How do you tell what animal you are running?

[barksalot]

I am in east, central NC. I have many years raising, training and hunting hounds (mainly Blue-tick and English). By paying attention to the nature of the track and the dog's response to it I can identify, with some accuracy, deer, grey fox, coon and rabbit. Until recently, I have not intentional run bobcat and coyotes are relatively new to this area.

My question is what are some of the tell tell signs that identify either a bobcat track or a coyote track from all of the other critters that they may be running.?

My limited experience is leading me to believe that a coyote lays out a long looping track that dogs have little difficulty following, running with heads up and giving mouth freely. Bobcat, on the other hand, seem to follow two different patterns. One pattern is a long straight, fast track to a tree with the dogs having some difficulty in locating the tree. The second pattern features good tracking straight sections (100 to 400 yards). with bad checks (my dogs aren't experience either) in which the cat appears to squat, return on the backtrack for a distance then move off in a different direction then repeat and repeat.

The above paragraph is guesses from very limited experience. I am looking to get a better foundation for understanding from some of you more experienced hunters.

Thank you for your time.

[mondomuttruner]

Sounds like you answered your own question pretty well......

[undertheradar]

A cat will set out an straight line if you ain't underneath him. if your cramping him he will duck back thru the dogs.
Unless you see the game while your dog is running, or you're hunting him with a broke dog you will guessing.

[merlo_105]

pretty much what undertheradar said. You always have the exception to the rule. But for the most part if your not hunting seasoned Cat dog's they'll most likely have trouble with a track where as like you stated they generally don't have a problem with a Coyote. Your dogs could have been over running the track and having to go back to the last spot with scent and move out from there in the right direction

[david]

Some dogs are a lot harder to read than others. I have owned dogs that had unmistakable bobcat lingo. And just when I think I can read dogs, I get one that is written in a foreign language. (If you always hunt similar bred dogs, you won't probably have that issue. And if you are smarter than me, you might not have it anyway. Nothing like a dog to remind me of some things I should know about myself.)

Part of that will depend on what the dogs have been used on. I have seen top coon dogs switched to cat that handled bobcat tracks extremely accurately. I have never seen an established bear dog do that on his first try. I would think a coyote dog might have similar issues, but I have never hunted cat with coyote dogs.

It sounds like you have a good handle on it from the starting gate. Good luck, and let us know how it's going. You can come back to this thread and put down what you learned for the next guy. Some times when you first learn something it is easier to TEACH than later on when things become second nature and you no longer think about it.

[dhostetler]

Bobcats run different in different types of country there is a 9 page post on this issue regarding this from about a month ago.

In my experience coyotes run like hell with no looses and occasionally bay up. In my country if I have a hard running bobcat, I start thinking coyote. A coyote race is more similar to a bear race than a bobcat race. Coyotes also seem like to run roads more than bobcats

[al baldwin]

To be certain one needs to see the critter, treed, bayed or in a place of refuge. There are other ways as certain critters run different patterns that give an experienced hunter a good guess what critter dogs are pursuing. However have seen coyotes run so much like a bobcat when first jumped, then line out for a new zip code. I have seen coyote races that sure had some looses in them & seen bobcat that lined out and ran straight away more like one would expect from a coyote or bear. I like to think I can always tell when dogs are running a bobcat, however I always keep my eyes open. Recall once dog boxed a track, went a hundred yards to the track before opening. That dog had ran a deer a week or so before this day & was now in hot pursuit of the track he had boxed, he was driving that track towards the road and i waited hoping to see a critter, A deer came on a dead run in plain view crossing the road, just as I was about to reach for the transmitter a bobcat came out in the exact spot as the deer, dog was very close behind. Dumped the dog box & after a good race treed a bobcat. Another race will always remember, Tom Barnett & I were hunting in the fall, dogs got after a critter and had a long race. Tom at that time was the best tracker I have ever seen, could sometimes, spot a bobcat track in a gravel road from the rig and drive until it left the road before releasing the dogs. However, this particular day that race crossed roads numerous times, never able to find any critter tracks, only tracks we could find were dog tracks. From the amount of time & distance the dogs covered we had decided had to be a coyote. Very glad in the late afternoon when we thought the dogs had finally bayed up a coyote. Tom sent me in a deep rough canyon with a shot gun to kill a coyote. Arriving at the bay up, I found about 100 lb. bear in a short tree just out of harms way, the bear was still breathing so hard, his sides reminded me of someone playing an accordion. Tom & I were both very surprised. Just my experience Al