This cat was killed in 1984 in Marinette County, Wisconsin, which is “up Nort’.” This cat weighed 48.9 pounds.
That’s the largest official record for a bobcat, but there have always been unconfirmed claims of bobcats weighing as much as 60 or even 70 pounds, which is close to the size of the Eurasian lynx. I don’t automatically reject these claims, but I am very skeptical of them. It is possible that there were very large bobcats at one time, and these were killed off as European settlers moved in. However, they were not weighed and fully documented, so we don’t know if these claims are true.
Without this important documentation, we have to accept that the largest bobcat on record was this Wisconsin bobcat.
Bobcats vary greatly in size. 12 or 13 pound queens are not unusual in much of their range. It is only in the northern parts of their range where the toms get so large. These largest bobcats actually weigh more than the Canada lynx, which does not have such wide variances in size.
Amazing! The ones I see here are not large at all- they’re of a size that I can see how people buy the ‘Pixiebob’ marketing hype, not much larger (but more massive) than a housecat.
I wonder if Texas bobcats can hunt deer.
The ones here are really good at it. Deer are their main prey item, as strange as it sounds…
http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/index.php?/scattershooting/article/do_bobcats_kill_deer
[…] These traits also exist in the bobcat species, which varies from as little as 9 pounds to as much as 49 pounds. […]