Sunday, March 27, 2005
Bobcat comeback: Endangered cats spotted in northeast Indiana
By Amy Oberlin
This bobcat photograph was taken by a trail camera mounted in a rural Steuben County swamp by hunter and biologist Scott Banfield of Angola. The Indiana Department of Natural Resources have added Banfield’s photos to a growing number of recent sightings in northeastern Indiana. Photo contributed.
The lakes area offers varied habitat for Hoosier wildlife. Deer roam everywhere, waterfowl make their homes here, rare fish and mussels swim in the lakes and streams.
Recent sightings also reveal bobcats in northeastern Indiana. The secretive cats might live right under the noses of rural residents without ever showing a sign of their presence. A pair of bobcats have been photographed by an Angola hunter on a swampy plot in northwestern Steuben County.
“It’s just neat to know they’re out there,” said Scott Banfield, who operates a lake management company locally.
Earlier this month, a vehicle struck and killed a bobcat near Nevada Mills in Steuben County, said Scott Johnson, Indiana Department of Natural Resources non-game biologist.
Around the first of the year, Johnson added, a “nice-sized animal” was documented in Porter County, near Valparaiso.
“When I was driving home (Thursday) ... something ran in front of me that looked unlike any animal I can think of, except maybe a bobcat,” said Jeff A. Smith, Lake James. “I saw it crossing (C.R.) 275N, west of the health club, in the vicinity of the bridge over I-69.”
Fred Wooley, interpretive naturalist at Pokagon State Park, said he heard a report of a bobcat this year in the Pleasant Lake area.
“You don’t see them that often,” said Wooley. “They’re quick moving. They’re wary.”
All these recent sightings might lead one to believe the bobcat population in northeastern Indiana is growing. Or, due to increased development and a growing human population, the bobcats are being driven from their hiding places into more public areas.
“There’s a lot of neat habitat up there,” said Johnson, who works out of an office in Bloomington. “Those four counties (Steuben, DeKalb, Noble and LaGrange) are considered our natural lakes region.”
Bobcats are considered quite rare in northern Indiana, and even more rare in the central part of the state. In southern Indiana, a tracking program has been in effect for the past several years to assess the activity of Hoosier bobcats.
“We’ve radioed 37 different cats over the course of the study and we’re tracking 12 cats right now,” Johnson said. At this time, the DNR is wrapping up its final trapping season. It will equip its last bobcats with radio collars to be followed by researchers.
Bobcats are currently an endangered species in Indiana. Under the Indiana Endangered Species Act, purposeful capture and possession of the animals is illegal.
The large, bob-tailed felines are more common in western states, and even hunted. Indiana may have more bobcats that originally thought, said Johnson, and the endangered tag could eventually be removed.
The current study does not aim to put a number on the Indiana bobcat population, but rather to study the cats’ behavior. Johnson said biologists have learned a lot from the way the young disperse from their natal areas.
Documented sightings are recorded by Johnson’s office to help DNR biologists estimate the health of the bobcat population in the state. Among those documented sightings are the photographs taken early this year by Banfield, who works as an aquatic biologist in the tri-state area.
Banfield hunts a property in rural Steuben County, and set up an infrared-activated camera after noticing tracks in the snow in January.
“I thought they were coyote tracks,” said Banfield. “You couldn’t see the foot pads and the overall shape of the foot.”
He followed the wind-swept trail several hundred yards. When he found a fairly recognizable specimen, he photographed it and posted it on his Web site: indianapredatorcentral.com.
“There’s a guy that’s from Indiana but he lives in Arizona right now,” said Banfield. “He said, ‘Yeah, that’s definitely a bobcat track.’” The shape of the footprint matched, as did the way the animal moved and where the tracks went.
“It’s a real thick, shrub swamp,” said Banfield. “Parts of it deer don’t even get back into.”
Bobcats prefer dense, thick cover and are often found around wetlands. They range 35 to 40 square miles during breeding season, and live in a 5- to 50-mile territory.
The 15- to 30-pound creatures are nocturnal and eat mainly small mammals and fowl. They are recognizable by their short, “bob” tails and tufted ear hair. Their coats are a tawny color, reddish or grayish brown, with dark streaks. Their undersides are generally white.
To capture an image of a bobcat, Banfield mounted a trail camera 21 inches up a tree near where he saw the tracks. He smeared beaver scent on the tree, due to bobcats’ supposed propensity to hunt beaver; prepared the camera; and waited.
The trail camera snaps a photo at an infrared cue — when a warm-blooded or otherwise heat-producing body walks in front of it. Banfield programmed it to take a picture every minute the stimulus was in sight.
“The first couple of weeks we got a new snow,” Banfield said. His camera caught what might have been bobcat tracks. Then, he said, he thinks the cat “turned and went behind the camera and it looks like it went up behind the camera and sniffed it from behind ...
“So I turned the camera around so it was facing the swamp.”
He again scented the tree, and also scented a stick that he threw into the camera’s focal area.
“I left the camera out for a month straight and didn’t touch it,” Banfield said.
When he returned, he had captured 19 photographs. Two of the pictures were of himself. Two showed nothing. Three were of a stray dog. There was one photo of a raccoon and another of a coyote. The rest were of bobcats.
From conversations he’s had with Steve Craig, a hunting guide in Arizona who originally lived in Indiana, Banfield believes the cats are a mother and a daughter. They also could be siblings.
“There isn’t much of a size difference, but one of them is smaller,” said Banfield.
Bobcats are generally solitary creatures, though litter mates have been known to stay together for extended periods of time. Female young sometimes stay with their mothers through the winter, said Banfield.
He will continue to document the cats, and has set his camera up to be checked in a week or two.
Banfield’s photographic study is a procedure also used the by DNR.
“It doesn’t surprise me that he’s got photographs of cats,” said Johnson, who received copies of Banfield’s pictures. “They’re just so good at avoiding people and kind of elusive that it’s kind of neat when you can pick one up on camera like that ... It’s another confirmation in Steuben County.”
A bobcat was trapped on Crooked Creek in Steuben County in 2003, Johnson said. A dead cat was collected by Conservation Officer Jim Price in the spring of 2003 on S.R. 120 near C.R. 700W.
Those were the first sightings in Steuben County since January 1993, when a bobcat was struck and killed on the Indiana Toll Road.
A live bobcat was found in a trap northeast of LaGrange in 1998. There have also been a handful of other sightings in the four-county area over the past decade or so.