BigGameHoundsmen.com

Folks,

The GOOD Bobcat Hunters on the East Coast face many of the same Problems the Lion Hunters out West do....namely Game Stewardship....or lack thereof. Here is an exchange from www.speeddogs.net:



C. John Clay When asked where he hunted to find the number of Cat His Dad's Hounds ran in Jan. and Feb.
Mar 6, 2013 - 5:19AM
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Re: outside foxz and cat hunters?

Not to Ruffle anyone's Feathers...but we Hunt where the Sow Cats are left to run another day and raise more Cats.

A Good running Tom might be left up a Tree as well....when Hunters KILL every piece of Game they Run, it is no wonder that soon there is NO Game left to Run!

ALLAN BISHOP(JABBER JAW)
Mar 8, 2013 - 9:33AM
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Re: outside foxz and cat hunters?

Great post Mr Clay!!

That's called "wildlife management", which is what a true hunter should be concerned with, not just the "kill"!!

If more hunters realized this, they would have more game to hunt!

Fortunately more & more people are beginning to realize this, & if they want to continue to hunt their hounds, they too, should become more invovled in "wildlife management"!! It's for their own benefit & the benefit of all hound hunters!!

It's about the "CHASE"!! Most any animal can be killed!!

Good Hunting to all!!

Allan Bishop
(Jabber Jaw)

Jason Riddick ( Riddick Boyz Deerhound Kennel)
Mar 6, 2013 - 6:26AM
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Re: outside foxz and cat hunters?

Very well put Mr clay. There's more to being a sportsman than killing everything running. Sounds Like y'all have a good thing going!

Casey Gardner
Mar 9, 2013 - 3:56PM
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Re: outside foxz and cat hunters?

AMEN but its hard to do it when there is always someone that doesnt care about what u are tring to do. All we can do is keep tring i wish Tawney and myself could find somewhere that we knew it wouldnt be messed with while we werent around and we could manage it like we wanted.


CJC Writes "Casey,

We hear what you are saying all the time from Cat Hunters up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

They say why should we save a Cat when the next truck down the road will kill it.

They tell us that we are blessed that you are the only Cat hunters in your Clubs. In those in Florida we did not used to be. People just like in your areas, some from your areas(some who you all know) used to come down there with 4,5,&6 Truck loads of Hounds. They would stay several weeks, several times a year. When they would find a Track the call would go out on the Radio and all Trucks would rendezvous at the Track. Soon upwards of 40 Hounds would be after a little 10# Sow. They about cleaned the Bobcats out of several Hundred Thousand Acres. Then them moved on to other areas.

Well, most have gotten old, died or quit hunting.

Also the Land Managers have gotten smarter as to what goes on in Clubs under their care! The Clubs themselves have become better Stewards of the Wildlife. GAME HOGs are not tolerated, not matter what they are after be it Deer, Hogs, Bobcat or Quail!

Well you have to start somewhere. Try getting all the fellows together who hunt a Club and make a Pact to leave Females.....maybe leave a tom up the 2nd tree it climbs....leaving it to run again. Hell a Picture is worth as much as a Carolina Cat Hide is, and a DEAD CAT leaves NO Tracks. Ole Poon says his Hounds eat one up anyway.

If A Hunter (and I use this term very loosely) will not abide by this Pact, then go to the Property Owner/Manager and inform him that there is a "GameHog" who if he/she is not exercising good "Game Conservation" practices maybe he/she should not be in that Club.

Policing your Sport should fall on each of us, not on the Game Conservation Officers. Some one who will over harvest will probably take out of Season as well.

Now in the States where we hunt a "Catch" by the Hounds outside of the kill Seasons is over looked as "An Incidental Catch". Yet I hear of people back yalls way climbing and shooting them out long after your "Harvest" Season is over. Those dead Cats can not raise any young, maybe ones already born! No wonder that yall are having to have several Trucks ride of a Morning to find a track.

The Feds just started rounding up people in an Undercover operation started in 2009 with So Called BEAR Hunters doing some of these same things.(we hear a socalled Bobcat hunter who has been in trouble before got caught up in this). The Feds have plenty of YOUR money to fund these kinds of Operations and people get Squeezed into helping them.

Do not be SURPRIZED if one has not been going on with Bobcats as well. Bobcats are on the CITIES list and the Endangered list in some States.

Self Policing and just Good Game Management is the way to go and starts with ONE Person/Group deciding that if they want to be able to enjoy what they love the Buck Stops/Starts with Them!

Just MY Opinion!

Very well put have too agree for the most part but in our area . Montana we are having some what the same problem but to the houndsmen defense it not them hurting the female and kitten population,so not to name the problem I won't I will let the reader figure out who is hurting our cat populations. Its pretty hart o let a dead cat loose! So all sportmen need to practice what as been said Jmo. Andy

I am a trapper and a hound hunter so don't get to high and mighty because I watch plenty of female cats walk away from sets in perfect condition some two or three times. greed has nothing to do with method. Steel just never sleeps and all mine eats is a little wax. you start drawing lines in the sand. You might look up and see your on the wrong side friends.

State trappers associations do more for our rights than any hound hunting clubs have ever done.We just won one of the biggest battles ever to keep are rights and it only works if we are together. raw fur sales affect us all and once trapping is gone what do you think will be next.

box rocker wrote:I am a trapper and a hound hunter so don't get to high and mighty because I watch plenty of female cats walk away from sets in perfect condition some two or three times. greed has nothing to do with method. Steel just never sleeps and all mine eats is a little wax. you start drawing lines in the sand. You might look up and see your on the wrong side friends.

Can't explain it any better!!


Take care, Willie

box rocker wrote:I am a trapper and a hound hunter so don't get to high and mighty because I watch plenty of female cats walk away from sets in perfect condition some two or three times. greed has nothing to do with method. Steel just never sleeps and all mine eats is a little wax. you start drawing lines in the sand. You might look up and see your on the wrong side friends.

The way I see it, is it's not drawing a line in the sand it's just the truth and it's not that all houndsmen are against trappers we all have our own way of doing things, the simple math is that if you take all regardless of the size or sex sooner or later they will all be gone, I've seen areas here in the high desert of California back before the fur prices went though the roof where when conditions where right you could find a dozen tracks a day to run with the dogs now after a few years of heavy trapping and the predator calling you can't find but one or two tracks a day if that, it doesn't matter what you do or how you do it we are all fighting for the same things our right to hunt/trap/call or what ever the way we want to so fighting with our selves does nothing but dividing our limited resources.

I agree Dale completely. I think that we must share in the numbers of cats we take if we want the numbers of people to fight for the rights we deserve. I think numbers have gone up at a incredible rate with the predator calling TV shows but think it is great for that reason. Yes the cat numbers have gone down fast with the high fur prices and I have harvested less but with the price it has compensated for it and it is worth it for more level headed masses.

I think if a guy wants to trap cats he should use live traps. Yes they are exspensive, but much safer on the cat. I know I am going to switch. I had 1 cat this year after a big cold snap that its hole paw was frozen to the trap. From its ankle down it was hard as a rock, and another with a broken foot. I would be hesitent to let an animal like that go. It might just sufer and die anyways. Dont get me wrong I do support both trapping and hound hunting. I think any time spent in the woods is a good time. But after what I saw this year I am welding me up some cage traps this year.

Box , tell me some thing , how do the gov. traper shooting bobcats from a Helo. tell which ones are female? do not get on here and the roll of the great saver. I'm a rancher with goats in west texas and ahoundsman. and i seen what the Gov. does to show # . So I say the line here has already been drawn in the sand bubby. Don't bull s#@# me !!!. ED Moore West texas .

Well I am at a loss for words. I can't argue with that Ed. Shit I can barly read it!!! Next time I'm out in the apache, shooting baby bobcats with the 60 mm and dropping poison rats from the sky I'll be thinking of you. Sorry to everyone that found any of my posts on this topic offensive.

Carey J Clay , sorry for getting off on the Gov.trappers .When you sit on a hill and see them shooting everything that they can ,as to post # numbers on reports . I just can't help myself sometimes.Box rocker, i didn't mean to single you out. Your post just set me off, i should of just got off of the site. Carey ,I've hit a few cold tracks and seen some sign , nothing the dogs can run. It's just to darn dry!! It's hell to type with one hand. Good luck saving those Females ED.

Well Fellow cat hunters, I am going to jump in here and just ad my 2 cents!!

The below is not for everyone, just what I do and think, right or wrong!

From Mid-March through June, I exercise my hounds couple or three times per week in the middle of the day. Especially in my private hunting areas do I do this in attempt to keep from starting or catching any cats!! I just do not have that many cats there and sure don't want to catch a pregnant female or one with new kittens.

My Dad had a saying that he never ran a dead coyote in his life, and that holds true for me on bobcats.

I have seen discussed on the forum before about why so many of our bobcat races end with dogs catching the cat instead of treeing, when the cat may have been caught under a big old oak tree? My feeling is 1) maybe to many dogs in race(12 to 20 dogs) keep cat confused even in the thickest of country? I really don't know! But I started hunting not more then 8-9 in my pack and seems the race is lasting longer? And yes the "pick-ups" may be longer and the cat may escape on dry road, but that is better then having a dead cat!

Does this lay off hurt my pack of hounds? I don't think so. I keep them exercised, enforce their handle, check them on off game, & they seem to come back fine.

Is it good to train young hounds? Likely not---but when they are encouraged in a cat race that is right, the light seems to go on so to speak and seldom have anymore problems that way. Its is if the breeding kicks in and they know what & how they are to run.

In closing & quit rambling, everyone has to pay attention to our bobcat population so as sustain our great sport. The chase is many times over more satisfying then the kill. Anyone can have my kill, for trading the opportunity to listen to a fine cat race!

Thanks for reading and stay safe,

Clyde Lawson

I was going to post on this thread and thought that I have posted something similar in the past. I went back and found one of my earlier posts where I voiced my opinion on how important a female bobcat is to the overall bobcat population. I cut some of the post out because it was fairly long.



Re: Cat populations

Postby CRA » Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:07 pm

I want to say that this bobcat section is very blessed with some very experienced hound hunters. I’m very impressed with a lot of the knowledge being passed around in some of these threads. This section definitely has a very wise counsel of hound hunters to learn from. As long as everyone gets along we can all learn from everyone.

The female bobcat by wild animals standards are not the best mothers. They often pick some horrible places to give birth to their kittens. They really don’t make any type of nest with dry grasses like other wild animals do. Female bobcats will give birth to their kittens in some much unprotected places, like an overhang in the rim rocks, a large crack in the rock jumbles, up tight to a downed log, brushy thickets that don’t offer much in the way of protection.
A female bobcat will often leave their kittens for long periods of time to feed herself. This makes the litter wide open for attack. A female bobcat will defend her kittens, but only to a certain extent before leaving to save her own life. A lot of wild female animals will fight to the death to protect their young. This isn’t always the case with female bobcats. They are more prone to leave than fight. Female bobcats will sometimes abandon their kittens when faced with a serious threat to protect their own safety. The bobcat doesn’t produce larger litters even when conditions are right and food is abundant. This is something that hound hunters may think about when out conditioning their hounds during the spring (late April, May& early June). Female bobcats have been known to kill their own kittens when a female bobcat gets very disturbed and something causes them to get too nervous. I don’t know why some would do that but it is something that some female bobcats have been documented doing. Bobcats are very susceptible to the same diseases as house cats are. It’s best to avoid any type of disturbance to the female bobcat during this time of the year. I know that every serious bobcat hunter develops a bond with the bobcat and would do almost anything to protect the same species that they hunt. If we could just get the animal rights groups to understand the feelings that hound hunters have with their quarry and the obsession with protecting them. If the anti’s could only understand the true passion hound hunters have with their quarry and hunting them has nothing to do with the harvest. It’s for the love of the hounds and the thrill of the chase. Lifelong serious hound hunters are very passionate about the bobcat and their existence. One thing a hound hunter has to learn to recognize is just how important a female bobcat is. Just knowing the whereabouts of a female bobcat is very beneficial. I have noticed as high as 3 Toms trailing 1 female cat. Keeping the females around is almost like a bait pile to a bear hunter.

In visiting with an older cat hunter recently, he offered his opinion that in the sixties & early seventies his guess is that there was 15 bobcat for every one we have in this area now. If that don/t convince hunters to spare females, what will it take? That hunter I believe has treed as many or more bobcat as any one in Oregon. For sure he has stayed at it more consistent than any one I know, using hounds only. Al

I can remember hunting in the early 90s with u Al up baker cr. We hunted every road that day and never ran a cat. Im not sure about the population being any different then compared to now. I might be wrong , but since the early 90s till now I think its about the same.

jc