Page 30 - May/June 2019 W.C.T. Magazine

28nWCT
Continued from page 27
trap requires some thought. With the exception of chicken leg eating bobcats, getting a bobcat into a trap requires some forethought. If the area is secure from interference by the public, the trap should obviously be set where a bobcat can find it easily. The best location is where a depredated chicken or pigeon has been cached. Remove the poultry and place the trap over the sight or nearby in a patch of brush. Avoid making the cat walk across an open area. You can often add to the attraction by adding small pieces of tinsel above the trap to catch the cats’ attention. I’ve also used the lid from a jar with a hole punched in it, suspended from a limb on a piece of fishing line, so it twirled in the wind. If the public has access to the site (or neighbors can peer over fences) you would not want to attract the extra attention.
The trap should be covered with brush, grass or set well into thick cover to make the cat comfortable entering it. In high end neighborhoods, it’s unlikely you can gather enough brush from their hedges to cover the trap, so you’ll want to go prepared in advance. For traps with a wire bottom, placing a thin covering of soil over the wires
A bobcat cage trap set. Notice the amount of cover placed over the trap to blend it into the area.
will increase the cats comfort level and greatly increase your chance of catching the bobcat. This, again, may require some preparation, as you’re not likely to be able to dig up soil in a well-manicured lawn.
Bait needs to be placed within the trap visible from the open door and should be something the cat is accustomed to eating (chicken leg aside). If there are rabbits in the area, hang half a rabbit, with the hide intact, from the top of the trap at the back. Make certain that the cat has to step on the activating plate in order to get to the bait. The
back of the trap also needs to be blocked so the cat can only get to the bait by entering the trap.
If bobcats are killing poultry, some trappers will wire a second cage trap to the back of the cat trap and put a live bird inside. Chickens are good for this use, as they will often cluck at night when separated from other chickens. Obviously, the trap used to hold the live-bait needs to be completely protected so the cat can only see the bait from the front of the capture trap. Poultry should be placed in the live-bait trap at dusk and removed the next
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