Bobcat Tricks

[Justaguy]

Cats were limited in numbers where we hunted so we did not take a cat unless the dogs caught it on the ground(most of the time). Also the area we hunted was covered in heavy brush so thick that you could either walk in the tops or get on the ground and crawl for 100 of yards at a time just to get through it. We also hunted mostly at night do to the dry conditions so we could not see what the cats were doing when a track would blow up.

With that in mind, the cats we ran we ran many times and they got very good at coming up with new tricks for our dogs. But, we got to know depending on what area we started the cat in we knew which cat we were running(90% of time) and new which way they would go a lot of the time. On one occasion we started a cat, just as it was breaking daylight, that we had run many times and it started going the way it normally did. The race usually went into an area that you could not get into without walking and would go out of hearing around a mountain/hill. In a while the cat would come back into hearing about 3/4s of mile down the canyon we were in, make a loose for our dogs and go back the way it came in. Knowing this we jumped in our truck and went down to where the two canyons meet. We got there some 10 minutes before the cat and just sat a watched to see what he was doing. The cat came on a trail about half way up the mountain/hill and ran up on a rock as big or bigger than a house on the side of the canyon. He then jumped down the mountain as far as he could and hide in the brush. The dogs came in and lost the cat on the rock so they started to circle. The cat got up and went down the canyon bottom and circled the dogs and came back up to the trail it came in on and went back the way it came. The dogs circled until they hit the cats track and back they went the same way. Now we treed this cat on a few occasion when the dogs got to close but given a chance this one of many things he would do.

[cat and bear]

I love bobcats, and amazed each time I turn loose. Here our season is Dec. so we have snow, which is a benefit to see the tricks, heck, I walk behind the dogs for entertainment, to see what set of tricks will be presented today I've jumped them, and put them in a rock pile with porkies, cold trailed a big one most of the day, to end up with a bay job on bear in a den, he must have spent the night with them, he wasnt jumped yet, or just give another trick))). White ice, no snow is a good one, I sat on a bank, and watched all afternoon, old smoke, circleing a cat, hit the white ice, loose it, find it on the edge, another circle, same thing, I must have watched the cat a dozen times, up that clear ice. Get a jumped cat on a river thats open, in the middle, he will run the edge of the open water, dogs fall through, fished a few out that way, or he will be on one side, and jump the open water, sometimes dog get across, sometimes he is swimming. Run dirty swamps, like wind storms, they jump blow down to blow down, up, under, around, may as well catch the dogs,your not going to catch him. Rocks, I seen them jump, rock to rock, one time, seen the cat, make four circles around one rock, before he jumped high to a bigger one, to slip out of there. They will walk in coyote tracks, deer tracks, runways, nothing like trying to pick a cat track off a froze deer runway, like a highway, and then jump his among 50 or 100 deer. Or 30 coyote tracks, and one cat, and come out with the cat. One time we had a cat jumped hit the road, run a quarter mile, dogs got a hundred yards off and caught. My buddy was ahead of me, sent him in, he got on the radio, said, there caught, but big, black and furry man it was a matter of a minute. Snowmobile trails, run a cat right down one for a mile, snowmobiles stopped, told me, the cat run right through the middle of the sleds. And last but not least, hit a big cat an hour before dark, good area, he was hanging on the wall only to find right at dark, the dogs at a side hill , on a creek, 4 bank beaver holes. one dog, in the first, one barking in the second,which must have been connected. Only to find the cat, had came out the second, went in the third, out the forth, and down the white ice. Run out of daylight LOL Boy, put these experiences in one pile, a man starts to wonder why he does it

[robbyson99]

We had a big cat this past season jump the snow bank into the road. Jump the bank on the other side of the road onto the railroad track and walk the steel rail/tie probably 40 to 50 yrds before it left the track. Took us half an hour to find where that cat went