Commentary on the status of Bobcats in Louisiana by Wiley Hilburn, Professor emeritus at Louisiana Tech U.

Wiley Hilburn: Bobcats are back -- if they were ever gone

My source for that statement is the excellent outdoor writer Glynn Harris, who recently came across a fresh four-toed bobcat track while scouting for turkeys. "It is not uncommon to find bobcat tracks or even to occasionally see one in the woods," Harris wrote in a recent column for the Ruston Daily Leader.
Charlie Booth of Monroe, for 37 years a biologist supervisor with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) says that he is "hearing more reports from people, particularly deer hunters, seeing bobcats."

Booth said, however, that he could "not visually" account for a dramatic increase in bobcat numbers in Louisiana though habitat is improving for the small cat. "Timber thinning and clear cutting have created prime habitat for rabbits and wood rats, primary food supplies for bobcat," Booth said.

Going on line to check on the bobcat population in its whole range, from Southern Canada to Northern Canada (including most of the U.S.), I found that bobcat numbers are "healthy" or "resilient." Though cruelly hunted for sport and fur, the bobcat, largely a loner, has somehow learned to cope with humans and survive in substantial numbers. In Louisiana, it's legal to take — or kill — one bobcat a year. In all, the bobcat numbers from 750,000 to 1.5 million in the U.S.

In Louisiana the bobcat is found most prominently in hardwood bottomlands and palmetto brush and briars where its numbers remain strong and silent.The only bobcat I have seen turned up in a cage outside the Daily Leader office in Ruston during the 1950s, spitting and snarling, and I did a story on it.This bobcat, recalled from notes taken at the time, was about twice the size of a domestic cat, maybe 20 pounds, with black bars on its forelegs, prominent and pointed ears and a black-tipped stub of a tail, from which its name is drawn.
This bobcat's snarls and hisses reminded me, again, of the sounds made by a disturbed domestic cat, though of course amplified and more angry and with the courage of a tiger.

A farmer had trapped the Lincoln Parish bobcat near its den in a hollow log. The little cat was feeding on his small livestock, though its diet is mostly rabbits.As with the farmer, the bobcat has no natural enemies except for man though a Florida panther or cougar will kill the much smaller Rufus lynx.

Speaking of panthers, I asked Mr. Booth at the end of our interview if the large cat could be found — sharing space with the bobcat — in North Louisiana and, with a laugh, he said a definite no.The LDWF biologist conceded that his agency gets about one sighting a month of cougars, but that none have been verified.

For a moment, at least, the bobcat doesn't have to share its territory with the much larger cougar, which is widely believed by wildlife sources to be extinct in Louisiana.

Wiley Hilburn professor emeritus of journalism at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston or email to stringer@latech.edu.