cougar / bobcat dynamics.

[Slagiatt]

So ive been buying up every book on cougars and bobcats i can find, and ive yet to find any detailed information about the effects cougars have on bobcat populations. So there is a lot of public land around my area, and it has a very heavy population of both, and from what ive seen there bobcats seem to have no problem living in cougar infested areas. Now a little over a year ago i bought a 21 acre chunk just a couple miles from the public land im talking about, and i started hanging plenty of cams this summer. I have what seems like ideal bob habitat, with plenty of snowshoe hares and grouse. I have yet to get any bobcat pics, nor find tracks in the snow, but i have a ridiculous cougar presence here. I lost count, but at least a dozen times since july ive had cougs on cam here, and its at least 6-8 diff cougs. So is this why i dont have bobcats? What do you think?

 

[Spidicus]

When I lived in the spokane area.. I'll be damned if I ever caught a bobcat on trail cam. Got everything else on camera. That's 3 years of trying to capture a bob

 

[Harvey7]

I have seen trapped bobcats eaten by Mt lions. They don't seem to be friends.

 

[rainshadow1]

Yeah, that overpopulated (lions) corner of the state had to have some effect.

Bob's and Cougars cohabitate pretty well on the Peninsula, but I've run Bobcats off over there switching to Cougar vocals on a stand. I know they give them the right-of-way. Killed two Cougars and about 6 Bobs over there though. Most deep winter snow drives produce both kinds of tracks. Not sure why the discrepancy in NE vs NW, but there definitely is.

I had a bobcat come out into the blood trail of my first Cougar and follow it for a ways. That was weird! It turned off them after about 100 yds, might have been coincidence, or curious, or too stupid to know what blood it was smelling, I dunno.

Found a few different Bobcat deer kills there too. They're usually yearling deer, but still... ambitious!