The Best Way To Catch Beetles In Animal Crossing: New Leaf

So here’s what you do.

Cut down all the bushes and pluck all the flowers. This minimizes how many bugs you have crawling on your island, because you’re only really looking for those big, shiny beetles. I felt kind of bad about this personally, so I opted to keep one bush and the flowers. I still get butterflies, but not nearly as many.

Cut down most of the trees on your island. You’re only going to leave two palm trees and two oak/fruit trees towards the front of the island. You’ll want them in as straight a line with one another as possible for easier viewing/more efficient hunting.

The trick here is that the game will spawn beetles around the island, but with only four trees for it to pick from, you’re creating an ideal tree set-up to best catch the most beetles in the least amount of time. It’s basically like your own trap.

Here’s a step-by-step visual tutorial of what you should do and what it should look like when you’re done:

Cut these three palm trees down. You can see the hut in the background for reference. (It’s the left side of the island.)

Continue down on the left side and this is one of two palm trees you will keep.

Keep on going and cut these two trees down.

Cut cut cut.

Cut one, keep the other.

In the middle of the island, cut that middle tree down. And get rid of the bushes (and flowers, unless you felt guilty like me).

And, finally, cut all four of these guys down, too. Including the oak tree sitting on the grassy area of the island.

As Patricia already mentioned, forgo the green fruit beetles and focus on the stags and bigger creatures. She has a nifty list of beetles and their prices in her article that I’ll copy here for your reference:

Miyama stag beetle: 1,000 bells

Dynastid beetle: 1,350 bells

Saw stag beetle: 2,000 bells

Scarab beetle: 6,000 bells

Goliath beetle: 6,000 bells

Atlas beetle: 8,000 bells

Cyclommatus beetle: 8,000 bells

Elephant beetle: 8,000

Giant stag beetle: 10,000 beetles

Rainbow stag beetle: 10,000 bells

Hercules beetle: 11,250 bells

Golden stag beetle: 12,000 bells

With this minimal tree set-up, you won’t scare the beetles off as easily when approaching them, because you can run back and forth on the opposite side of the island and approach the beetles head-on rather than running around the island to get to them all. Though I’ll often run around anyway in search of finned fish while waiting for more beetles to spawn. You just have to slow to a walk if you’re approaching them from the opposite end of the island.

Stick to this method and you’ll be bringing home hundreds of thousands of bells per island trip. Makes that 1G cost seem like pennies, doesn’t it.