Weekend Cat Hunts

[mike martell]

You Coquille area hound hunters and Eastern Oregon or out of State guys and gals need to join the Fern Ridge Tree Hound club. We are a 501 (c) (3) Non Profit Organization and enter the Bobcat & Coon contest this winter...Five bucks gets an annual membership that serves as one more number in the fight to keep our hunting....The new President and Vice President have been elected and both have extensive experience in the hunting lobby process in Salem...

We plan on having several club hunts for both Coon and Bobcat with cash pay outs. Details pending.

Membership contact Diane Young @ 541-466-5396

Al and Brad.

Not sure where the years have gone...I and Mark won first place in 1985 in the Mary's Peak Hound club biggest bear hunt over the Labor day weekend, seems like yesterday. Good to hear about Wendell moving to Ely Nevada, that country will be way easier on him than the Coast Country.

Mike

[Varminator]

Mike, Yes the years have flown by!! I'll call Diane, get an address and join the Club. Don't know about the hunts? We don't have and official weigh station or master without driving 2-5 hr round trip!! With Roseburg being over 1 hr. from me..Unless of coarse there is a lot of Money involved for the Winner! Gas isn't getting cheaper,if I hunt up that way and there is a contest that coincides I'll enter!!

I'll wait till you Post what is the entry fee and places paid, (such as) 1st, 2nd, and 3rd ???

[catdog360]

Brad and Al. This is the good stuff here. Dad tells me the same stories every year about those buddy hunts. He has a beautiful bobcat rug that they won the cat hunt with. I believe he was 31 lbs. Dad and Ron Risner and Jerry Giddens caught 3 cats that night. Another group caught 3 also. Dad said they walked into 5 cat trees that night. Man the good old days.
I remember going to night hunts as a kid and Ray Meares telling dad I had no choice but to be a houndmen. Something about me walking around on all fours with a dog collar on howling at everyone.

Mic O'Brien

[dwalton]

The good old days, yes they were good when everyone could get a job in the woods logging or a mill as soon as you got out of high school getting 3 to 5 dollars an hour for your work, gas less than $.30 a gallon. You could catch 10 trout out of most streams any day, a club hunt almost every weekend for bear or bobcat. There were no seasons or limits on bear or bobcat, it was ok to kill all them varmints. We did huge clear cuts logged across streams,beaver, deer and salmon were thick. Now we protect the predators, log in a limited manner and protect our streams. We have more predators then we ever had [ cougar, bear, seals hawks ect] our fish, deer and elk herds are dwindling, our forest burning up. We need to be good stewards but some people want to protect the things the way they were until it is all gone. Just maybe we need to take a real look at how to manage our resources with all the emotion and the Disney fantasy world out of it. With that said, I feel I had a the best bobcat dog that I ever owned at that time [ more good dogs now] my best days would be three bobcats a day. In resent years I have treed four on several days and five one day. I don't hunt any harder, whats the deal with less bobcats, maybe I am just like that young dog that runs all over hunting hard to catch a bob every so often or I just walk out there and hunt smarter and catch them all? Memories are great but the world is always changing no matter how much we want it to remain the same. Dewey

[david]

If you were dumb like me, those were not the good old days. Those were the days when straight bobcat hunters hoarded all knowledge, and never let a dog to an outsider unless he was a millionaire. Many folks on here would not have the knowledge they now have, nor would they have access to bobcat bred dogs like they do now. Nor could they stop a trashing dog with the push of a button. Nor could they find a lost dog by listening to electronic beeps or staring at a computer screen. If you had connections, such as family or close friends who knew the bobcat hunting gig, maybe those were the good old days. If you didn't I think maybe these are the good old days.

There are things folks on here regard as common knowledge that took me 15 years of hunting to figure out. There would have been a lot more caught cats if I had known it all along. I would give you a couple examples but it is just too darn embarrassing to admit how long it took me to figure them out.

[Varminator]

I guess in some ways these are the good old days and in some ways yesteryear was!!!

With all the new electronics and access to information and Bloodlines maybe it is now!!! To quote Dave Fuller...
"With these new gadgets all a guy needs is a decent dog and he is a cat hunter!"

But with all the locked gates, new hunting laws, Anti's who have infiltrated our Fish & Wildlife service and Government. Something had better change or "Those" were the good old days!!

Dewey, I knew a guy who's old dog (Cricket) died, so he got a couple young dogs. I talked to him a little over a year later and he said, "I think all the cats died off about the time Cricket died"!

Not!, saying that we have as many as there was! Some areas don't, do to over harvesting. Some still have, do to unhuntable back country and/or good stewardship which should always be maintained by the Hunter. "Not" the GOVERNMENT !!!! TMO