Bobcat Trapping Resources

With Bobcat season ending in Missouri and no luck for me. I am looking for some books and other resources I can get my hands on to study in the off season and be better prepared for next season. What are your suggestions.


Seth

I got a lot out of Extreme Northern Bobcat by Rick Olson. Much about “Northern” but covers much for any area regarding location, scouting, sets,flagging.

Find someone in your type of terrain that catches good to great numbers and pick their brain as much as you can. One thing I'm learning is unless you have high population cat trapping is a low percentage game and you need to make up for it by setting LOTS of traps.

2X.. I know from experience.

It is really just location. Lots of gimmicks on the market for cats. Crazy disco ball flagging, synthetic smells that are supposed to make them go plum crazy, squeaking devices, etc.

None of those will help you more than being where the cats are

Once you are there a nice big dirt hole set with good bait is all you need. They seem to be fairly easy to catch for me when I am in locations that are "catty"

Thanks all for the input!

Seth, I've never trapped in Missouri before. Do you have big cutovers where timber has been cut and they have replanted pines? They will be real thick with briars

Not so much where I have access. We have property that borders Mark Twain national forest. Also have access to some private farms.

Walk every inch of the property until you find scat. When you find it, set it. If you aren’t finding tracks or scat then the odds of you catching are pretty slim. Use a flat set at the scat and across from it do like Coondagger said and put in a flashy dirt hole set. Didn’t realize until this year exactly how many cats will hit a toilet or even just two piles of scat.
Also, the “gimmicks” only work if you have cats. They don’t make them magically appear.

If you can do trail cameras try putting them out early in the fall and see where they are traveling. Get a good idea before the season arrive.

I would suggest a book called The Bobcat Trapper's Guide by Ricketts. It really helped me cement an idea about how to go about my business trapping cats. In the system that I use (and fully explained in the book) I set very few traps and my catch rate is very high.

T-man archives!!!

Thanks everyone!