I live in Greene County Ohio and am a retired SWAT/K-9 handler so I spent countless hours on patrol in the area I hunt. I don't ever remember seeing a bobcat in the area. My dad was the Chief Ranger at Glen Helen nature preserve and always told me there were a few around. Recently I have been hearing of guys getting them on their trail cams all over the place and a buddy of mine's coon dog treed one a couple weeks ago. I don't have any pics yet but its just a matter of time. Why the sudden increase in bobcat population around here and are any of you Ohio boys seeing the same thing?
Was hunting in the Wayne National Forest last fall and saw my first bobcat ever. Pretty freaking cool. Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk
Not just in Ohio it seems to me that Bobcats are starting to show up in alot of areas around the midwest. IL almost opened up a hunting season for them because the numbers are starting to grow.
KS here, but seems to be more now than ever. But then there has always been quite a few lol. I think most folks don't realize just how many are around because they are very elusive creatures. Even in spots that are full of them it isn't uncommon to never see one in the flesh. I can tell you this, they put a real hurt on the small game and upland bird populations here in the past few years amongst other things of course. I have a pretty cool trail cam sequence of one taking a squirrel from under a feeder a few months back. Pretty cool
I get at least one bobcat on cam each month on different properties. We run coyotes in the winter with hounds and usually tree or run 2-3 bobcats each year. I think controlling the coyote populations has helped increase the bobcat population along with fox.
Illinois will open to hunting, trapping or both next year for the first time. I see them every year now in the southern part of the state.
I'm in the same parts as Josh and I haven't seen any either but I'm also not surprised. There was a push in the late 1990s early 2000s to reintroduce a bunch of animals in multiple states around the Appalachians including fisher cats and bobcats to control the porcupine population. It's only a matter of time that they work their way into other states.
