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Does anybody think a pack of bobcat dogs from the north west could possibly catch a cat say in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida? I have a good friend says( NO WAY)

I know my dogs will catch cats from Maine to Florida. I know that's not the west but i dont see why not.

A good bobcat dog is a good dog anywhere now that said there are a lot of differences in what people call a dog a good cat dog. Some only like to run at night hitting hot tracks and some people hunt day and cold trail there cats up. Each to there own. When I hunted Nevada the locals said bobcat can't be treed down here that did not seem to hold up for me. In recent years I have hunted the wet western Oregon on one day and the desert in Oregon or California the next with no problem catching cats both dry and bare ground or snow and below zero. I have not taken my dogs to the southeast to hunt but know people that have sold good cat dog there and they dig fine. Hunting with Jessie in south Texas with all the thorns and heavy brush it may intimidate a dog to run full out until they learned to handle it. I would think that it might take a little time for a dog to adjust to the heat and humidity also. Some day if I get a chance I would like to give it a try just to see what would happen. Dewey

Mule man, one of my old mentors gave me some advice about 25+ years ago. I was looking for some sure enough good dogs and had one dog in particular that I was thinking was a sure enough bad dude. We live in central texas and some of the country can at times be pretty rough but not everywhere. He told me if I wanted to find a dog that would get it done right that I had to find it in my same terrain or tougher terrain. That a good dog in our area obviously worked in our part of the world or terrain. He said but he would go to a more difficult terrain because a good dog there would 9.5 out of 10 times shine like new money in an easier terrain. That made sense to me. He also said that if I thought so highly of the dog I had to go hunt him with other dogs that were supposed to be top notch and if I really wanted to test him to take him to east texas. We have thickets here, the whole country is a thicket there it seems. As fate would have it I wound up moving to Palestine, tx. I got to find out what he was for sure. I too had doubters when I moved there that my dogs could do what I thought they could. I kept hearing this one man and his dogs name over and over. To the point that I couldn't take it anymore and asked where he lived. I was told he didn't have time to hunt with someone like me that my dogs and I weren't on their level. These people had never seen my dogs work. I went and looked the guy up and he and I became GREAT friends. My dogs more than stacked up. I say this to say go try it. Find out for yourself if they can. It just might help you better your program and it just might show you that you've been doing it right. Plus it's fun to hunt different terrain. Why does he say your dogs can't do it there? What is the variable that he thinks changes things from.place to the other?

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I have hunted in the areas in question. I think some dogs may be able to catch cats in both areas but how consistently is the question. This is a touchy question because a lot of people do not want to hear that their dogs cannot do something even though the truth of the matter is they probably can't.

IMO with cat or varmint hunting there are factors in catching game in different areas that can contradict each other. For an example of this go back and listen to David's interview with Harold Parker. The example he gives is there is one area he hunts where having tree dogs will cost you cats. To me that doesn't mean that a tree dog couldn't catch any cats there but just catch less. I think it goes both ways and I think you would catch a lot less cats with pure running dogs that do not tree in the redwoods of Northern CA. I think there is a lot to be said for specialization and that is why there is such a big difference in dogs used from region to region.

Another trend I see that has been going on for quite some time but a lot more over the last 20 years it seems by the research I have done and that is the varmint hunters out west have been adding running dogs to their tree dogs, and it makes sense. But what I have not seen as much of is the southern guys adding tree dogs to their blood though I'm sure there is some of that too just not on as large of scale. Thats my 2 cents from first hand, eyes on accounts.

Hi Muleman, only takes one hound to catch some bobcat anywhere , if, you have the right hound, a true bobcat hound. However, there are bobcat that are very difficult to catch even with a large pack of cat hounds. Just my opinion. Al

macedonia mule man wrote:Does anybody think a pack of bobcat dogs from the north west could possibly catch a cat say in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida? I have a good friend says( NO WAY)

i have hunted texas if that counts, they do things differently then the north west, thats for sure. but from what i saw a good west coast dog can catch a cat down there. im not sure they can catch 3 a day for a week straight in the heat like those damn near straight running dogs can. but catch one or two in the early am was possible.

On the flip side Im not sure how most south east cat dogs would do on the west coast, rigging from the box, searching 200 + yards for a rained out track,cold trail, jumping one, and locate in big timber....

Conditions and acclimating play a big part unlike some will ever admit!

Brian, the only part ofTexas that compares with the area I’m talking about is north of Beaumont through the big thicket up to interstate 20. Along the Louisiana line. It’s probably not more than 60 miles west of the La. line. From what I hear south Texas dogs are not much over hear.

My opinion is if you take a dog hunting in different terrain he won’t do as good as you would like on the first trip. Dogs need to be acclimated to the area you are hunting. There’s easy cats and hard cats and anyone can get lucky. But if you hunt them in that terrain consistently they will start to figure it out. Now how long will it take to acclimate a dog? That’s a different question. Some may pick it up quick, others maybe never will.

Cody, do you catch most on the ground or put more in a tree

It depends. Down here the terrain can change so much from one ranch to the next. I would say about half and half. Some places I hunt aren’t too thick and most cats tree in ten to fifteen minutes. On another ranch it’ll be thick black brush or big thick white brush thickets and the cats will run 45 minutes to an hour or even longer and catch most of them on the ground. Not every case but generally if they run more than about 20 minutes or so they’re not gonna tree.

I hunted a area last year were the dogs might not touch the ground for a 100 yds or more just running on big blow downs that are in alot of places 10 feet or more off the ground and stacked like pixie sticks It took my dogs 2 weels to learn how to run in it tell they started catching them. Once they figured it out they caught them very consistently.