Want to make serious bells in Animal Crossing: New Leaf?
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.
Click here for Kotaku’s step-by-step visual tutorial of what you should do and what it should look like when you’re done.