KODY TUFTS
THE MOUNTAIN BOBCAT “What was I missing? I needed to know this cat’s schedule. I needed to know what he was hunting and when he was hunting it, and how often he was coming through the area.” On December 8th around 7 a.m. he set foot in front of my trail camera for the very first time. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This was no ordinary bobcat. The first half of the 2021 trapping season wasn’t overly kind to my trapping partner Adrien and I. By the end of November we had bagged a fisher, a coon, two bobcats and several fox. However, that bit of success came at a cost. I had a coyote stolen, we both had several sets vandalized, and a miscommunication with a landowner of a prime piece of property led to a temporary loss of trapping permission. We decided to take the week of Thanksgiving off as we knew the deer hunting pressure would be high and we could use the rest. Sadly, between his work picking up and morale being hit pretty hard, Adrien couldn’t join me for the second half of the season. Rifle season came to an end and now not only was I trapping new ground, I was doing it alone. It was a piece of property that I had hunted for years, but only had a few coyote sets in the log landings closer to the road earlier that season. Fortunately, although there was still two weeks of muzzle loader season, the only people hunting the property this late in the game were my dad and my older brother. This fact, along with my plan to go up further than any
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