Sadie & Ol' Roy

[Phil Soucy]

I don't know if you guys have seen the wolf kill post under the mountain lion threads, but I am posting a few pictures and stories about the dogs that were killed. This is more for me than anything. This is the last bob cat Ol' Roy ever caught. It was a thirty pounder and he made pretty quick work of things. Someday i hope to compete it at the World Taxidermy Championships. Man I miss that dog.

[Unreal_tk]

That is a dandy, I've not had a run in with wolves yet. I do feel your pain, hope you get back in the woods soon. Better take some steel and remove a few as well!

[al baldwin]

Phil sorry to read about your loss. Would you mind telling us how Roy was bred. That is one nice bobcat. Any chance the state could be forced to compensate you for the loss? They do own the wolfs? Al

[chiller]

that is one of the best lookin cats i have ever seen, i read the article bout your dogs and that is terrible that guys out west fear to open the dog box and cringe to watch them go. the only thing a guy can do is start to thin the heard. sorry again for the loss and for the cat that one should be on display not only for the looks but also for your hound.

[Phil Soucy]

Thanks guys. Al, Roy was the product of a female lightfoot dog once owned by Dustin Myers. Her name was Ricki. The first pup I got from Dustin, is still here and we call here Jolene by his male Jammer. Shortly after he sold Ricki to Byron. He bred Ricki to a dog he called Patch that was part engilsh and part walker. He gave men Roy and female that A freind raised and is still hunting here. I brought Roy home ten years ago this week and put him on his first lion right away. He was six months old and he knew nothing at all. That same race my old Rusty dog split off and treed in another drainage. At dark, the cat came down and bit him all to heck. It took me two days to find him as the old blue box was almost worthless in the canyon. He lived and treed a few more cats, but really never was the same. I had some other good females at the time, but Roy was the best male I ever owned. Here is how rusty looked on Roy's first race.
Also a super spotted up 26 lb. bobcat killed the last day of season 2005. Roy is on the right side of the box. This was one of Penny's first really impressive showings as a young dog.

[BlazeNBrat]

Sorry to hear of your loss, Phil. It's hard not to have a little trepidation turning the dogs out into wolf country anymore.
Those are some really nice looking cats BTW!

[Phil Soucy]

Here is another real nice Yaak bobcat we caught for my brother inlaw. We cut this bobcat track while looking for lions. We found a cougar track and got it havested, then we went back and ran this big fat tomcat. I will miss hearing these dogs when they are all gone.

[al baldwin]

Nice pictures Phil. Thanks for sharing the lineage behind Ol Roy, have seen several nice hounds that were a cross between english & walker, had a feeling Roy shared those lines. Those Montana cats are sure nice lookers. AL

[Liz ODell]

Very sorry to hear of your loss, I can't imagine how I would feel if that happend to mine I feel sick and disgusted skin crawling just to see photos of other peoples dogs it has happened to but I must say I do think it is good to show the photos, if it just changes one persons idea about wolves from naive to educated it is worth it.
I can't imagine how helpless that feeling must be, to know the dogs are getting possibly into this kind of danger and you can't get there, yuck, it gives me nightmares and they aren't even my dogs.
That is a nice tom in that first photo, I always wanted to kill one with rosettes but can't kill anything here in this state anymore now. My friend Mike has a bobcat from here with you still, can't wait to see it when it's done.
Good luck in the future, I hope the wolf hunts get more successful every year.

[twist]

Nice cats. Nothin good about a wolf. Andy

[Phil Soucy]

I have chamged the name of this thread to include Sadie now that I have found some pictures of her. She was Ryker's first dog. One of those that a boy at school had as a pet, but as you know hunting dogs rarely make good pets unless they get to do what they are bred to do. I remember the first cat we put here on as a pup. We had found a fresh lion track and shuttled four young meatheads to it. I got a hundred yards down the track and turned on the video camera. I could hear all of these young dogs roaring as they started coming towards me. They were still about fifty yards away and I barely had my camera up when Sadie went blowing by me as fast as she could run with here nose skimming the ground without so much as a peep. It was clear right then and there that she was fast. In just a couple months of weekends she had been under about a dozen trees. It was evident that she was something special when we ran an older track all day and she peeled of and tree a big female lion on her own in Feb of that year. While here carreer was cut short we did manage to find some nice photos to document some of her adventures. Enjoy.

After this day, I never saw a lift ticket on his jacket.

[Phil Soucy]

Ryker and Roy with a bobcat a few years back.

[Phil Soucy]

This was one of sadie's first solo bobcats. It was evident early on that she posessed the track speen needed. By three, her locating skill had became highly developed. The guys that we hunted with were always offering Ryker obscene sums of money for her. He would just smile and say, "she's not for sale at any price" If you guys are not hunting with kids, you are missing so much.

[Phil Soucy]

Just look at how muck joy this little bluedog brought to this young man. Here is another solo catch for Sadie.

[Phil Soucy]

Another real nice bobcat that Roy was in on. With Roy, Jolene and Penny we had a pretty strong group that could all handle bobcats on their own. We usaully ran two together and rested one. I never kept track of how many we caught, but it seemed like it was never enough. There is few things better than the end of a long bobcat race, looking up into a tree at a shortailed cat. We never really had very good cameras, so we took very few pictures of the ones we released. I did get one cool picture of one we treed and left on top of a burned out snag on a steep face above the river.