Bobcat eating my chicken, and I miss!!!

M

middle of somewhere

Joined
Oct 19, 2012
Messages
7
I need some advise on bobcats.

I came home last night to find a bunch of feathers around my chicken coup. 10:30pmish.
Count the chickens and one of the seven is missing. CRAP! Go inside eat some food, i was in a soccer tournament earlier that night.
So the wife and I go back outside with a flashlight and the .22lr.(shoulda got the shotgun) Start looking around and about 40 feet from the coup in the dead chicken with a cat near it. WTF have the wife do a cat check. We have 4 and they are all inside(they never mess with the chickens anyway) So I'm creeping up to this thing and it is BEAUTIFUL, not huge but bigger than any cat with long legs. Its looking at me and not caring. So I take my shot and MISS. It jumps a couple feet in the air and then takes off. Tried following but no luck, woods were logged 10yrs ago and are thick with small stuff. Got the dog out and she couldn't find anything. About an hour later I hear it killing a rabbit in woods, but couldn't find it.

I guess i'm going to have to keep the cats in at night(....which they hate) until I take this thing out.

I can't believe I missed that shot,, so mad at myself. I think it was because there was no light and I could see the cat, but not my sights. I usually just shoot from the porch where the porch light does my sights and the flashlight gets the target(usually possum)

So right now my plan is go deeper in to the woods with a distress call and try to lure that sucka out again. It seemed really bold, until it heard the gunshot(shoulda doubletapped lol).

I live in VA and have never seen one until now.

Any advice is welcome.
 
"shoulda got the shotgun".
Yes, you should have. The one Bobcat that I have killed was really hard to kill. I wouldn't use a .22 on one without a sitting still guaranteed head shot.
Take the shotgun and some heavy loads. Any predator call will work on them.
 
Those BoB cats are pretty animals, they kind of remind me of felix the cat, any way I hate cats of any shape or color, blast its head clean off with some buck shot. If theres any thing left hang it on a pole in front of the coup to let others know they aren't welcome.
 
As long as you have chickens, it will probably be back. If you try calling it with a distress call, keep in mind that bobcats are much more deliberate in stalking than other predators (coyote), so don't expect an immediate response.
 
yeah as long as you have chickens he will be dropping back in. once he gets over his first scare. just set out there near the coup out of sight and wait for him.
 
Maybe you should put a treat out in the open for him. Give him an offer he can't refuse :) Then BLAM..

Good luck with the hunt..
 
A friend of mine was having a similar problem with his chickens, killed them all except one and then started going after his goats. He isn't much of a hunter or shooter so he asked me to help him out. I towed my dad's pop-up camper over and set it up about 30yrds from the chicken coup and goat pen, I set up 2 halogen lights with a motion sensor on a pole off to the right of the coup, and staked down (stake em' down or the varmints will just pick them up and run off) a couple dead hens in the area lit by the halogens. Stocked up the camper with beer, snacks, coffee, DVD player and a space heater. When an animal goes to feed on the carcass the motion sensor kicks the light on and you shoot. I shot 5 coyotes, 2 foxes and a bobcat there in 8 nights in the pop up. Chicken coups are like a buffet for predators, and once they find a solid food source they'll always be back.
 
My neighbor behind me had a chicken coup. One night I heard very loud and shrill chicken "screams". The next day I spoke to my neighbor and asked about the noise. He said a "predator" killed all eight of his chickens. I had seen a Fox earlier in the evening which are prevalent in my area. Either that one fox or multiple foxes killed those chickens. He has since given up, and no longer has chickens. Our area is too suburban to shoot at anything, and he isn't willing to go through the hassle to trap them as that is what I had recommended.
 
For a real fix you need make your chicken coup predator proof or else risk losing all your birds. Its never one cat, its many cats. Shoot one and you will just end up shooting more and still be losing livestock.
 
Traps are the way to go. My grandfather often had a time with predators getting at his chickens, he would often trap them and get rid of them. It'd take much more time and effort to wait on it to come out, whereas a baited trap will always be at the ready. But as with any predator you should expect more than one. Because tangling with those things.
 
For a real fix you need make your chicken coup predator proof or else risk losing all your birds.
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If one bobcat found the chickens, then others will undoubtedly follow. As well as coyotes, stray dogs, feral cats, foxes... Spend the rest of your life sitting outside at night guarding chickens and killing wildlife, or just fix the darned chicken coop and be done with it? :)
 
Bob W said:
If one bobcat found the chickens, then others will undoubtedly follow. As well as coyotes, stray dogs, feral cats, foxes... Spend the rest of your life sitting outside at night guarding chickens and killing wildlife, or just fix the darned chicken coop and be done with it? :)
Click to expand...

This. We have coyotes coons bobcats opossums and probably a few more critters. I built my coop with base boards buried a foot in the ground then I laid asphalt shingles horizontally out from the bottom of the base boards.
 
middle of somewhere said:
I need some advise on bobcats.

I came home last night to find a bunch of feathers around my chicken coup. 10:30pmish.
Count the chickens and one of the seven is missing. CRAP! Go inside eat some food, i was in a soccer tournament earlier that night.
So the wife and I go back outside with a flashlight and the .22lr.(shoulda got the shotgun) Start looking around and about 40 feet from the coup in the dead chicken with a cat near it. WTF have the wife do a cat check. We have 4 and they are all inside(they never mess with the chickens anyway) So I'm creeping up to this thing and it is BEAUTIFUL, not huge but bigger than any cat with long legs. Its looking at me and not caring. So I take my shot and MISS. It jumps a couple feet in the air and then takes off. Tried following but no luck, woods were logged 10yrs ago and are thick with small stuff. Got the dog out and she couldn't find anything. About an hour later I hear it killing a rabbit in woods, but couldn't find it.

I guess i'm going to have to keep the cats in at night(....which they hate) until I take this thing out.

I can't believe I missed that shot,, so mad at myselfI think it was because there was no light and I could see the cat, but not my sights. I usually just shoot from the porch where the porch light does my sights and the flashlight gets the target(usually possum)

So right now my plan is go deeper in to the woods with a distress call and try to lure that sucka out again. It seemed really bold, until it heard the gunshot(shoulda doubletapped lol).

I live in VA and have never seen one until now.

Any advice is welcome.
Click to expand...
We have been losing at least one chicken or turkey poult per night, sometimes two at a time. The predator usually leaves behind feathers, the backbones or breastbones, large leg bones and feet and all of the bones are well scrubbed of any meat. There doesn't seem to be a specific pattern of where the remains are found as we free-range our poultry, nor is there a specific time of day or night when the damage is done. If the bones and remains are left during the day, they are usually gone the next night but there's also a fresh kill at the same time. We are surrounded by woods and the predator leaves our geese, adult turkeys and ducks alone, all of which are much bigger than the turkey poults or chickens. The rabbits that remain outside in a colony have been left alone as well. We also have a lamb, cow, miniature horse and rabbits that are in a barn at night, although not in stalls, and the barn is kept lit at night. We suspected a raccoon until now, but we've just learned a bobcat has been seen in our area, so now I'm wondering, especially since our neighbor came by for eggs and mentioned there were remains left at his place - on the next street over, which seems like a long way for a raccoon to carry what he described as a bird much larger than a chicken (likely our larger 6-month old poult which went missing yesterday). Anyone have any suggestions?
 
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Bobcats are easy to trap, even in a live trap. When we used to coon hunt with hounds, we would tree them and they'd jump and run when we got close. One night the hounds caught one after it jumped and three big hounds had a hell of a time killing it.
 
Probably raccoons as from what I understand, bobcats will take the kill to their young, or eat what they can and move on, kills on multiple days sounds like raccoons, everything dead is more like foxes. A live trap with dog kibble or bait wired to it is a good start, if the trap is tripped with no animal in it, then it's raccoons, since they quickly solve getting their accomplice out of the trap. Kill trap only if you need to, otherwise just make harder targets, even free range chickens do better with a closed coop overnight. But also make sure everything else is sealed, a lit barn means nothing to a raccoon if it can get into cages. Last time I delt with raccoons, we just made it a very hard target, killed about a half dozen then they stopped bothering. Probably just a population surge. But once they couldn't get to the chickens they took a 35lb turkey who wasn't quick enough to get airborne.
A couple trail cameras will also help you know what's in your yard at night and help you make choices. Not a big investment for what they offer.
 
My paternal grandfather was a farmer. He had barn cats and two collies. And no problems with predation.
 
Dragon_Man said:
My paternal grandfather was a farmer. He had barn cats and two collies. And no problems with predation.
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For that you need smart collies, our yard dog was a scott/border mix, and was... not bright. Only racoon she managed to tree was the one that mistook a yard power pole as a tree, which she then fell asleep at the bottom of (Racoon did not do so well, as it found no cover at sunrise). But that said, we had neighbors who only knew they had a racoon in their yard by the look of their dog's muzzle (one blood hound, and two rottie mixes. But their yard never had small kids in it, so in some ways you make the choices and compromises that fit. Our barn cats were useful to a certain degree for mice and such, you you would need an army of very determined and hungry cats to deal with norway rats, and they always seemed to give foxes a pass. But individual attitude matters a lot in cases like that. In fifteen years on the farm we had a racoon problem for about six months all up. before I just left the live traps out and the cats learned that food wasn't for them.
 
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