Our search for the wiley Arizona Bobcat continued between Christmas and New Year’s Eve this year. With a fresh dump of snow coming to the higher elevation regions of Central Arizona on Christmas Eve, the conditions for cat hunting looked to be the best that anyone could ask for. When the storms were first predicted to roll through around the 22nd of December I plead my case to the wife that we should just postpone Christmas by a few days to take advantage of the fresh snow and to get some hunting done. Unfortunately, she did not think that this was a good idea, and we also had concert tickets to go see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Boxing Day, so we were stuck in the city and were going to be hunting at least 2 day old snow. Oh, and Boxing Day is what we Canadians call the day after Christmas, it has something to do with boxing up the gifts that you didn’t want and returning them to the store. But I digress, our trip out would not start until the 27th of December. The good news though, was that the holiday provided us with 6 uninterrupted days to be in the woods, providing us ample opportunity to get a good idea of what was happening in the area and to hopefully catch up with one of these elusive critters.
With the truck loaded up with all of our gear we set out Tuesday morning for an area of National Forest that I have become somewhat familiar with. Tucked away comfortably in the high country pines we were happy to see that the snow conditions were still very good. It had been cold enough since Christmas day that the snow was still a fresh fluffy blanket covering the forest floor, and the roads had been broken open by a few adventuresome 4x4ers in the days prior. The going was fairly easy with all of the weight of our gear helping to ensure good traction in the snow, but my 2 wheel drive truck still ran into a couple of problems climbing a couple of hills. Although we were able to get around, it became all too clear that we were not going to be able to make it as far into the forest as we were initially planning. Luckily, campsites in the area are plentiful and we were able to find a spot with a view.
We cleared a spot for our tipi and laid a layer of pine boughs that had been left behind from someone’s firewood collecting to add a layer of insulation between us and the frozen ground below. On top of that went our tipi and as the sun tucked behind the distant mountains a fire crackled to life in the small metal stove that would be our salvation for the coming days. Dinner the first night was some homemade pierogis and bacon bits before we turned in for the night. Morning comes early when cat hunting and this trip was going to be no different. Coffee went on at 5:30 am and by 6:30 the slow steady putt of the percolator coffee pot filled the tipi with the smell of morning. The dogs were unhurried to get going as they like sleeping in as much as I do, but as the truck cranked over in the silence of the morning, they found the temptation to see what was going on too much to resist and made their way from their beds to the cab of the truck as we headed out to see if we could cut a fresh track.
As our old black pickup rattled down the forestry reserve roads, two things became very clear. First was just how much of a difference the weight from our gear made in helping the truck get traction on the snowy roads, and the second was that there was no way that we were going to get through this trip without doing some digging. The truck got stuck at least twice that morning when we simply ran out of momentum trying to get up some of the hills. Luckily though it was not all that bad; simply clear the snow from around the wheels to get down to the gravel below and get another run at the hill. About two miles from camp we cut our first track, a bobcat had popped out onto the road near a drainage culvert and crossed into the adjacent piece of bush, so we found a place to park the truck, collared up the dogs, and the chase was on.
The cold of the night before was still prevalent under the canopy of the pines above, which kept the snow fluffy and made our steps fall silent as we meticulously counted that bobcat’s steps up one hill and down the other side. The dogs looked sharp and they knew we were up to something as I would encourage them every time they came back around to check our progress on the footprints in the snow. The cat made a short run from some exposed rock to a pine thicket a few hundred yards away, and Cedar, my oldest dog gave a couple barks of excitement, but she was headed the opposite direction?! Not sure what she was up to, I hiked over to where she was located, but could not make any sense of what had caught her attention, so back to the original track we went, down into the deeper snow of the next valley over.
The forest thickened up quickly and that crafty little bobcat began running circles, this was not his first rodeo, and he knew just how to throw a tracker off. Hopping from rock to rock, leaving as few prints as he could, we quickly lost him. We made one last swing by where Cedar had opened earlier in the morning in hopes of finding where the cat had made his escape, but we were unable to locate anything. The GPS odometer read 3.5 miles as we got back to the truck, and we loaded the dogs up and went back to camp to eat lunch and cut firewood for the coming days.
Day 2 started much the same as day 1, with coffee and a truck full of hound dogs, cruising the loop of road near camp that was not too far removed from the highway to get some help should the truck slide dangerously far off of the road. Again this morning it seemed that I got stuck at least once for every mile of road I was able to cover. I did cut one track, but I was not able to decide what it was, and with my parents being scheduled for a visit today, I did not pursue it further. Any guesses at what might have made this?
Lunch was some shish-kebabs roasted over the coals and dinner was a pork roast in the Dutch oven. Both turned out excellent and I turned in for the night full and happy as it was the wife’s turn to watch the fire tonight. Running the fire in the tipi is a precision balancing act, like walking the edge of a razor blade. Too much wood and you cook everyone out of the tent, not enough and you get to re-light the fire in the dark and freezing cold because it burns out quickly. The correct combination seems to be about 1 piece of wood every hour. It gives you a nice temperature, but does not allow for a very restful night by the fire tender. I had taken my shift our first night, and sleep came easy tonight knowing that the fire would be taken care of by someone else.
Again the smell of coffee filled the tipi marking the start of day 3. We had settled into a bit of a grove and the dogs were ready for another day in the woods as we set out in the truck. The road had iced up as the temperature had climbed in the past couple of days, providing a freeze-thaw cycle that followed the sun. The snow had a slight crust in it, and when I stopped at the bobcat track from day 1 for a little insight to what a two day old track looked like in these conditions, I was amazed to see that the little critter had crossed back at the same culvert just this past night! Again we parked the truck, prepped the dogs and headed off in his footsteps, determined to catch a glimpse of him today.
After our learning experiences of day 1 we were much sharper and managed to stay with his track as again he started jumping from rock to rock and running along blown down trees. Sometimes he even jumped from one blown-down tree to another and then to a third, but we managed to find him and press on. We started the track at 10:00 and by 12:00 we were walking back down our trail coming into the bush as he had circled around and basically ran his same track back out of the area. With all of the commotion of three dogs running all over the place, coupled with the rapidly melting snow, we again found ourselves at a loss to where he had. With a lull in the action and a grumble in our stomachs, we decided to break for lunch.
Leftover Christmas dinner, wrapped in tin foil heats up on a fire very nicely and made for a great lunch as we dried our soaked feet out a bit. Neither the wife, nor I, nor the dogs had any clue where that little bobcat had gone, so we decided after lunch we would make one big circle of the area, down off of the top of the hill, where the trees were a bit closer together and the snow was still a solid blanket, to see if we could find where he had again given us the slip. So we doused the fire and packed up and made one last circle, trying to find our elusive prey. Maybe this bobcat had learned to fly as we put in a huge loop in uninterrupted snow and were unable to find where he had again made his escape. Defeated, but not beaten, and with only a couple hours of daylight left we went back to the truck to head to camp to make dinner and call it a day. GPS reading 11.3 miles.
I checked the weather once we got back to camp and found that there was a big rain storm coming our way. It was forecast to rain for the next 24 hours and with the trouble that we were having getting around already, coupled with the fact that our campsite, which gets full sun, had turned into a mud pit, we decided that we would have to cut the trip short by a day. We broke camp in record time as daylight was fading fast and the rain was closing in, but we survived to run another day, and you can bet that we will.
