brogy
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Just finally got settled back home from cat hunting. Thanks to Chris Dailey and the other locals that offered input and advice.
It was sure nice to get out of the house and try something new and get the hounds some exercise.
We got up there Friday evening just before dark and my cousin showed us some public and private ground.
We got up Saturday and started driving looking for tracks. Saw lots of tracks but snow conditions weren't real good combined with inexperienced hunters we didn't find but a few real promising tracks.
We made a half hearted attempt to walk out a few tracks but ended up going into an area where we had multiple sets of somewhat recent tracks and appeared to be populated by a few cats. We decided to just free cast and hope for the best. We were fortunate to get some excited and dogs got a track going real good and got treed out in a frozen swamp in a lonely evergreen. Tree was empty but appeared to have signs that something had climbed and busted limbs up high made us believe whatever it was bailed. Dogs retreed again and as we closed it, they went back on the run and quit and came in. We believe that they obviously had run something but after it had bailed a couple times, they began to question whether they should be running it. After all, each of the young dogs has been molded and shaped to never run anything but coon they're entire lives.
At the end of the day, they had a few chases in and a lot of treeing leaving. Not 100% sure what they were always doing but it was fun anyway.
It was definitely exciting!
This morning snow conditions were much better with an inch or so of fresh powder but no good tracks were found.
We free cast them in the same area as yesterday but nothing real exciting. We called it quits about noon so we could pack up and head for home.
It sure was a fun experience and we've talked about possibly trying again next year with more time. I don't think I can justify feeding a "cat dog" with such a short season on them and no local established population but I sure wouldn't mind putting some more effort into preparing them for such a trip in another year.
Suprisingly, even after talking to some experienced locals, we never ran into another cat hunter the whole weekend.
I did see my first porcupine (2 of them) in the wild, and first wolf (2 of them also) in the wild. With that and good buddies made the whole trip worth it.
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12-15-2009 03:34 AM
