What makes a Bobcat climb a Tree or turn to Bay?

[sourdough]

Dewey,

I am with you and have seen it many times. The style of hound I have does not dictate them to be bobcat hounds though I have a few that hunted together with out the rest would make fine hounds for bobcat. I like bare ground better than snow it keeps them honest and free from cheating by using their eyes. Spoiled bobcat are tough as hell and they use every man made obstacle as well as god made feature to lose their pursuer a one time and for ever learning experience, one lose it back to trailing two loses it's game over for me as I have hounds that can catch bobcat, but not bobcat hounds. I can only guess and surmise why the clays have treed more cats this year. My first guess is they added some tree to their running dogs and are making it through some of those loses that before their hounds would not locate. Again a guess. I know they have plenty of presser in their hounds or they couldn't catch them on the ground, or run them to a stand still. They may have flat put an end to the runners and spoiled suckers and the survivors are tree minded as that's what saved their lives.

sourdough

[George Streepy]

I have been thinking about this all day also. I agree with what Dewey posted. Cats that are ran by dogs that fail to stick with the track and put on enough pressure become educated. The cats run harder and are less likely to tree. One of the areas I used to hunt had several guys hunting it almost everyday and none of the guys ever seemed to be able to catch that much. The cats become hard runners and half of what I caught ended up being on the ground. Which is an extremely high percentage for around here. I believe the cats would start covering ground as soon as they heard a dog open. It seemed the dogs were trailing and covering a lot of ground at an usually fast pace before they would get them jumped. Once jumped it wasn't unusual to get a couple hour race. I had a race a couple years ago that we saw the cat cross roads 11 times in a 3 hour jumped race. Those cats almost always end up getting caught on the ground.

So what makes a bobcat climb or turn to bay? In my opinion it is the education they have received from the dogs that pursue them.

[pegleg]

I'm kinda slow at times so I don't know if i'm reading more into the question then there is or just plain missing it.
I agree pressure puts cats up a tree or bayed. a hound that can come along a track quick and then really turn the speed up at the end is going to make that cat make a decision. most cats just hum along until they feel safe but like said if you can run them well enough to get them to start panicking and feel they have to make a decision right now thats when you have usually won.
bobcats are all pretty feisty and will fight, seems toms will back up in a bush and make a stand more often, females often get caught on the ground so the results may look to be the same unless you can read your hounds or are in close at the end.
one thing I have noticed is a big mouthed hound can panic a cat much quicker then some squealers. especially at the right time. if you could train a cur or fast track dog to push the track and right before they catch up bawl like hell once you'd find more cats in the tree I am sure.
anyway back on topic the difference between a cat treeing or choosing to bay has to be based on fear level. and individual aggression. look at how often a cat will run past good trees to finally bay up farther along. or a cat picking a poor spot to bay where it is only partially protected on the sides. in those cases it seems they didn't real feel pressured until the end.
look at it like this your in a war zone and hear mortars SOMEWHERE off to one side you will suit up and move to a fairly safe area semi leisurely. your showing evasive behavior but not raw terror, probably selected a safe spot to hang out as well .
Then look at a similar incident your body armor is on and your walking through a street and light arms fire starts hitting all over your IMMEDIATE vicinity. your body goes haywire you drop to the ground using a pebble or four inch high curb as your safe haven.
there are other variables that may effect changes in those scenarios. combat/response training, and the gradual increase in threat level. both would give you some chance at making better decisions.
then there is your natural disposition and response to stresses.
I can only assume a cats decision is made in similar ways and before I am accused of giving animals higher intelligence/human behavior etc. people themselves don't always act on a higher intellectual plain when threatened that severely. so in a large part those reactions and choices must be programmed in some way.
maybe this is one reason that a larger pack may have higher success rates the shock n awe effect.
the difference in the demeanor of a bayed cat and a treed one is obvious also.

[Nolte]

This is just my opinion as a weekend wannabee cat harasser. In WI, more cats are lost in trees and over run than are missed hiding on the ground in the brush.

We hunt in the snow and cold, cats don't leave much scent. So to get a cat going, you've got to put your best track dog down that hopefully is a little cat minded. Now what makes these dogs great cold trailers, usually makes ultra frustrating on a jumped cat. They just have more trail built in than locate. So at the point of when the race should be finished, the cat pulls a trick and you go back to trailing. It might not even be on the same damn cat.

To make the problem worse, the majority of dogs here are hunted hard on bear. The dogs learn to push too hard and most times don't have to be located, two bad scratches for cat dogs. Most guys are just trying to get by and keeping 3 extra dogs for just cats isn't a reality. Pretty tough to justify a cat pack when you get a tag every 5 years and even tracks to run can get tough to come by. Top it off with the timber wolf problem and it makes me wonder why I don't have a nice big fish house and a boat, instead of these dogs.


I remember reading about someone harvesting/catching cats in the hundreds in a year, I think in WI there are usually only a couple hundred cats harvested state wide in a given year.

[Nolte]

To answer the question, I think it's just the nature of the cat that decides the outcome if it's a tree or bay. The dogs may convince them otherwise, but most times they just do what they do. In our area more seem to bay than tree. I can take the same dogs to a couple other areas and I would expect a tree more than a bay.

[Hipshooter]

Cats don,t have many enemies,
They are used to bluffing out farm dogs & coyotes
& most anything else all their life.
I think they develope this image & it just don,t work on a pack of dogs.
Coyotes have the same fault.
I have seen them, just stop & I think they think
I will just whip their ass here & I won,t have to run any more.

[Dads dogboy]

This Post should go into the Cat Hunters Hall of Fame for the amount of very Good information that is coming Out!

I Hope that Twist will give us his insight into what those Nice Nance Hounds have to do to either put the Cat up or get him to "Mike Tyson" a while!

CJC

[johnnyrick1981]

This is a great topic. I have been thinking about this for a few years now. Running cats here in the u.p. has to be alot like running in northern wisconsin I would think. That being said I have a hound that just turned 5 this april, that has given me 5 winters to hunt him. This dog is an ace, the first three winters he was treeing every cat I ran him on with one or two maybe caught on the ground. He piled into every cat he got the chance to until his 4rth winter. I started walking into bayed up cats and after the first few started to notice he was giving the cat more space on the ground. This past winter was much the same, nearly every cat being caught on the ground. Another thing is that I only run bigger cats and that definetily seems to factor, actually it 100% factors in up here.




he'll probably TREE every cat next winter.

[coastrangecathunting]

i never even read all the post just the first sentnce of some. it is the number of dogs finding the cat hiding . have you ever listened to a cat race or watched it on the g p s . when the cat gets tired it hides and the dogs find it or it heads back the way it came . this shit is what pisses me off when cat hunters (beep) a round with others . tell the truthe . cjc you know what im talking about , u to duwey

jc

[George Streepy]

i never even read all the post just the first sentnce of some. it is the number of dogs finding the cat hiding . have you ever listened to a cat race or watched it on the g p s . when the cat gets tired it hides and the dogs find it or it heads back the way it came . this shit is what pisses me off when cat hunters (beep) a round with others . tell the truthe . cjc you know what im talking about , u to duwey

jc

It doesn't take 10 dogs to find a cat that laid down, it takes one. If a dog is a good track dog that makes the corners and finds the looses it should have no problem finding them. That is a scenario that a fast track dog may not be the one you depend on. One of the best dogs I ever hunted with was far from the fastest track dog, but she moved out plenty quick, made all the corners, and was almost always the first dog with hair in her mouth. In my experience having to many dogs just adds to the over running of tracks, even though that doesn't seem to be the popular opinion these days.

[dwalton]

George and JC: You are both right, in fact everyone that has posted on here is right because what they have posted is what they have seen happen or how they interpreted what they heard and saw. One dog can catch a cat , 10 dogs can catch a cat. If you have 10 cat dogs working together, not barking off track and not over running a cat they can cat it faster than one dog. If you have 10 dogs that are not working together, that bark off track you will be lucky to cat a cat at all. JC I think what you mean when you say that a cat hides more dogs looking for it will find it quicker is correct. If a dog is not over running a track the cat can't hide, the dog is always on the cat track there will be no loses. The dog or dogs will tree that cat quickly or catch it on the ground. AS I said before I have the easiest cats there is to cat. I had two races all winter that lasted over 20 minutes. During hard conditions[ dry and warm] I will get a lot longer race but they are making little loses and can't hold the pressure on that cat. Now I have had those 1or 2 hour driving jump races that sound like coyote races but they will usually catch that cat on the ground. A cat does not have the lungs to stay on the ground and out run a pack of driving dogs that do not over run or make loses for long. Again just my thoughts not the truth there is always exception to the rule of thumb. Dewey

[Daniel Tremblay]

I dunno but maybe im just crazy....but I think it has to do mostly with the country you hunt. I hunt the in eastern oregon; I have never had a cat bay up or even heard of one baying in the country I hunt. My father in-law has hunted cats for 20 yrs and to my knowledge never had one bay up on him. An occasional one that gets rocked up but thats it. He has ran all sorts of hounds and currently has two running dog crosses and has hunted with a silent plott. No combination of dogs has ever lead to a true bay like you guys are refering to. My only guess is that with the more open country that we hunt the cats have the ability to see whats coming and decides it better tree than try to hide on the ground like you guys are saying.

[dwalton]

I hunted eastern Oregon this year and caught several on the ground. My dogs don't bay them, cats are easy for a dog to kill,a lot of time I don't think people even know there dogs caught and killed a cat. I new a hunter that caught a lot of cats with one little female in the sage brush country by bay the cats up where there were no trees. Every area is different, how you hunt and what your dogs do on cats. Dewey

[Daniel Tremblay]

How vocal are your dogs on the track?

[dwalton]

They are open month. They bark steady but don't bark on loses or off track. If they are barking they are driving to catch. They move a track while opening. They are not tight moth or silent dogs. The only time they don't bark is on loses. They may not bark much on a old tract. Dewey