Tracking Bobcats

[mike martell]

Brad

Now that a starting point has been established, I will relate two bobcat stories...The first bobcat jumped the road while I was not hunting and drove home and was side lined and not able to make it back until three hours later....The dog was not a good bobcat dog but solid...Took this track out bumping it every few minutes and that cat must have laid up not far away, the trailing up to the jump was short and ended at a bobcat tree.

I believe I could have started this cat the next morning and caught it because it was laid up in a block close to where it jumped the road....

The second example was from a phone call I received in January, two winters ago (prime trailing conditions) and took me one hour to reach the location that was well marked. I had previously stopped and cleaned out the dogs noses and placed the dogs on the track sending them into the unit below, fairly well timbered with good vegetation and only a few chirps. I expected the dogs to leave like they were shot out of a gun and ended up loading up and going on hunting. unlike the first example, I shipped some nice hounds that tree bobcat with nothing for results. Good thing I didn't have any one riding or I would never lived it down for saying this is a done deal and in the bag!

[1bludawg]

I've thought about this a lot over the years and i believe a good cold nosed dog that can move a track could probably work a bobcat track about 8 hours old.This would be under ideal conditions in the winter.A friend of mine saw a cat while deer hunting and decided later to try to run it.It was 5 hours later when he got back to the track with the dogs.The dogs moved right out on the track but never did jump it.It was still pretty dry at that time.On some occasions i've had my sorry dogs take the backtrack on a hot cat track ,sometimes it would take me 1 or 2 hours to get them turned around.They would still go out running on the right end.This was before e-collars.There are a lot of variables involved in this such as the individual dogs nose ,weather conditions and the type of ground the dog is trailing on but i think 8 hours is an educated guess.

[david]

It is so strange to me that we know so little about this. Guys that have been hunting cats for 30 years and more, and still not really too sure. It is so hard to age tracks. You certainly cant gauge the age by the dogs.

I have read verified accounts of man trailers, and search dogs put on a person that had walked there 3 days ago, and even longer, but I don't even want to say it because it sounds crazy. And they find the person, even trailing through areas where a lot of other people had passed. Even one case I read where the person traveled in a car, and the dang dog found them. I know people smell a lot stronger than a bobcat.

I know we excluded snow, and also that one special dog, so I am breaking both rules here. And snow can be hard to gauge also, but at least you have some indicators with snow. By looking at tracks where you see the cat, and then looking at it hours later, you can see how tracks are aging that day. By keeping track of the times when it last snowed, you can at least know if it was made since the last snow or before it.

My last dog used for cold tracking in snow, we called our 15 hour dog, because there were times when we knew the track was at least that old. Basically, if we found a track that had not been there the day before, she was going to take it, except in unusually rapidly changing temperatures, and rarely did she take a track when she did not get the cat jumped. In fact it is hard to say this because I know what you are thinking, but I cant remember a track she took and did not get the cat jumped, unless I called her out for some reason. She was slow and steady and just did not make mistakes. Guys in areas of abundant game would not even want a dog like her. But when there is only one track, and its all you got for hours or days of looking, sure is nice to have that dog. This is in snow in the upper midwest. She was 1/2 Southwest big game hound from Adelle Prochaska, and 1/2 mountain cur from Larry Albright. If someone wanted to put their best rig dog up against her, I never even took her out of the box (the box had vents, but no head holes). That way, if she got beat, I had an excuse, ha ha. She still could not be beaten on the strike. No credit to me. That is just what she was.

I sure am appreciating reading about those rare cases when you know for sure how long it was since the track was laid on bare ground.

It also sure is encouraging to young folks doing this when they can find out that guys doing this 50 years have dogs with the same scenting limitations as their own dogs have. They are all just dogs.

But I have seen proof that dogs cold trailing capacity can be influenced by the way the dog is trained/handled also.

Brad, I know of at least one for sure bobcat hunter from your area that would not allow his dogs to take a cold track at all. And they learned not to strike them, because there would be consequences for that behavior.

Also know of a government hunter I have written of who worked his dogs all summer long strictly on their cold trailing abilities. They came to recognize and handle traces of scent that most dogs could not or would not pay any attention to.