Bobcat hunters in Northern Michigan are starting out with a plentiful harvest in the Upper Peninsula this season.
Debbie Munson Badini is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. She says, “Right now it looks like the bobcat population in the northern Lower Peninsula is stable; whereas in the U.P. the bobcat population is actually starting to go up after a few years where we were seeing a possible decline.”
Badini says hunters need a fur harvester license to hunt or trap bobcats in Michigan. They also need to get a kill tag from the Department of Natural Resources and register any animals they have harvested during the season.
Hunters are limited to harvesting one bobcat in the Lower Peninsula during the season. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources require hunters who want to kill another bobcat to harvest in the Upper Peninsula where there is a larger population of bobcats.
Badini says that, "over the past 5 years hunters have harvested an average of 680 bobcats each year." This year the harvest is expected to to be within the same range.
The bobcat hunting season ends March first in the upper peninsula and northern counties in the lower peninsula.
-Lindsay Hall, Michigan Radio Newsroom
