A rabid bobcat’s attack on an 80-year-old woman in Sunapee has renewed calls for a limited hunt on the animal.
New Hampshire Fish and Game withdrew a proposal last year to introduce a 50-permit lottery for trapping the cat after the plan engendered fierce public backlash and objections from the Legislature.
Now, the New Hampshire Trappers Association will once again ask the department to reconsider the ban that’s been in place since 1989 on hunting and trapping the short-tailed feline.
Paul DeBow, trappers association president, remembers a frequent objection often lodged against the hunt — bobcats don’t cause problems.
“And I said: We’ve got rabies out there. If rabies gets to them, we’re really going to have trouble,” he said on Tuesday.
The Monitor reported on Tuesday that Sunapee woman fought off the cat with a sickle and the help of her five dogs.
She reportedly received dozens of stitches for bites and lacerations to her face, arms and back. The bobcat was killed by her son, and public health officials later confirmed it was infected with rabies.
Rabid bobcats — with confirmed cases in Massachusetts and Connecticut this year as well — along with frequent sightings in residential areas, could be a sign that the animal, once in decline, has rebounded and then some.
“It’s all pointing to a significant increase in the population in the region,” Patrick Tate, wildlife biologist with Fish and Game, said on Monday.
Rabies in bobcats is rare, Tate said, and disease, along with starvation, will occur when a predator is becoming overpopulated — or nearing “biological carrying capacity.” Nothing can completely eliminate the possibility that an animal will be infected with rabies, he said, but controlled hunts can be a useful tool for keeping populations healthy.
“I will say that managing a wildlife population can lower the negative interaction rate between humans and lower the disease transmission rate between animals,” Tate said.
And DeBow said that’s precisely what trappers want — to help keep the population sustainable.
“We want a balanced, healthy population of furbearers,” he said.
Any initiative to bring back the hunt is sure to be met with intense resistance, as it was previously.
“I don’t think we should be trying to justify hunting or trapping bobcats because we had one unfortunate incident,” said John Harrigan, who co-founded the New Hampshire Wildlife Coalition to lead the charge against the hunt when it was first proposed.
A longtime hunter and outdoorsman, the Colebrook resident said he’s opposed to hunting bobcats because they’re trapped for their fur, which is sold commercially.
“I believe in eating what you shoot,” he said.
Harrigan also cast doubt on the idea that there might be too many bobcats in the state.
“I don’t think that we know what the capacity is,” he said. “Those are loaded phrases: too many, not enough. Those are loaded phrases.”