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What are you guessing is too cold of a track to scent trail not sight trail in snow? Scenario around 12 degrees night old track that has frost in it in about 6 inches of snow. Temp has not been over 25 degrees for a couple of days. Humidity around 40%. I ask because I dont really mess with bobcats and took a dog out today that is 3 years old that does well on bears and trails nice in the dirt with low humidity and night old lion tracks. I found a big bobcat track and sent him down it to see if he could move it. I know he was sight trailing in the snow because when this dog can smell a track his tail whips in circles like crazy. This dog is very tight mouthed and seldom opens unless jumped, treed or riggs. Anyhow we went about 5-600 yds like this and bumped a little on some rocks where the track disappeared with very little snow to sight trail. Just curious on your thoughts. I am by no means a bobcat hunter but since I started finding a bunch I though I might try it.

That should be excellent cold trailing conditions. Your dog probably just needs to learn how to snow hunt. You said he was sight trailing? He didn't stick his nose into the track? Conditions like you described should hold plenty of scent but dogs have to stick there nose into the track to smell it. Most bare ground dogs will trail a track without the the nose every hitting the actual track and run it on scent lifting off the track. In cold dry snow dogs have to wallow out the scent with there noses.

Cold and old like that the dog's need to go track to track using their nose until they warm it up. Smarter ol cat dogs will follow an old track by site in open snow where there are no other tracks around but they still need to stick their nose in it once in awhile just to make sure they are still on a cat. Warmer snow=more sent, cold snow=less sent. When you start getting down below zero the really will have to grind out old tracks.

That sounds like normal condions in Montana. Not all dogs just because they are cold nosed dirt dogs will work in these conditions. Even though some think snow hunting is easy its because they haven't hunted cold dry snow.

Man, that would be a great track. Just keep puttin the dog on em and encourage him when he stays on the track, he'll figure it out. Have fun.

Now that Trump is in there global warming will accelerate at a rate so fast that cold dry snow will be a thing of the past and everyone will be on a level playing field. LMAO

Dogs that have been ran on different game will walk over or not take a bobcat until they have been worked on them for a while. When I ran bear with my dogs years ago the first few bobcats were real hard to get the dogs to take them. I would walk them up with snow the first couple. After three or four caught cats it seem to click and they did good the rest of the winter. I have seen a few dogs that it would not make a difference to them to bounce them back and forth but very few. It is tough to beat a dog that has been bred and hunted only on one game his hole life. Dewey

Awesome. Thanks for the replies. I am going to keep trying with him and he will have it or he wont for bobcats.

JT,

that was an excellent observation you made about how you knew your dogs was sight trailing rather than scent trailing because of the action of his tail.

All dogs over time it seems learn to do some sight trailing especially in snow and this is ok as long as they don't become sight trail crazy. I was trying a bobcat dog one time and I know this dog caught plenty of cats but she would just drive me crazy at times. Cat tracks are sort of like Forest Gump's box of chocolates, you just never know what you are going to get. At times it may look like a hopeless track and the dogs work it pretty darn good and other times you think it is a slam dunk and you stand around there and nothing much happens.

This little dog if you found a snow track she was going down it if she could see it. and she at times would take them and get them warmed up where she could run them and catch them. but if she was still sight trailing and you got in an area where cats were hunting rabbits or running together with tracks going this way and that. She would grab one go with it until it maybe got mixed around or crossed another cat track going another way and she would see that track line and away she would go on that. If the track stayed about the same shape and didn't warm up much she might be all day running around track to track. needless to say I didn't buy her.
Tried another female that would only go if she could smell them and she would root and bury her nose and puff like a steam engine but if she got some scent that tail would ring and she would move up. I watched her working a cold cat track out of some timber and across a snowy park area that had some pretty deep drifts in it. She would just bore along at times painfully slow, and I thought, well this dog will never catch a cat. I was wrong...if she stayed at them and got it up to a decent track that head came up that tail speeded up and now you were running, and then she had an overdrive gear too and that old gal showed me some fur!

Good to hear. I will keep trying to get him to take one. Other dogs in his pedigree can consistantly catch bobcats in Arizona. He might have the ingredients to figure it out. If not I will rotate out my other dogs and see if they can come up with something.

J.T. When I have pups when I have a snow track I usually get the pups out first and grab them by there head and shove there nose into the track before any other dogs have a chance to ruin it. A pup will in very short order learn to stick its nose into the track. It is fine if dogs sight trail a ways but they need to actually stick there nose in it every once in a while to confirm they are on a cat. I don't know if manhandling an older dog to force his nose into the bottom of a track will work or not.

This is Rocket at 3.5 months trailing a lion up a road bank on the top there was bare ground so he lost it and came back. He stuck his nose in every track going up the bank. The way I got him started was holding his nose into a track until he had no choice but to inhale the scent. This was a hot track probably about 3 hours old. Currently Rocket is 13.5 months old and one of my fastest bobcat dogs.

Some folks accomplish the same thing by putting small treats they can smell in the holes in the snow, and eventually put a little snow in on top of the treat; point to the hole and call the dog over with the same voice you will use cat hunting. They will put their nose in willingly and will begin using their nose to check little round holes in the snow; Then, even though the smell won't be as strong, they check a hole you point to and they will notice the treat of all treats: cat scent.

You can do this hole training with pups before they ever hit the woods. If you bait the holes randomly, they will have to use their nose and not just sight.

I am pretty much too lazy to do it. But I have a Freind who I hunted with for years who was always excited about the results and evidently forgot how many times he told me about the method. But I never felt the need for it as my dogs checked holes just as good as his did. Lol.

Most dogs catch on very quickly just by hunting them, in my experience. If they don't , I start to wonder.

I have a dog now who sometimes looks like a genius (has caught bobcats on his own); sometimes looks acceptable (has looked good with top bobcat dogs); and sometimes looks like a complete idiot.
He has only hunted snow twice, and both times displayed that his habits/style did not work at all in that snow that day. I could describe it, but it was painful enough to watch the first time without re-living it. In short, given the scenting and snow and non-target tracking conditions, to progress uninterrupted, he really needed to put his nose in most of the tracks, and this was just below his dignity. I think he would figure it out, but I might never have him in snow again. (So I can pretend he would figure it out)

Ok somewhere the post got turned. This is a trained dog, just no bobcat experience. You point and he puts his nose in it. He would drift over the track and each time crossing he would put his nose in and check the track. I say sight trail because this dog is very tight mouthed and I can usually tell how good a track is by what his tail is doing. In this case tail tucked would mean he is unsure and in one sense may think I am setting him up. However when he bumped on some rocks his tail would helicopter and thats when he likes it. At this point he couldnt move it any further. I tried to help him out but I could not find where the bobcat went either. I imagine in a hole somewhere in the rocks. No snow on the rocks therefore no more sight trailing. Just curious on track age and temp, frost in bottom or no frost. I may have answered my own question with the above comments. He may think I am setting him up and not fully committing to new game. Thanks for the replies, I will hit it this coming weekend and see what happens. This work thing really gets in the way.

J.T. wrote:Ok somewhere the post got turned. This is a trained dog, ...

It's Duane's fault. Lol. Or maybe the devil made me do it. Actually something I read made me think of a related method that might help somebody. I wrote it probably knowing it didn't apply to your situation. I might have had some other hidden motive for doing it also. Like being too lazy to start a new thread; or maybe even worse. Maybe I just wanted to prove to my mother that I am not a looser after all. Lol

It really sounds like he could not smell the cat in the snow, yet on the rocks (which would heat up before the snow would) he could get some scent, just not enough to move the track.
If he thought you were setting him up on trash in the snow, how come he didn't still think so in the rocks? (Maybe because he could finally smell what you were trying to get him to run).

In the Great Lakes areas, it was not uncommon to have NO scent noticeable to the dogs in a snow track at dawn, and dogs could move the same track with ease a few hours later after the sun came out and warmed things up. Seems like it depended on the temperature changes since the track was made. It has been so long since I hunted snow, and I never kept records. But I feel like it was when the track was make in milder temps, and the temperature dropped significantly freezing it in; because In stable temperatures it could be 15 below zero and good trailing.

Like Finney Clay said many times, "if they can't smell it they can't catch it". Pretty simple. He never got upset in those situations. It is just part of bobcat hunting.

Keep after it and let us know how it goes. I bet you will see a different dog in different conditions.
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