Tennessee’s bobcat record runs to 412 occurrences spread across 63 counties, reaching from the high country of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with Sevier County alone holding 109 records, west through Cherokee National Forest to the wooded ravines of Radnor Lake beside Nashville.
A cat of cover, mountains to bottoms
The bobcat hunts from concealment, so it lives where Tennessee gives it cover: cove hardwood and rhododendron tangles in the Smokies, the rocky gorges of Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, and the brushy field edges and overgrown fencerows of the middle and western counties. Rabbits, squirrels, and rodents make up most of its diet, and any thicket that holds prey can hold a cat. Its secretiveness is its defining trait. Most Tennesseans share a county with bobcats and never see one; a fleeting road crossing at dusk or tracks in mud is the usual form an encounter takes.
Late winter on the move
Reports come in every month, but they crest in February and again in May. The February rise matches the bobcat’s late-winter breeding season, when males range well beyond their usual routes and both sexes travel and call more than at any other time of year. Bobcats do not hibernate, so the quieter midsummer and November counts reflect cats lying up in thick cover through the day rather than any absence from the landscape.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the bobcat S5, Secure, in Tennessee, and the species is native throughout its range here. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
