I have been looking out my laundry room window and trying to figure out what these foot prints are from...I don't think it is a dog and if it is a cat, it is a large , very large cat. I will walk back out and measure it when I am done here ...it is about a week old and the snow has been melting and the only area left is where the prints are. Here goes... I just measured and it is not quite 5 inches long...
Have there been any reports of Lynx in your area? They have been sighted in some areas of Wisconsin, coming from Canada. The Bobcat is a species within the Lynx genus. Their paw prints in snow are very similar to what you have there. If you do have them there, do not shoot them. You have to have a license since they are on a protected species list.
We don't hunt Toni so no problem. This is why we keep our little dogs in a covered kennel when they need to go out and our cat inside...
There were reports of some kind of large cat here in Oshkosh last week. I'm not sure what kind it was but I remember it was quite large. Might have been a bob cat. dooley
A cat doesn`t walk in a line with one foot directly behind the other ! This looks more like a bird track. Do you have ducks ?
We have a resident bobcat down by the pond, and I've seen her tracks in the mud. That looks pretty much like her footprints (I know she's a female because I've seen her with her kits, drinking from the pond). Sherry8, you mentioned that the snow had been melting, and where the tracks are is the remaining snow. As snow melts the tracks get larger due to loss of definition. Up north our dog tracks were normal until a melt, and then they looked as if an elephant had passed through!
Could be marlingardener...I thought the same thing. These were just under 5 inches when I took the pictures and we had snow a little bit before this was taken.. but not sure about who's they are. Now one set with the melting is really large and just looks like a round circle. Dooley...I live not far from Oshkosh, we do most of our shopping in Oshkosh or Omro. We don't get a newspaper except a small one from our town so I haven't heard anything about the large cat type.
Yikes Sherry. I hope that that large cat stays in your part of Wis. and does not travel down to Denmark, Wis. We did catch a rather large looking coyote on our trail cam.
Tooty2shoes...when we lived in New London we had coyotes. You could hear them howling and at that time we had a woods in our backyard so they had plenty of hiding spaces. Neighbors even spotted a bear close-by. The coyotes ate the road kill and when we would come home at night you could see them on the roads.... Now we have deer here ...I am closer to Oshkosh. We have a large covered porch and we find muddy prints from them there and in the ground. Once we get our grass growing we shouldn't notice the prints. I really don't want them right on the porch walking so I will have to see what we can do to keep them closer to the water... On the side of the house they are walking close to the house too...I think this was an area they used when the old cabin was here.
We've had coyotes up on our porch at night as well. As much as I hate that idea, my pets are inside at night, and lately there are no rabbits hanging around my gardens. THAT makes me happy as I had a lot of damage to my garden plants the past few years.
