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What’s for dinner, bobcat? A look at the dining habits of this elusive predator

A bobcat carrying a freshly killed eastern cottontail across an Illinois field in March 2025. Bobcats are one of its most common prey species across the Midwest, especially in areas where forests meet open grasslands. (Photo by Max Allen)

Bobcats often feel almost familiar; like an animal we should easily understand – but that sense of familiarity can be misleading.
They are common enough that most outdoors people in Illinois know what one looks like, but elusive enough that seeing one still feels like an event. A few seconds of movement at the edge of a field, a tail disappearing into brush, or a set of tracks in mud or snow is often all the evidence they leave behind.

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