Wisconsin’s bobcat file holds 207 records scattered across 52 counties, with no single place dominating: Columbia and Green Lake counties in the farm-and-marsh country of the south, Bayfield and Oneida in the northern forests, and a long tail of single records from wildlife areas like Pine Island, Tiffany, and White River Marsh.
Marsh edges and northwoods cover
The named places tell a consistent story. Wisconsin’s bobcats turn up where thick cover meets hunting ground: the wetland margins and oak barrens around Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, the big timber of Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest and Northern Highland State Forest, and the river bottoms along the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway. Rabbits, hares, and rodents are the core of the diet, and a cat working a cattail edge or a brushy swamp border can live its whole life a few miles from town without being seen. Most Wisconsinites never see one at all; tracks in snow or a brief road crossing are the standard encounter.
No peak, because the cat never clocks out
The monthly counts barely move, from a low of 11 in October to a high of 23 in February. That flat line fits a resident that neither hibernates nor migrates, hunting its home range through every month of the year. Wisconsin winters sit near the cold edge of what a short-furred, small-footed cat handles easily, and deep-snow years are hard on bobcats, but they persist by keeping to dense conifer cover and packed trails until the thaw.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the bobcat S4, Apparently Secure, in Wisconsin, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
