I’m extremely fortunate to have friends with really good bobcat dogs. And a few weeks ago, I was able to capitalize on an opportunity presented to me by these friends with good dogs. It was a training opportunity like no other and my two bobcat-dogs-in-the-making—Coulee and Roux—are all the better for it thanks to the kindness and generosity of my hunting mentor and his main hunting partner.
“Hey Nik,” he called out over the radio. “You better get over here as fast as you can.”
It took me a bit to figure out where exactly they were calling from, but once I did, I boxed up my dogs and mashed the gas pedal.
“Wait,” I said, “Where are you?”
“We’re in the middle of the road … you can’t miss us!”
Very descriptive, I thought. But once I got there, he was right. The scene I came upon was not what I was expecting. I was not aware of the plan that was in the works.
I saw the bobcat in the tree before they even pointed it out to me. It was just … right there, practically overhanging the road, with about a dozen Walker dogs below. It almost never happens like that—most of the time, the trees bobcats decide to climb are far from the road and in the steepest, thickest, nastiest little hell holes you can think of. This bobcat must have been having one of those days.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” my mentor said. “You go drive up the road a ways and box up your dogs and get them to quiet down. We’ll come up there too and give the cat some time to come down. Once it’s out of the tree, you can go put your dogs on the track and see what they do.”
I can’t remember exactly what my response to that was, but I assure you it caught me off guard and seemed too good to be true. It was probably something along the lines of, “Oh hell yes.”
About 15 minutes of BS-ing later, I drove back down the road with Coulee on the box. Sure enough, the cat had come down. Coulee didn’t strike from the box—she rarely does—but was getting very squirmy and I could tell she was rearing to go. I cut her loose, then opened the dog box door to let Roux out.
Both dogs went straight to the tree the cat had just left, then moved down the hill into the brush. Coulee opened right away and started trailing with Roux alongside her. They moved down into the draw and continued working their way down hill parallel to the road. Coulee was barking every ten seconds or so consistently, then all of a sudden, both her and Roux erupted and accelerated.
On the GPS it looked like they were getting ready to cross the road, so I jumped back in my truck and drove down to get closer. Once they hit the road, their progress slowed down and I could tell they were struggling to figure out where the cat went. Knowing the cat was so close, every second they spent grubbing it out on the road was more and more painful because I knew they were getting further and further behind.
After five minutes or so, they had crossed the road and started moving uphill through this small, marshy creek area. About 80 yards up the hill, Roux started barking more and more and his forward progress slowed. Coulee made it up to where Roux was and was also barking, but she was not staying in as tight of an area as he was. I have a lot of optimism for my dogs but sadly not a lot of confidence, so I wasn’t sure if they had treed the cat or what was going on. It was starting to feel like another one of those times when what started as a red-hot race fizzled out into a mess of spaghetti tracks on the GPS. I had to fight away feelings of defeat.
“Hey what’s going on down there?” my mentor called over the radio. “Want me to come down there and see if they’re on the back-track?”
“Yeah,” I replied, “we definitely need help.”
By the time he got down to where we were, Coulee and Roux had both come back down to the road. I showed him where they had gone on the GPS and he confirmed that they were not, in fact, running the back track.
“Mark that spot where Roux was then go up there and see what’s going on.”
So I did. Coulee and Roux beat me to the waypoint I had marked and they both started barking again. The trees we were climbing through are hard to describe and even harder to navigate through. I don’t know what species of tree they are but they grew out of the ground at every angle imaginable and formed a tangled web of bent and twisted trunks between two and four inches in diameter. Much like a jungle gym, I pictured the cat moving all the way up the hill tree to tree without ever touching the ground and I understood why Coulee and Roux were struggling to figure out where it went.
Once I got to the general area where Roux had been, I watched him huffing around on the ground and sniffing all the tree trunks. He seemed confident that it was somewhere close, but due to his lack of experience, struggled to pinpoint the exact location of the cat. I moved around looking up at all the treetops until a big clump of branches and leaves caught my eye … it looked almost like a huge bird’s nest. I climbed further up the hill to get a better vantage point.
At first, I saw what looked like a patch of fur peeking through some branches. And then I saw the ears poking up. There the cat was, no more than 20 feet off the ground.
Even though he didn’t fully locate it himself, I was so incredibly proud of Roux—he was right on it. Coulee did good too, but her obsession with finding the track on the ground was getting the best of her … she has a hard time looking up. On one hand, it’s a good quality because she is great at cold trailing and finding out-tracks. But on the other hand, her biggest struggles always come down to sealing the deal when the track runs out. My hope is that with more time spent chasing cats, she will learn to pick her head up.
Once I started petting up Roux and cheering him on, Coulee started treeing along with him. Although the cat was very well hidden in its little nest, the dogs could almost see it and I know they could smell it. At the time, the harvest season still wasn’t open so shooting the cat out to them wasn’t an option. Whooping and hollering had to suffice.
It truly was an amazing training opportunity … not only for the dogs, but for me, too.
Thanks for stopping by for the read! If you’re interested, I also made a video about this training opportunity and it’s live on the Hound on the Run YouTube channel right now. Check it out!