Caracal Lynx South Africa Hunt

[nhunter84]

Thought I would share a quick photo of a nice tom Caracal cat that I had the privilege of hunting while in South Africa. I hunted in the eastern cape area with Chappie Scott and Jeff Ford. Jeff Ford runs an outfit called lynx safaris and has some of the best caracal and jackal hounds in Africa. Ill post some photos of the dogs and a story later when I get all the pics downloaded to the computer. If you are a hound hunter and ever make it over to Africa this was an awesome hunt over the dogs. Anyway enjoy the photo and Ill post some more in the next day or two.

[walker83]

pretty dang cool.Looking forward to seeing some of the other pictures.

[Gary Roberson]

I like the looks of those hounds...Looks like South Texas Cat hounds.
Adios,
Gary

[Dan McDonough]

Tell us how they run compaired to North American cats.

[nhunter84]

The morning of the hunt Jeff picked me up about 5 am. We headed off to an area that a rancher had seen a caracal in about a week prior. Jeff dropped Tim (the dog handler) and myself off with 11 hounds to start hiking into a canyon to see if the dogs could find any scent while Jeff went to another area to listen for bushbuck barking. The bushbuck will bark (sounds very similar to a hoarse hound) at caracal that are moving through the jungle. Anyways Tim and I started hiking in the dark watching the hounds hunt for scent. About a half mile into our walk the dogs started picking up the scent of a caracal or a jackal, we were not sure what at this point. They started trailing pretty slow and hunting hard at first but shortly got to moving the track very quickly. At this point we decided it must be a Jackal after we had followed the dogs for 3 miles through several drainages. Eventually this jackal crossed a big open farm field and the dogs were having trouble so we managed to get them gathered and Jeff came and picked us up. While we were out chasing the dogs Jeff received a call from a local rancher that one of his hands had heard a bushbuck barking so we decided to head there asap to check it out. Again Tim and I unloaded the hounds and headed off into the canyon where they had said they heard the bushbuck while Jeff went to a high point to listen. When we were about half way down into the canyon we heard a ram bushbuck start to bark across the canyon from us so Tim and I started to pick up the pace to get the dogs there to see if they would hit the trail of the cat. Unfortunately when we were about 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the canyon the hounds started barking and trailing in the opposite direction from where we heard the bushbuck. Tim and I ran as fast as we could and circled below the hounds and got lucky that they trailed into an open field at the bottom of the canyon. At this point we were able to get them gathered and turned around on the trail. Once we got them trailing in the right direction the 11 hounds moved the cat very quickly through the jungle brush. They trailed about a half mile with tim and I going as fast as we could to keep them in ear shot. We both heard the tempo of the dogs change and we knew they had treed the caracal. Tim and I fought our way up through the brush until we could start to see the dogs treeing at a large river euphorbia cactus. Caracal get very nervous when they see a person and often times jump tree very quickly often to their demise by the dogs. So when we got close I spotted the cat looking directly away from us and I took that opportunity to sneak in and get a clear shot with the shotgun (used #1 shot) instead of trying to get live photos in the tree. Made a good clean shot and the cat got hung up in the tree so the dogs were able to keep treeing with out tearing up the caracal. It was an awesome hunt and I highly recommend Jeff Ford if any of you get the chance to go hunt one of these cats.

We hunted on the coast in jungle type terrain. The caracal seem to run very similar to our north American cats. The conditions are very different compared to the southwest US where I am used to hunting. One main advantage is that the bushbuck give the caracal away by barking at them so if you are lucky you can know you are on a very fresh track. I personally think that caracal are one of the prettiest wild cats in the world and the pictures don't really do them justice in terms of the depth of color and silver guard hairs. Anyways here are some more pictures of the dogs starting the track of the jackal we trailed and I will post some of the euphorbia tree and country side photos later

Getting the pack turned around and headed the right direction on the trail

What it looks like when you are running through the jungle

[david]

Thankyou for the story and pictures. What an interesting looking cat. How much did that thing weigh do you think? Is that a big one or how big do they get. What is the government like down there. Is Obama the king there too? Can anyone hunt and have guns, or just certain people? Who owned the land you hunted, govt.\private? How can we get some of those barking brush bucks up here?

Sounds like you had a great experience. Congratulations!

[nhunter84]

Here is what a cape bushbuck looks like. My wife killed this nice ram on the last afternoon of our trip. We got lucky and the weather was very cool on the coast so the bushbuck came out in the middle of the day to sun themselves. Normally they are very nocturnal and you only find them on the edge of the brush very early morning and very late evening. This is the critter that barks at those cats.

There is no public land in south Africa for anyone to hunt on. Everything we hunted on was large private ranches for cattle and sheep. There is a lot of high fence hunting in the country but we chose to hunt on the cattle ranches versus the strictly game ranches. Obama wasn't king over there with the crowd we hung out with. They mostly made jokes about how similar our two countrys are becoming. It is a great place to visit and most people over there are very friendly. I would guess that cats weight around 26-27 pounds. That is a very nice caracal tom. Some may get bigger in the higher elevations but for the eastern cape of south Africa that is a good mature cat. Anyone can take a firearms course and get a rifle permit, but you do have to take the course and register weapons if you are local. Move to Texas if you want a bushbuck they probably have them imported, ha.

[Gary Roberson]

Great job, enjoyed the article.
Adios,
Gary