Special Thanks to Plum Tree Hound Supply for donating the first place prize!
Looking for all the contestants, club members to post some bobcat pictures or videos for everyone to enjoy!
The Huge Tom on the left side, I treed with the three dogs on the box, the other two were treed with myself and our club President.
The tom weighed in at 31 pounds 8 ozs. He was started with great snow conditions. I cut his tracks earlier that evening and couldn't move the track well and abandoned it after some effort. I hunted until one am and decided to sleep in my rig as I have done for many years and collared the dogs again at 6 am off of a dead end spur known to be an excellent crossing for bobcats.
I started my way out to the main road and cut his snowed in tracks with about a half inch of fresh snow in his tracks and knew I could only be five hours at most behind this cat. The two older dogs left on the track like shot from a gun and the young dog cut in behind. The track went trailing out about 500 yards to the point the bobcat laid up on a mule deer kill (it had several pounds of fresh muledeer meat in his stomach, look at how swollen his stomach is in the picture) I listened as the dogs made a huge sweep and the cat hooked back out some distance and headed straight towards where I started the track.
The cat treed 185 yards from where I was sitting....He was so full and big it didn't offer near the race the other two posed....Those two ran like they were shot from a gun and pulled out all the stops before seeking refuge in a tree. The cat on the center was Started at 1:15 pm and was harvested just at dark after a tremendous race. The bobcat far right was started about 7 pm in a huge cinder pit and made a mad dash for an area very tough for the dogs to navigate, he ended up going thru a culvert repeatedly making small circles to elude the hounds and had no choice but to climb.
The three dogs are all of running dog influence, heavy towards the Kemp line or early California fox and bobcat dogs. The young hi tan on the right is from California and really cranking at10 months old. I never liked the running dogs until I found a blend that does well on all tree game. When I hunt, I stay gone for days at a time and don't keep many dogs and expect them to all contribute as lead dogs, no place for pack dogs here....They also run way better than most of the Treeing Walkers hounds I owned in the past offering more days of back to back hunting.
