There’s Just Something About Bobcats

Posted On April 28, 2026

A Trail Camera Chronology

Maybe it’s their rugged beauty. It might be their elusive mystique. Perhaps it’s that distinctively short bobbed cat tail. It could simply be their spots. Whatever the case, whenever a new image graces our Monroe Wildlife Area’s trail camera array, we feel blessed.

There’s just something about bobcats.

My first bobcat sightings came in late 2021. Of course, that’s also when I began integrating trail camera technology into the Monroe Wildlife Area’s management repertoire. They had likely been there all along. They’d just been stealthily invisible before.

Over the ensuing couple of years, we continued capturing bobcat glimpses occasionally . From the varied size profile & markings, I suspected there might be more than one.

Then, beginning in the fall of 2024, for reasons unbeknownst to me, our bobcat sighting frequency dramatically increased. It may have simply been due to strategically improved trail cam placement. Once we placed a cam overlooking our series of bridges crossing our backlot intermittent stream flow & swamp, we began seeing bobcats regularly.

So we focused more cameras on capturing their Monroe Wildlife Area activity & movements.

After that initial effort’s success, in 2025 we invested in a trio of cameras, placing them on what soon came to be referred to as Monroe Wildlife Area’s “Bobcat Bridge”. I began regularly posting captured images on Facebook, where they proved quite popular. Our resident bobcat even was bestowed with a nickname: “The Sheriff”, or for those priveleged enough to know him well, “Bob”.

Then in early April our Monroe Wildlife Area trail cameras captured something truly exciting.

Though some Facebook folks conjectured that it might simply be a spring bear emerging from torpor (which would have been exiting enough in and of itself), this single image shows what I am to this day convinced was a rare glimpse of a melanistic bobcat. I sent it in to the NYSDEC on a furbearer report, but they never responded.

It’s the only such image to date that we have.

Not long after that, our cams picked up another exiting image out by what I suspected was a brushpile bobcat den.

This image looked to me like a kit.

2025 was also a great year for “In Action” photos of bobcats hunting.

As well as this image I just loved of one very wet bobcat caught out in the rain.

2025 was a great year for sightings of Monroe Wildife Area bobcats. Topping it off was this stunning bobcat profile pic.

2026 is thus far proving to be a great year for Monroe Wildlife Area trail camera bobcat images as well.

It is a privilege to share our little part of the world with these elegant wildcats. I awaken each morning hoping our array of Monroe Wildlife Area Trail cams captured some more. Every time they do, I feel blessed.

There’s just something about bobcats.

**********

Until Our Trails Cross Again:

ADKO