Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:21 pm
Good stuff here!
Bobcat hunting is a great test of a dog and not very many make real cat dogs. Many more cat are caught in high density cat populations with running type dogs. Generaly these guys do not want a dog to mess around cold trailing a cat they want to rig or road them right up on a hot track and then put the highball on him and it is fast and exciting hunting.
I grew up hunting cats in the badlands of eastern Montana and western North Dakota in the Little Missouri River Breaks. We got a lot of snow and cold in the mid winter here and cat hunting was usually put on hold when the tyhermostat hovered below minus 20 degrees which many times it did for weeks. We would hunt them hard thru the early fall and then when the chinooks blew in and things warmed up or when spring starting warming things up a bit. It wasn't the best bobcat hunting but at time it was pretty good. I went to my first cat tree at age 6 and was hooked on it from that point on. There were several huynters around thewre that had a few cat/coon combination hounds and these were the ones I was exposed to early on but when I got in my late teen I met a real bobcat man and things were never the same. This old Govt. hunter took a liking to me and invited me on a 3 day weekend cat hunt out of one of his camps on Cabin Creek. In three days of hunting patch snow we caught 13 cats ranging from big toms to subs that were caught in a hole and killed. These dogs were big bawl mouthed blueticks and black and tans mostly crossed on walkers, They would cold trail , jump and tree a high percentage of the track they started. Not what a lot of folks think of when you think of bobcat dogs but they got it done it that country. I have never done that good myself, but I did have a five cat day one time hunting with my own dogs. The cats were breeding and I got into a pocket of them in a place called Smokey Swamp, and about the time I would get one knocked out a little Nance walker bitch I had called Sally would be gone again and it wouldn't be long and she would set down under another one. I felt like I was 10 feet tall and bullet proof when I pulled up in front of that old man's house to show him my catch that day. LOL! He was as happy as I was but he gave me that little wink and said be careful though because those days don't come along very often. He was right I think it was three weeks until I caught another one. LOL!
Bobcat hunting is a great test of a dog and not very many make real cat dogs. Many more cat are caught in high density cat populations with running type dogs. Generaly these guys do not want a dog to mess around cold trailing a cat they want to rig or road them right up on a hot track and then put the highball on him and it is fast and exciting hunting.
I grew up hunting cats in the badlands of eastern Montana and western North Dakota in the Little Missouri River Breaks. We got a lot of snow and cold in the mid winter here and cat hunting was usually put on hold when the tyhermostat hovered below minus 20 degrees which many times it did for weeks. We would hunt them hard thru the early fall and then when the chinooks blew in and things warmed up or when spring starting warming things up a bit. It wasn't the best bobcat hunting but at time it was pretty good. I went to my first cat tree at age 6 and was hooked on it from that point on. There were several huynters around thewre that had a few cat/coon combination hounds and these were the ones I was exposed to early on but when I got in my late teen I met a real bobcat man and things were never the same. This old Govt. hunter took a liking to me and invited me on a 3 day weekend cat hunt out of one of his camps on Cabin Creek. In three days of hunting patch snow we caught 13 cats ranging from big toms to subs that were caught in a hole and killed. These dogs were big bawl mouthed blueticks and black and tans mostly crossed on walkers, They would cold trail , jump and tree a high percentage of the track they started. Not what a lot of folks think of when you think of bobcat dogs but they got it done it that country. I have never done that good myself, but I did have a five cat day one time hunting with my own dogs. The cats were breeding and I got into a pocket of them in a place called Smokey Swamp, and about the time I would get one knocked out a little Nance walker bitch I had called Sally would be gone again and it wouldn't be long and she would set down under another one. I felt like I was 10 feet tall and bullet proof when I pulled up in front of that old man's house to show him my catch that day. LOL! He was as happy as I was but he gave me that little wink and said be careful though because those days don't come along very often. He was right I think it was three weeks until I caught another one. LOL!
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