State sees high bobcat trapping numbers
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Bobcat
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LAKE COUNTY – High fur prices created a lucrative pull for trappers to take to the woods last year and more incentive to break the law.
“We saw more steel out in the woods this year trapping than anyone has seen in recent times,” Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Captain Lee Anderson said.
Many of the traps were meant for bobcats. The pelts of the animals can fetch anywhere from $300 to $1,000 in the present market, a 30-year high. In the most recent season, 145 trappers claimed 300 bobcats, according to Anderson.
Fish Wildlife and Parks ramped up its efforts to enforce trapping violations because the agency knew high prices might incentivize people to ignore regulations.
“We got a lot of reports of abuses from people,” Anderson said.
The outlaws got creative in their rule breaking. Some held animals from the previous year in a freezer as a way to get around the state’s quota system. In one case a man trapped a bobcat in the North Fork/Flathead area where the quota was closed and drove to Havre to claim it in a region that wasn’t closed. State Game Warden Ron Howell was able to work with other wardens to catch the man and issue a citation.
“If you are from Kalispell and are reporting one in Havre – it’s done, there are people who go all across the state (to hunt) – but we’ll look into it. We may make them go back to a kill site, which they are required to do,” Anderson said.
Although trapping bobcats is against the law on the Flathead Reservation, a minefield of traps lie just beyond the border.
“If you go over by Dog Lake towards Plains along the reservation line there’s literally a set, I’m not kidding, sometimes 10 feet apart,” Howell said.
“There are just lines and lines of sets, right against the reservation line.”
Howell issued citations to trappers in the Dog Lake area who went a half-mile into the reservation to place their traps.
“You could see tracks where these guys had been all over the reservation looking,” Howell said. “It’s pretty popular.”
Some of the cases required some clever thinking, but others were more straightforward.
“If you’re going to do it, you don’t want to leave your name on your traps,” Anderson joked.
