Ghosts of the Woods: Bobcats in North Carolina

Close encounters with our state’s only wild feline — the fierce, fast and rarely-seen Lynx rufus.
by Mike Dunn

Elusive, secretive, solitary — these areall words that describe one of my favorite mammals, the bobcat, Lynx rufus. Over the years, I have had fewer than 20 encounters with these masters of stealth, but each one is embedded in my memory as a treasured experience. Bobcats are found throughout our state but are more common in the mountains and coastal plain. Most of my sightings have been at wildlife refuges in Eastern North Carolina. One that particularly stands out was back in 2005 at my favorite refuge, the Pungo Unit of Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, near Plymouth. Driving on a dirt road on the refuge, I spotted an animal several hundred yards in the distance and stopped to look through my binoculars. It was a Red wolf!

The wolf was trotting down the left side of the road moving away from me. Suddenly, the wolf stopped and moved over to the other side of the road, tail tucked, glancing back. I saw something in the grass off to the left, but wasn’t sure what it was. Then it arched its back and I could see a bobcat staring at the wolf. When the wolf got beyond the wild cat, it looked back and trotted quickly down the road. The bobcat relaxed and moved on across the road, disappearing into the brush. Despite being well over twice the size of the bobcat, the wolf apparently had no interest in tangling with this fierce feline.

Bobcats are North Carolina’s only wild cat. They are twice as large as a domestic house cat, standing about 2 feet high at the shoulder and weighing from 15 to 40 pounds, with males being larger than
females. Their fur is brownish to gray, with white undersides and dark bars or spots. Bobcats are so named because of their short, bobbed tails (about 5 inches long). The underside of the tail is white and they have distinctive white spots on the back of their ears. Those spots are thought to resemble false eyes to deter predators and they may also help kittens see and follow their mother in low light.

Those white spots were an important clue for my only local bobcat sighting. In February of 2004, I was leaving the trail at Mason Farm Biological Reserve in Chapel Hill just after sunset. I walked up to my car and in the dim light I noticed what looked like a very large house cat sitting out in the field beyond the parking lot. Then it turned its head and I saw those white spots on the ears and knew it wasn’t an ordinary cat. It got up and sauntered over to the trail I had just walked and headed down the path. I grabbed my camera and followed at a distance, managing only a couple of photos before it vanished in the fading light.

Though I have not seen one with my own eyes on our property, my trail cameras have captured quick videos of bobcats seven times in our woods in the past few years. Most have been at their usual activity times, from the dark of night to crepuscular sightings (near dawn and dusk), though one was during the middle of the day. My wife Melissa and I have searched for tracks and scat but have never found any sign of their presence. Their activity patterns closely match those of their usual prey, such as rabbits and small rodents, though a large male bobcat can kill even an adult deer by pouncing on it and biting it in the neck. Bobcats are opportunistic feeders and will take advantage of almost any available prey.

Twice over the years, I have seen bobcats with waterfowl. One was at sunrise, carrying a dead Snow goose through a field at Pungo. When we stopped the car to watch, the cat dropped its meal (we felt bad about that) and crawled on its belly almost like a snake until it reached a ditch. It got into the water, crossed the ditch into a line of trees and disappeared. On another winter visit to the refuge, when waterfowl are abundant in the fields feeding on waste grains and winter wheat, I saw a Tundra swan flopping on the ground a few hundred yards away. A small group of swans stood nearby, necks stretched in an alert pose.

With binoculars, I saw a bobcat hanging on to the swan by the neck while the large bird (weighing up to 20 pounds) struggled to escape. The swan eventually did pull away and flew off, but I could see blood on its neck. The bobcat retreated to the ditch, from where it no doubt had ambushed the feeding bird, and disappeared.

Such is the usual encounter with bobcats: a brief view, often in poor lighting or hidden by brush, making it difficult to clearly observe or photograph. That is why any time you get even a few minutes with one of these beautiful creatures out in the open, it is especially meaningful. I’ve been lucky to have had two such experiences.

One day while driving the roads at Pungo, I spotted a bear across the canal sitting at the edge of the water. I had to drive past and turn around to get it on my side of the car to photograph. After a few photos, the bear stood up and wandered back in the woods. I started to back up to turn around, and when I looked in my rearview mirror, there was a large bobcat coming out of the woods behind
me.

It stopped for a few seconds, looked at me and then slowly walked down the road. I finished turning my car around and slowly followed the big cat (it must have been a large male) for about 50 yards before it headed back into the roadside tangle of bushes and vines. My favorite bobcat incident happened late one hot September day about a decade ago. Once again, my wife and I were driving on a dirt road in a part of Pocosin Lakes NWR that is rarely visited by the public. We turned a corner and spotted something far down the road, but we couldn’t quite tell what it was since it was walking away from us.

When it turned, we could see it was not a deer (no long neck) and not a coyote or wolf (it had a short tail) — it was a bobcat. We drove slowly towards it and it walked off the road into the vegetation. I have read that bobcats (and many other animals) will sit quietly while you drive or walk by and then come out and resume their travel after you pass. So we drove slowly, hoping to see it sitting in the bushes (we didn’t), but then went well beyond where the cat had disappeared. We parked in the shade of a lone pine tree and got out.

We sat against the back of the car so as to minimize our human forms and waited. In just a couple of minutes the bobcat came back out into the road and continued walking our way. At one point it stopped, slowly crept to the side of the road, and pounced. It stayed hidden in the grasses for a minute or so, presumably gulping down whatever small creature it had caught, then headed towards us again.

We were taking photos and watching intently as the cat approached, stopped, and, to our surprise
and delight, sat down in the middle of the road. It just stared at us with a sleepy look, occasionally turning its head to look around. It sat there for a few minutes and then slowly got up, walked to the side of the road, turned and vanished. Melissa wanted to get up right away and see how close it had been. I suggested we wait as it might just come back out.

Many minutes went by without any hint of its presence, so she got up and paced off how close it had been when sitting in front of us. As she got to where it had walked off the road, it suddenly bolted from its hidden spot in the bushes and ran farther back into the shrub thicket. All we saw was moving vegetation as it evaporated deeper into the thick Pocosin vegetation. It had stopped and may have just been watching us all that time, without us being able to see it.

Turns out it was only about 30 feet from us. In all, we spent a little over 15 minutes with this beautiful ghost of the woods. Magical moments like this are why we spend time outdoors — and why we so appreciate our public lands and other wild places.

This article originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of WALTER magazine