Bobcat Jump Style

[ethertonee]

Yeah I could see how the silent dogs would end up dead a lot on bigger game. I have been warned by a guy I know that grew up running cats for a living in the late seventies and early eight's that your vet bills will most likely go up running silent dogs as well.

The more I thought about it if the dog is silent and runs to catch it is more like a coyote or wolf and more likely to catch game on the ground. I agree that it isn't as pleasant to run silent dogs, but in the area I live it is the best option to get the game to tree in the smaller areas. Also if the dogs do get off the properties they don't make as much noise to spook cattle or draw attention to them. I am not trying to stretch the law just limit the damage when it happens because when your dogs are cold trailing and then jump or the track heats up it is hard to get them stopped before them go a cross property boundaries.

Ed Etherton

[dwalton]

Bobcat jump style? Bobcats do what bobcats do in my opinion what they do on a jump depends on the track style of the dog or dogs running it. In deep snow if the cat can't run on top while the dogs fall threw it makes a very short race easy to tree. If the cats running on top good luck you are going to need it. I have seen in coyote desert country big toms not run a couple of hundred yards after the jump them turn to fight the dogs. I have seen a lot of bobcats in 12 inch or more snow go up the tree they are sleeping under, dogs going from cold trail to tree. I have seen cats run across the road, turn out and get caught on the ground in less then 200 yards, get a good race and tree or the dogs not able to smell them at all. If a cat is running a straight line after jump to me that says he is not being pushed hard. If he is dodging and turning it means the dogs are running to wide or the cat has squatted and the dogs have run by him. On the coast country a cat will get into a tight circle before he is caught a lot of times on the ground. When a bob is jumped with cat dogs most will tree in 5 to 20 minutes as long as there are no looses. With each loose you cut your odds of treeing that cat in half. This is with bobcat dogs, I have seen very few combination dogs that were bobcat dogs but have seen a few. A bobcat that has made a dumb mistake and got caught on the ground are easy to tell from one that just got ran down and caught. One that has given its all after a hard race will be stiff from over exertion, usually its legs out front and back with the hole cat stiff.. It will just cease up. Dogs that run bear are the hardest to get then to tree bobcats. When I ran bear the only way to make a dog a decent bobcat dog was to run it a year or more on strait bobcats before it was aloud to run bear. I have hunted bobcats in 7 states, I have hunted the wet coast on one day and tree multiple bobcats in the jumper sage brush desert the next. This just my opinion based on 50 years of hunting bobcats. Everybody has their own opinion based on the dogs they run, in the country they hunt in and folk lore [ what the local beliefs are] which most of the time has nothing to do with reality. Each to their own if it works for you and catches game hunt it. That said if a bobcat can learn all kinds of things to get away from the dogs, rock piles, bluffs, running roads, doubling back up their back track bobcats learn quick if they are ran by dog and get a way a few times. Dewey

[al baldwin]

The dogs I am hunting with have caught a couple more cat since I last wrote. A decent sized tom that took about an hour, with the cat trying numerous things to elude, before they bayed it up & it held off six dogs, leaving dogs with marks to prove it, before help arrived to finish the job. The second was a ten minute, down hill, hot jump from the get go, with the cat appearing to try to out run the dogs, while doing nothing fancy before treeing. The ten minute race cat, was as stiff as a board five minutes later as I skinned it. Bobcats run as bobcats run, but, has been my experience from the very first bobcat hunt I ever took with Clarence Berg/s dogs, to that last ten minute down hill run, there have been some cats here that sure eluded the best dogs in this area before being caught. Dewey, would your dogs have any trouble catching those type cats? I don/t believe I have ever seen a twenty bobcat race in this brushy ground without the dogs making one lose. Thanks Al

[dhostetler]

ethertonee, I can come up with all kinds of theories on your question but all it would be is theories. I actually believe wolves benefit bobcats because where there are established wolf packs the coyote populations go way down.

My area has the largest Lynx population in the lower 48 and feds are always studying them to death. I have visited with a few of them during there studies and they told me the biggest mortality on lynx is lions, so my guess is lions prey on bobcats too.

Our lions very rarely bale out of trees in fact most of the time it is impossible to get them to bale out. My friends east of the divide have a lot of lions bale out several times before they stay treed. Even lynx are notorious to be tree jumpers and when my dogs "trash out" on lynx even they hardly ever jump. I have never had a bobcat bale out unless winged. All I can figure out is that our cats of all species are just more inclined to tree and stay treed.

[merlo_105]

Al, them are the cats I like the tough ones. I have always been told the area I run is tough ground and it takes a good bunch to catch cats there. When I started I didn't know better but thats the easiest land and the nearest so thats where I go. I have noticed other area's I go the dogs do make it look easy somedays. So I have continued to work a pack out that caught good in that area was always told if you can catch cat there you can catch them anywhere. And a lot of what I have seen is true. Or is it? So many factors come in to place, pressure and so on. It seems some Cats in some areas I like to go into run Jumped way different and thats litterally right over a couple mountains what would be the huge change lands the same

[dwalton]

AL: I have the intention for my dogs to catch every bobcat they run but it does not always work out that way. I had a nice tom over east in an area that is hunted hard try to out run the dogs. They took him out of the timber and snow country down to the sage and rim rocks on bare ground, it took about a hour for them to catch him on the ground about 185 feet from where I sat in the truck. There was no fight he just ceased up with no marks on the dogs. I get a few on the west side that I don't catch usually in areas hunted by others. I ran one in such a area last week that hit the roads, ran the roads and doubled back up his own tracks where he came down for up to 1\2 mile before leaving them called the dogs off at dark. I went back the next day with Tanner and Red which I did not have the first day thinking they could tree him. It didn't work out that way, to much running the roads and doubling back up his back track to keep the pressure on him to tree. Bobcats can get educated by running them and them pulling something to get away real quick. I found out others have been running this cat and not treeing him. He makes a good race and works the dogs hard. I will run him some more and have Tom up to see his dogs work him. No I don't tree them all but I don't miss many it takes looses from roads, bluffs or doubling back to shake these dogs usually from 1 to 3 jump races a season is all they miss. When we get a good week of weather I plan to come down past you to hunt some country that i have not hunted in years. Most of Eastern Oregon and the Cascades are snowed out for this winter so I will be down here where everyone hunts. We will see how it goes. Dewey

[mark]

Awhile back the dogs were on a 18 straight roll. We were all thinking that there wasnt a cat in these parts that could get away. The races had been everywhere from very easy to very tough including some road runners. Got home from work one afternoon with a couple hours of day lite left and grabbed up 4 of the older dogs to go run a tuffer cat i knew of that ranges where its easy to end up close to houses. Didnt want to have to worry about pups going to yapping house shitters. Got to where this cat hangs and collared up the dogs and put em up. Drove about 4-5 hundred yards and they hit smokin hot and left the box jumped. I settled back to listen to the race i knew that cat could preform and enjoy every bark in it. Well, about 2 minutes into it the cat ran in front of the pickup with the dogs about 30 yards behind, and they blew across road and got about 150 yards out there and shut down. I was waiting on the locate barks and they never came. I had dogs check the back track as well as out front of the shutdown. I was in a patient mood so i sat and watched the garmin and listen for who got it picked back up. Well i sat there for over 30 minutes and never had another bark. Dogs hunted all over in a 2-300 yard radius and nothing. They never caught it on the ground and it was 10 year old reprod so it wasnt up a tree. That cat just gave us a spankin of biblical proportions! Lol ..... It happens! I dont care how good you think you are. So i was 100% for 18 and then got beat and back to 0% lmao

[al baldwin]

Thanks Dewey & Mark. no doubt you guys have as good as any. We run the same areas over & over, don/t get too many easy ones, then we will get some. They all are not hard to catch & we figure that was not the first try these dogs had at that tom grounder. David, you have a hunter PM ME TRYING TO BUY MY BOOK, guess it was flattering, however had to let him know, I can barley type enough to participate on this forum. Hope he sees this and contacts David, who post on this forum. Thanks Al

[merlo_105]

Another thing to keep in mind is everyones different look on what a jumped race and jumped track is. Some cats get up and get moving leaving putting distance between the dogs and it when they here a dog. So them races may seem different compared to others for the fact that the cat is already doing tricks before the dogs get close enough.

[mark]

A cat up and moving out in front of the dogs is a different sounding race altogether from a jumped and running cat especially if you have some dogs that can control their mouth until they under the cat good. IMO

[dwalton]

Well said Mark. One of these days we need to define what a bobcat dog on here. I bet that will show a lot of differences of opinions. Dewey

[merlo_105]

100% right Mark, just threw that out there for the younger guys.

[dhostetler]

Well said Mark. One of these days we need to define what a bobcat dog on here. I bet that will show a lot of differences of opinions. Dewey

I imagine there is a larger variety of opinions on that than anything else in hound hunting LOL.

One question I have for you guys, one of my friends on the coast's kill dog is his slowest dog. His faster dogs catch cats on the ground and bay it and if he can't get there before Charlie shows up he can't save it as it is dead in short order once Charlie shows up. In bear hunting bears usually bayup by choice and with enough pressure they climb or run. In this case are the cats baying by choice or to exhausted to go on but his fast dogs just don't have the grit to stretch it?

[mark]

Going by most of the opinions i have read on here over the years i dont have a dog on the place that can catch a cat. And if they did catch one they would do it all wrong i suppose. As far as it taking a certain dog to finish a grounder i have never seen that. If im lucky i may hear a squall out of the dog that gets hooked and then dead silence. Have 3 or 4 dogs that have drug cats out of culverts by themselves so everyone can play on mutiple ocasions.This is just my opinion but i think that comes with running to catch. A run to catch dog should use every trait and sense along with its experience to put an end to the race with the intent to eat it. They dont care about the consequences they may encounter at the end they just want to catch it. Now before everyone gets all fired up, i am not talking Bear Dogs here but i bet alot of dogs with that kinda drive have met their demise on bears and the ones that have survived and not got whipped go on to be good bear dogs. Im not saying that dogs that dont have that type of drive wont catch cats but the ones that do will catch a lot more of em in their life. Like i said its just my opinion

[al baldwin]

Duane don/t think I have ever bayed up a cat where I thought it was by choice. There are cats here that just refuse to climb, often wondered why, realize cats can be taught that, however believe some here are born that way. Mark while I agree to a point, dogs that like to bite a critter try hard to catch, have seen some of those that were less than fast. I would prefer once a critter is bayed dogs stay back & hold that critter at bay until I arrive. Some of the faster cat dogs I have hunted were not much to mix it up on a bay, that is not a necessity in cat dogs, or bear dogs in my opinion. Bite and pull hair away from the danger when possible, yes, but charge into a buzz saw, not desirable. Al