The Misfit Cat Hunting Thread

[david]

I agree with Dewey's advice regarding going along with someone without your dogs; And I don't know if you will ever have perfect tracking snow again, but if you do, many new bobcat hunters in the north country have become successful on their own this way:

Take only your best dog. ONE dog. Keep a leash handy. Any time the scent is not strong enough for her to advance easily, or she makes a loss, put her on the leash, and keep her out of the way until you figure out what happened. That cat went some where. If you have snow, that cat left evidence of where it went. Don't give up until you find that evidence. It sounds so simple on paper but can be nearly impossible in reality. But not impossible! So don't give up. It only becomes impossible when you have a bunch of dogs casting about destroying evidence. ONE dog, and keep control of her, and don't let her step on any disturbance in the snow when she is not advancing the track well.

When she IS advancing well, do not follow HER tracks. Follow the cat tracks, and do not move yourself ahead without them.

Take the attitude that YOU are going to track this cat down, and your dog is going to help you run it down at the end. In the mean time, that one dog will become a careful expert, and that is what you will be needing later on for those pups.

[Cowboyvon]

Nice write up and pics.. keep it up!

[cfanno01]

nice story and pics. i started out cat hunting the same way you are...no one to show me the ropes. I took the advice of many on this site and it gave me a place to start and a direction to go. what worked best for me was going about it like david described. use 1 dog, not 3. It is hard enough to work with one dog that has limited experience, and adding more inexperienced dogs will make it overwhelming especially if they are all running around freely. leash her up and follow the track until shes really wanting it then let her go. If your luck is like mine you will have to do this many many times... eventually you will jump one though, and thats when it really clicked for my dogs. once you can get a cat up and running with some kind of consistency try those pups out with your other dog. it took me many hours over the course of her first 2 yrs of life to get my first dog to cold trail cats, now Ive come to expect her to jump almost every day-old track shes put on...in the Michigan snow of course. dont know much about dry ground but its obviously more difficult for the hunter keep tabs on the track. the other dogs will learn much faster once the first dog knows what shes doing, in my experience anyway. Getting the first cat jumped is the first major hurtle, then getting the dogs to stick with one thats running is the next. At this point I have no problem getting a cat jumped...its catching them consistently that Im still working on. Its a long learning process but you are already doing the most important thing imo and that is getting out in the woods for some first hand experience.

[barksalot]

What David said!!

[duck duck goose]

I see 2 problems right away and never read the thread. Redbones and a pretty girl. You aint never gonna catch anything. HAHA!

Hahaha oh no I am doomed!

Was fun to read. Thank you for the entertainment.

Invest in a set of tire chains when you are able to, and keep bags of sand or other weight over the drive wheels. If you bring empty feed sacks, you can fill them as needed. I know you have a shovel, hopefully you have a tow chain, toe strap and a come-along,two jacks and blocks, a bow saw, a pick axe.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks David, I carry a chain and a jack as well, the come-along is the next purchase and tire chains after that. I had a chainsaw until last weekend when I had a tree fall the wrong way for me and take the saw with it, now I have to fix that... but I know what you mean, some time work and creativity and you could get moving again with just a few tools.

[duck duck goose]

Take the attitude that YOU are going to track this cat down, and your dog is going to help you run it down at the end. In the mean time, that one dog will become a careful expert, and that is what you will be needing later on for those pups.

David, that right there is great advice. My biggest problem after a while was trying to sort out the dog tracks from the bobcat tracks. I think I am going to leash them up next time and make sure that they stay glued to the cat track.

Thank you guys for all of the encouragement, I will keep this thread going as I get out in the field so stay tuned and I will let you know how things go.

Also thanks to Bluedog and Ndigs, I will definitely be giving you guys a call when I get back north of the border. Bluedog, you are sitting on a little piece of paradise right there. I used to spend quite a bit of time up the Waiporous Creek when I lived in Calgary. I cut one cat track there one summer where he jumped the river but being as the season was closed I just carried on.

[david]

It is a great story and it seems like you had fun together with your wife. That is the most important thing. I don't know how they make them in Canada, but most American made wives will not enjoy the intense devotion required by bobcat hunting for very long. In fact, I could tell you about how long you have with the average American made version. So, just enjoy it and hunt in a way that she can enjoy. I think by adding two pups to your pack you have reduced your chances of actually catching a bobcat by 50-80%. If she enjoys the three dogs and you enjoy the three dogs: go for it. Make some memories you can hold on to for life. Have fun, and keep on sharing it with us!

Thanks for posting.

[Dan Edwards]

Last piece of advice from me. Get rid of the dogs and keep the woman. You can still get on here and tell everybody how good you are at catchin critters. Problem solved.

Take care

[SASS]

Great story and pics. Keep up the good work and I would really read over David's advice he just gave you some great knowledge to build from. Also one dog until it can jump a cat on its own and then you can add the other dogs when they have a lead dog to follow and learn from. Good luck and keep it up.

[davidg1!]

Great story, keep the wife and your hunting will always be more fun.

[dhostetler]

Great story. David gave you excellent advice on everything he posted. The track that you found that you didn't know what is looks like a trotting coyote track to me.

[david]

That track bugs me. It has always been hard for me to see a track and not identify it. In a picture you don't get the context of surrounding environment, where the track came from or where it goes. The cup helps, but it is really hard to get the size of it. In the first photo of it, I can see a spot where there are two pine needles, I think. If they are, the track is too small for coyote. There are a lot of animals that will lope like that at times. But the mustelids do it most of the time. I include skunks in that family,(although these days they say they are not) as they have that same gait. Coon do it a lot also.

The dirty tracks made me think skunk or badger, because I see no bare dirt, and both of these usually come out of dirt dens of some kind this time of year. The pine needles make the track look too small for badger. So I am leaning toward other small mustelids: skunk, marten, mink. I have seen gray fox tracks that small. Just can't see enough detail in the track itself. But see no claw marks which says gray fox. I would have to know why the feet were so dirty. The dirt says skunk to me.

All that just says I can't tell what it is. Lol. But it is not because I didn't think about it.

[perk]

When you look at the track directly next to the cup it appears to be coyote track. The 2 middle ties are much longer than the outer toes, which says yote to me. The pine needles throw me off. But not knowing the type/size of pines the needles don't really give me anything to base size against. Here in Va you could find a va pine whose needle is 1-2", the loblolly which has a needle that could be 4-5" and some spots I see south of me they are paying people to plant long leaf needles, the needles look like they can be 8" or better in length. I don't think the track is so much dirty as wet, you can see where the truck tire made that kinda wet mushy dirty snow, perhaps the animal walked in that prior to getting back up on clean snow. I'm gonna guess yote.
Nice pics and story happy hunting

[david]

Do you know what Mr. E.F. Clay would say about it? Well, if he couldn't see it well enough to identify it, he would say "I don't know what it is, but I know what it isn't!"

And like most bobcat hunters I have known, he would be saying "it really doesn't matter what it is, it is not a bobcat."

Wanting to know so badly is not a bobcat hunters trait as far as I have seen. It is left over from my childhood as a trapper.

But if you look straight down at that pair of tracks, you could fit about two of them in between. Then if you transpose that to the distant angle of the pine needles, you could fit about six of those tracks along the length of that pine needle. So if that needle is six inches long, those tracks are about an inch long front to back. If those needles are eight inches long, those tracks would be about 1.33 inches long.

If you say only four tracks can fit along that needle,(which to me is clearly not true, as already explained by looking straight down at a pair of tracks), an 8" needle would give you 2" tracks, which is still small for coyote.

That is why I don't think it is a coyote.

But we know what it is not. So who cares? (besides me)

[perk]

David, I don't wanna go to work tomorrow anyways, swing on by and pick me up we will go try to find those tracks!