How to Track Bobcats

Video Transcript

"We’re Nick and Valerie Wisniewski with Expert Village.com. We would like to talk to you about bobcat trails and for more information, you can check out our website at www.walnuthilltracking.com. Bobcat is a seldom seen member of the wildcat family that we have here in the northeast and throughout North America and the bobcat shows 4 toes in its tracks. Very rarely shows claws because it has retractable claws. The bobcat has a fairly robust heel pad and in between the heel pad and the toes is a c-shape, that is one of the distinguishing features of a bobcat track. Another thing that you look for in a bobcat track asymmetry of the toes and the heel pad. Sometimes it looks almost like the toes and the heel pad are pointing in different directions. Other features to look for are the leading edge of the heel pad is a bi-lobe and on the trailing edge is the tri-lobe. In other words, 3 lobes in back and 2 in front. Other animals like wild dogs do not have that feature. The bobcat is a very efficient mover and when it is moving around the landscape they prefer to move in a walk. Often times it will move in a direct register walk like we are trying to show here where a hind foot lands on top of a front foot. A bobcat when it is walking has an extremely variable stride that it can do. It can go anywhere from about 11 ¼ inches to 25 to 26 inches, but on an average it is going to more around 14 ½ to 16 ½ inches in between these steps on the ground. The trail tends to be wide which is a distinguishing feature and if we look at the trail with this particular example that we’ve laid out here, it should be fairly typical; about 4 ½ inches almost, a little over 4 inches and again that is going to be variable. In a bobcat it could be anywhere from 3 inches to 5 3/8 or so wide. The general impression when you look at the trail it is that it is wide for the distance that it is covering."