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Just wondering your opinions on running bobcats more than once in the same area. Is there any threat of chasing them out of the area?

Short Answer, NO!

C. John Clay
Dads Dogboy

sure makes em smarter!

I'm guessing I run the same cats a few times each season, as Tramp posted, they do get smarter, also think they hole up in a swamp or thicket for awhile before they start moving around again. Have a few cats I can somewhat predict which swamp they are heading for, and how they are going to run it.

They seem to stay in the area unless you jump them a few times. Although thats not true with every cat. The general rule in my area is that if there is a food source they stay.

It also seems if the cat around here get wise after a few races. They find holes, bluffs and run roads out.

I always wondered how often or how many times a guy ran the same cat or fox.

One would always assume that just because the dogs would strike in the same curve in the road, or the same draw that they were running 'ol so and so again. Then you would tell your buddy "yeah last week I run this one and he went this way and that way and over that hill, into that canyon". Well about 3 years ago I got the ultimate way to shed light on this "myth".

For the first time in my life I treed a pure and I mean pure white albino grey fox. pink eyes, pink nose, pink pads on his feet. I treed it 3 more times over the next 2 years. I never struck it in the same spot twice, and never treed it in the same spot twice. But I was damn sure running the same fox. I asked at least 10 people if they had ever seen an albino fox and nobody ever had and some of these guys had been hunting 50 years or more.

To get to the point, this fox hung out in the same 2 mile radius for 2 years with heavy hunting pressure and I myself jumped him out at least twice everytime I treed him. A friend of mine also treed him once............Funny thing is I haven't treed that albino fox since my friend treed it and we all made a pact that we would not kill it or let the dogs catch it on a kick out...go figure

I have noticed that some of the cats get a lot more tricky and harder to catch, which in turns make the dogs work harder and get better. Other cats learn to just go up, I think. They get used to being treed, taking a nap, climbing down and being run again the next week. So who knows..

Zach

We treed what we think is the same bobcat in the same tree about one week inbetween runs. Both runs were from different directions. I thought that was kinda neet.

IMO many different animals are ran and we think it is the same "old bigfoot" because of the route that was taken. Every cat in the territory knows every crossing, fallen log, every thicket like the back of your hand. When pursued, all know where to go when pushed. An example was seen in the 50's & 60's in central Florida. Leonard Owen and "Uncle" Kelly Runnels hunted and killed more Bobcats than everyone else combined. They had a 1/2 beagle gyp that was a cat dog. Florida Power had a hydro plant on the Withlachoee River, a prime area for bobs that they hunted often. The chain link fence surrounding the plant had a hole in the wire large enough for a cat to get through yet stop the dogs. The dog had ran the cats to that hole often enough that she learned when a cat was started that she could run to the hole and wait and soon the cat would show up she would be waiting for him. Too many cats were killed for it to have been only one cat running the same pattern. All the cats in the area used the same excape routes when caught in that area.
Don't assume it is always the same cat, just because it uses a natural pathway that is known by every animal in the neck of the woods.