RunninBear(Ike)
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586 |
I started a nice tom bobcat a few years back with three of my best hounds. It was around noon and those dogs all treed up high on a bare south slope, so I walked in with my video camera and .22 rifle.
I came into the tree from below and stopped about fifteen yards away trying to decide whether to just shoot the cat or get the camera out first. That tom was in a pinyon tree and only about four or five feet above the dogs. I laid down the rifle and pulled out the video camera, flipped on switch and that's about when the bobcat jumped--not one photo and the bobcat was gone.
The bober went up the canyon, turned and came back past me at a short distance and ran out from under those dogs. That was around 2:30 PM and the dogs never got treed again before dark. In fact they hit the road around 8:00 PM that evening and I had never heard another tree or had the tree switches indicate they had him.
Over the years I've decided that either the dogs hunt, the area I hunt or the climate I hunt in prevents the dogs from running down a jumped bobcat on open ground unless the bobcat goes and hides somewhere. I have dogs will run a bear from tree to tree until they give out or I come, and have often heard people say the bear decides whether it trees or not. I don't buy that on bear but do on western bobcats.
If any of you people can come out in my back yard and show me I'm wrong then I'd like to jump in and ride along..........
ike
By the way, nice cat and congrats on the catch.....I also like the looks of those red dogs you have!
Last edited by RunninBear(Ike) on 02-22-2009 at 03:04 PM
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