Bobcat Tricks

[Elroy Tate]

Lets hear about some of the tricks you have notiest a bobcat has tried to pull on your hounds to get them off his trail. I was just wondering if they tried diffrent stunts in diffrent terrain.

[david]

the #1 trick I have had those bobcats use on me is to dress up like a bobcat and do stuff a bobcat normally does. I am sure there are bobcats I have run that have never heard a dog before and never had the experience of shaking them off. They still do pretty good at loosing my sorry mutts. I think it is more just the nature of the beast.

A lot of them are not giving off a lot of scent. Might be because they are such clean animals, always bathing so to speak. Couple that with some of their natural habits, and they can come off looking pretty smart.

I know that some are capable of repeating something that lost the dogs before. I dont pretend to know if they are thinking about those things and problem solving in the way a smart herd dog might do, for example. They might be just repeating routes that are habitual for them and it just so happens that there is something about that habitual route that throws the dogs every time.

Probably the most common "trick" they used in Oregon when I was hunting there was simply to hit the open road for a while. You would think a dog could just go down the road either way and figure it out, and sometimes they did, but a lot of times they didn't. And even if they did, sometimes by the time they found it things had gone from a jumped race to trailing.

My style was to try and keep up with the dogs so I got to experience as much of the actual hunt as possible. A lot of times I would get thrown out of the race, but I also got "lucky" a few times and got to see some things happen befor my eyes.

In following them cold trailing, I have often seen a bobcat put a "spur" in his track. They seem to go out one way, then come back on their track for a ways, then head off in a different direction with a new track at some point. This looks extremely smart. But again, it was a cold trail. The cat was probably hunting. I have done the same thing many times if I was still hunting deer, for example. I am checking out a veiw point, or returning to a spot I got lucky in the past, or I start one way and change my mind or whatever. I might be making sweeping statements if I were to put those same thought processes on a bobcat, but he might just be doing the same thing.

I have also seen a different cat walk down another cats track the opposite direction. and then peel off after a while. How smart can you get? But I honestly dont think it was something they thought about. I just think it is something they do sometimes. I am of the opinion that they hate walking in snow, and all these behaviors are is puting their feet on the sidwalk instead of getting them snowy again. I have seen domestic house cats shake their feet while standing in an open doorway of the house thinking about going out! They dont like it. But they do it because they got things to get done.

This same thing has caused some cat tracks in the snow to completely dissapear into thin air. Then you get to looking and realize there is a series of exposed rocks, and that cat is just avoiding the snow.

I have told the story of the cat I saw about to get rolled. The snow was at least 8" and soft. That cat disapeared, then reappeared behind the dogs, heading the opposite way. The dogs had not the slightest Idea. I was watching it, and I have no idea how he got that accomplished either. But because there was two dogs you had the old Oula Belle saying"I dont got him anymore, you got him?" and Spike Driver saying: "What are you talking about, I thought You had him... Are you sure you dont have him? No I know you got him, you always got him... right? right? C'mon, you got him right?" And by the time they realize that neither one is cracking a joke, they have gone 50 yards and have no idea where to start looking for that cat. If I had not been there, I have no idea how long it might have taken them to find the track going backwards inside their own tracks.Now there is a smart cat, right? Hmm, not sure if that was brains or just basic survival instinct or just pure luck cause my dogs are idiots. But it sure caused me to think back on races that could have been explained perfectly with exactly the same series of events.

The other thing they commonly do here is to repeat a circular route and get an area so tracked up with cat and dog that the dogs really have no idea if they are coming or going. I kinda dont think the cat really processes that one mentally either, but maybe he does.

Another thing those smart cats do sometimes is to climb a tree! I feel that loosing cats at a tree is probably about second to loosing them on a dry road. They use this trick of not hugging the tree like a coon does. They have figured out it is best not to rub your private parts on the tree bark like that. Depending on the tree and the obstacles around it, they might not even touch the tree until higher than a dog can put his nose. I dont know of any dog that can figure some of this stuff out except with just a ton of experience, and learning something from each experience. But the cats are just being cats, I think. In an area of hundreds or thousands of thick evergreen trees, and thousands of dog tracks within minutes, what are chances of finding him? I have even seen dogs that KNOW he is up and can wind him but cant figure out which tree.

Now I think the thing that probably displays the possibility of memory and reasoning in a bobcat is the vertical rock syndrome. There are cats that have gone their normal routes when escaping persuit and eventually seem to realize that dogs can not climb walls. The reason I think this is because some cats will make tracks toward the vertical rocks just at the sound of a hound. There are cats that have been "trained" to tree in the same way; long befor the dogs have gotten close to them. So, I guess I just dont know how intellegent they are. Maybe a lot more than I am giving them credit for.
Hopefully, we can get some stories that would give some more evidence one way or the other.

But these are some of the reasons I love bobcat hunting. Extremely intellegent or not, it is a great challenge to dog, cat, and man alike. Probably a bigger challenge to the dog and the man than it is to the cat. But that is what keeps me wanting more, and spending way too much time thinking about it when I probably should be thinking about something else.

[Dads dogboy]

Great Post David!

About all Dad says he would add is two things.

#1. despite what so called "Experts" say Bobcats love h2o and when jumped will head to the nearest creek, canal, pond, or Lake.( We put one in a Corps Lake Wed. night.) Dad has seen a Bobcat cross the Brazos River in Texas, no little feat, numerous times. Then come back to the River and float down the current, and was still floating when he went out of sigjht. Bobcats have a whole volume of Tricks that they pull on Hounds in the h2o.

#2. doubling back on their track. Just as you have said David, Ole Shortail will just about cross a road then double right back into the pack. How he can do this and not be sucked up by the Pack is hard to believe.

One last trick that we see here in the Southeastern US is Bobcat that are spoiled by having been run by Deer Hounds. When jumped these Bobcats will head to the nearest place frequented by Whitetail Deer and try to switch the Hounds off on a Deer. I sure would like to see the expression on the Cats face when he discovers these are "Cat" Hounds and he has to shift gears into survival mode!

Good Running to All!

C. John Clay
Dads Dogboy

[bluedogs]

had a cat onetime it was a female she would ran for a good hour with one dog on her then the rest of the pack caught up she ended up finding a big leaning snag to jump up on this snag was probly a 50 foot tree were she jumped down she landed in her tracks that were coming up and back tracked her self for about 100 yards my buddy figured out what the cat had done and we got the dogs back on the track the cat ended up making serveral small circles everytime doubling back on her old tracks then she found a little thicket of trees that were in about a 50 yard circle well we though that was it we had her cuz there was a road that went all around this thicket my buddy went to one side of the thicket and i was on the other the cat never left the thicket just ran a bunch of small cirlces and then zigzaged how that cat never ran into the 5 dogs that were in that thicket with it i have no clue but i do know the dogs go so confussed with all the tracks that cat left that they ended up never findin her i am pretty sure she was just layin there in a really thick bush or somthing i walked into the thicket to look around and try to help the dogs out and there were cat tracks every were in there going ever which way but out we ended up pulling the dogs off and waited about 20 minutes then walked the road around to see if it had snuck out of there but it didnt ended up running that cat for 2 and ahalf hours and never gettin to see her.

there is also another trick that bobcats pull and this one i have no clue how they do it but you should all be very careful of this one as i am pretty sure this is there best trick of all. so me and my buddy were out huntin one night we had a couple younge dogs with use and the older ones up top we were gonna try to get the young ones on a coon, well the young ones were in the dog box tailgate shut we are drivin down the road and seen a cat in the road so we undo 2 dogs to start it when my buddy opened the tail gate the door to the dog box came opened and all the young dogs came out and fouled up the race how that cat snuck up behind us and unlocked the door to the dogbox i have no clue sneeky bastard

[Elroy Tate]

David, I can tell you have wore out alot of boots following these spotted creatures. Roads are almost always a race ender. Also like you said jumping high on the trunk of a tree will throw off a dog if they are not top locators.

One morning the dogs were realy burning this cat up on the side of this brushy hill. There was one big pine in the middle of this about 2 acre clearing. I was watching for the cat to come out of the brush because the dogs were almost to the edge of the brush line. All of the sudden like a flash out popped the cat heading for this loan pine tree. I watched this cat leap about 8 to 10 feet up the trunk before ever touching the trunk of the tree. With about 4 big leaps the cat was at the tip top of this pine. It didnt take the cat 2 seconds to do this.

Once I was listening to this cat race, I was standing in top this ridge looking down into this clearing when I seen the cat crossing this grassy clearing. The cat suddenly stopped running and sqatted down in the grass. It just sat there hiding when the dogs came running through the clearing they went right over the top of the cat. The dogs overran the track. The cat got up and went right back the way it came in. It took the dogs about 30 seconds to relize that the cat just screwed them. I stood there cussing the sorry SOB,s.

It seems the toughest cat for a hound to trail is a cat that just calmly walks or loops as the dogs are getting right up close to them. Ive seen a cat about 200 hundred yards out in front of the dogs just walking through the rocks and the dogs can do no more than just cold trail them.

[Dads dogboy]

Mr. Tate,

A little Sow cat squating and ducking, then doubling back through the Pack, we have found are maybe the toughest Cat to run. She can just about run the Pack to death and never leave a 100 sq yd area.

As to Treeing with little pressure last year we were down hunting with Glen Rybard. His Hounds were trailing up an SMZ just before dark, a good track but not jumped. We were looking across a clearcut towards the SMZ, there was a lone White Oak tree the loggers had left in the middle of the 40 ac. clearcut. All of a sudden Glen said look going up the Oak. Sure enough there was a big Tom climbing 50' up it. We timed the Hounds and they were just over 20 min trailing out into the Clearcut.

The rest of that story is we tried to chunk the Cat out(this was before we found out about Paintball Guns) and could not. So every hour or so we would road back by this clearcut to see if the Tom had come down. It took three hours before he did. We cast the Hounds out, they struck, trailed him about 15 min, jumped and ran this old Tom 2 & 1/2 hours this time before he Treed right next to the road about 2 miles from the original Clearcut.

Mr. Tate where in OK do you live and Hunt?

Good Running to All!

C. John Clay
Dads Dogboy

[spruce mountain]

Another thing that they do here alot is run on snowmobile tracks.We had one run one last year for 600 yds and when they do turn off them they never just turn off,they run past then back track and turn off.It always seems to buy them some time.It never seems to fail that a bunch of snowmobiles will come thru between the cat and the dogs.

[LBell]

The one bobcat I have caught (still new in the game), it took the dogs up the stepest hill around in a fairly staight path, in and out of brush and stuff, then got into a boulder pile that was snowed over and went in a nice tight hole were my young dogs stuck, when we finaly got there we saw nothing in the hole. I jumped on top and saw a set of tracks coming out of the rocks twenty yards away, then in and out of little tight spots for as far as the rocks went, then into what I think was it's den or another really cool whole. The only dog that could fit was my pup I had on a leash but the kitty was waiting down and safely around a corner with very sharp looking claws waiting to say thanks for the run but I am done. I was so in aw of cathing it with my not heads I didn't even think about the talent of the sly bugger till back at the truck and going home. I was impressed.
P.S the cat was left to run again

[Hipshooter]

John,
Tell me about the paint ball program & how you
do that.
Hipshooter

[horshur]

while technicaly not a bobcat I have seen these tricks from a lynx as well.....here you need to be out early in the season because lynx are deep snow creatures.... one particular cat crossed a thinly iced up lake three times one chase the dog broke through so we would circle round and start again and pretty soon damn cat is across that lake again.
Another trick is to walk rough high blowdown and then drop down and run under the blowdown backtracking as it were.... blowing out and starting all over again.
mostly though they beat the dogs by tracking up an area in circles under lodgepole sapling second growth they circle under the tree well and then to another and back to another and such.

[pegleg]

hopping across the tops of rock columns or just big boulders then either runnin or ledgeing up. as a note i think this might be a learned behavior as i believe they hunt cottontails this way in my area . i thought it might be hawks etc. leaveing the fur up there till i jumped one eatin on a boulder probably eight ft tall. i had been taught they didn't eat in the open and most areas they don't seem to hence my theory of learned behavior.

[stacey robeson]

the worst I ever saw was dumping a dog on a bobcat and it turned into a deer somewhere on the track........lmao!! yep, had that happen more then a few times. hahaha!

[spruce mountain]

I know what you mean Stacey,I had a bear turn into a moose this week.They can be pretty crafty to.lol

[david]

Ha Ha, come to think of it, that just may be the bobcats' most amazing trick.
Shape shifting. Coyote, porcupine, racoon; I have even had bobcats climb under a huge root system in the middle of the winter and turn into a bear. dang them suckers are versatile!!

[Hipshooter]

I run a bobcat one time on the snow
tracks showed he went in a hole & dogs bayed in the hole.
when the dogs came out of the hole they had porkeypine
on them,
so I guess cats can turn into porkeypines some times.