Can anyone make recommendations on good instruction for eastern bobcat trapping methods? Books, videos? I’m reading and learning all I have time to from these forums and archives but I guess I am old school in wanting a book in my hands. Books or video or mentor. Or maybe direct me to a forum member to search/follow their posts and message with? Read halfway through sets and locations 2 thread so far as well as some others in archive. Location location location seems most important. Then walk throughs and messy dirt hole sets near sign. I would assume cats in the east behave similar to cats in the west. So I need to look for similar situations to set?

Do you have cats? If you have them, any set will catch them. A flashy dirthole with bait and urine to a flat set with nothing but lure will catch them. Find scat and put a set. Cats are easy to catch if you have them.

Matt Jones and Clint Locklear has a lot of stuff out and they're mostly eastern cat guys.

Us Ohio guys are still trying to figure out how not to catch cats in coyotes sets lol.

I'm from Indiana and I can't keep em out of my coyote sets

No cat expert but location seems to be about 95% of catching them. And 3% making sure they don't miss ur pan.

I’m from Indiana as well and like stated above they plug up my coyote sets all the time, so really any dirt hole or flat set will catch them around here.
With our pee poor DNR I don’t foresee us ever getting a season on them, it wouldn’t bother me if I never seen another one!

J Lord / TN

I’m hoping to get a chance to travel to an area where there is a season for them. Where are folks catching them in Indiana? I would guess in Southern portion of state?

Yep I agree with the other Indiana replies. Annoyingly thick in southern Indiana. I've caught them in every kind of set imaginable.

I cut timber for a living mostly in the south Eastern part of the state.The number 1 complaint I here when talking with landowners is way too many bobcats.

We have no limit here in eastern VA. And they are everywhere. I mean everywhere.

here in kentucky we have a 5 cat limit. if you turn in the lower jaws on cats you can get extra tags. we have a lot of cats.

i turn a couple loose every year.

one landowner last year said he sure has a lot of coyotes, but there weren't any cats around his place. i caught 8 there last season.

he was shocked. said hes been there for 20 years and never seen one.
told him bobcats are very elusive and you you dont see them often.

Thank you all for the replies. Wish Indiana would start a season for them. Could manage it like they manage otter. Wonder what it’s going to take to get that started?

Rick Olson has a good bobcat book.
J Lord has a great bobcat DVD
Wayne Derreck has a couple good cat DVDs
John Graham has a couple of good cat DVDs.

Probably lots of other good books and DVDs, but these come to mind.

I don’t know the others mentioned, but John Graham can stack the cats up . If you can swing it go to coyote days , he has just as many demo’s on cats as he does coyotes .
Not to mention Johns a great guy !

P.S. He did not pay me to say that ,lol .

Rick Olson – Get the book.


MTP has it in stock.


Shoot Rick a PM if you have a question. I'm sure he would be glad to help you out.