine. Ravens might pick at them but mostly not.

I throw out otter carcasses along with my beaver. If a cat comes along it will cover both. When the beaver runs out they will eat a little on the otter sometimes. Not always.

I’ve had stacks of otters not touched. Canines and coons aren’t favorites but will eventually get eaten.

Try to use what is the best not what is most available to to u. You will be a better trapper.

Up there where the OP is, coyotes and bobcats may feed on anything they can get their mouths on, lol. I imagine their winters are a lot different than down South or places where there’s much better offerings.

My response was while I was in Alaska, (40 years' worth). It can be hungry times in dead of winter, and otter carcasses left on the beach, where most everything comes down to eventually where I was trapping, would mostly get ignored by everything other than wolves and wolverine. Mink might take a sniff, but that was it.