Leupold BX-4 Rangefinding Binoculars

Idaho's Opening Day

GatoMan

New member
Joined
Jan 8, 2001
Messages
784
Location
IDAHO
Well Idahos cougar season opened up today in the area I hunt in, so at 4 in the morning I found myself in the old ritual of rolling out of bed and loadin the dog box. Idahos bobcat season in my area does'nt start till the first of the yr but you are allowed to pursue them during cougar season. My main passion is bobcat hunting so usually thats all thats on my mind. Anyways 5:30 I pull up to my normal spot, that I let dogs clean out and collar up at. At about 6 I cut a nice bobcat track, it has been snowing all nite and the track is pretty well covered but under the canopy of the trees I can tell its defintally a good runable track. In Idaho you can only start your hunt 30 minutes before sunrise, so with it being early I decide to go on up the road, break some roads open and maybe find a better track to run since I knew where this bobcat was headed and its not a favorite place of mine to turn a dog out in, Well I had been cutting roads with not much luck, the heavy snow all nite long kept the animal movement almost to nothing, keeping an eye on my clock, I knew I could go back and run the bob but I wanted to break this last one road open before I went back. Getting higher up on the ridge the going was getting tougher the snow was now over a foot deep but the driving was;nt to bad because it was so powdery I was able to break through fairly easy and chug along. I was just looking for a place to turn around and bam, seen the track like a sore thumb, nice cougar had came across probably around midnite or so I figured, the track had about 3-4 inchs of snow in it. I walked the track about 20 feet off the road under a big pine and seen it was a decent tom track. I put 3 of my older dogs out on the track , and they plum hammered the throttle down but problem was they was taking the track up the mnt, not a real good deal. I started up the road to where I last heard them ridge out on me. About 100 more yds and I just sat there and spun my wheels, anyways I whip out the chains and start putting them on, about that time I hear the dogs coming back around the ridge but on the opposite side of the canyon, the dogs dropped off the canyon and was now coming back around below of where I turned out, at this point they was riding him pretty hard and I knew by the tone it was gonna be over in a couple minutes, all about the same time all 3 dogs came smoking into the tree, my 2 females are straight chopped mouth but my male has a huge locate and a big changeover at the tree so when I heard that I knew it was over....so thank goodness I did'tn have to chain up, just backed up to where I could turn aroud and drive down the canyon, only had a 200 yd walk or so into the tree, which I was real glad cause I started gettin the flu the day before and today is my birthday , and if you miss your own party cause your out hunting....well you get your arse skinned...lol Heres a couple pics from today I hope they work.

This is a picture of Molly and Luke treed.
Nov25$05.jpg

This is a picture of Penny treed, I almost lost this dog on a bear this fall and this was her first time back in action.
Nov25$03.jpg

And heres the best picture I got of the lion , it was snowing and it did'nt take long for the lense to get blurred but I think you should be able to make out the cat. I estimated him in the 120-130 pd range, he was left to grow a little bit bigger.
Nov25$07.jpg
 
I'm envious Gato.Cat season opens dec 1st here,cant wait and hope we got snow by then.Give them hounds a pat on the head for me.Good luck on the rest of your season and Happy Birthday.
 
Way to go Gatoman !!! Thanks for the excellent story and great pictures.Nice to have an easy walk now and then isnt it ??? You lucky bas**** having that many choices as to what track you want to run.Here in Maine when we cut a bobcat track that is the one we are going to try and run.Probably would be the only one we would find that day. Keep up with the storys and pics ,I am going nuts here without running a dog for almost a month now.
 
Gato HAPPY BIRTHDAY .
Sure hope you are feeling better .
Thats a great story,and the pictures are to cool.
So are you saying that the dogs sound or bark different depending on what they are doing,and when they get something in the tree?
Sounds pretty fun and exciting (up till you start talking about all the snow :eek: :eek:
 
Dang you Gatoman,
You just had to beat me didn't ya?...lol
Well its been snowing like SOB. we have around 8" here at the house with more on the way they say....Can't go tommorow, but Tuesday its off to play I go......congrats..you better get them dogs dialed in...only have a couple weeks before ya get here man and your dogs need to show mine how its done.... :D :D
 
George you would probably hate me if I told you the farthest bear tree I walked to this summer was about 1/2 mile..lol. Yes MD4M, most hounds will have a changeover when they are on the tree, most hounds bawl on track and chop on tree, and the intensity of the barking becomes dramatically increased, I have a pup here right now that barks upwards of 100 barks per minute on the tree, thats flat slinging the slobber. I had to judge a treeing contest once , thats where they count the number of barks per minute, a stephens cur dog came in around 140 barks a minute and won the competition, there was 3 of us judging and all 3 of us came up with different numbers cause you can;t mentally even hardly count that fast to keep up with them. Catman 8 inchs of snow so I geuss I need to bring my snowmobile then huh??? I think I am gonna go back up in the mornin see if I can cut anything else, by the time I left around 10 in the morn, the snow was already starting to get real wet and heavy, I think everything should move pretty good tonight.
 
GATO....... UGGG DID you post that just to rub it in ?!?!?!? :D :D

COOL TOOLS man !!!! THANX for the CALl.. and the invite but.. WELL... MOOSIE was outta town and got a meeting tomorrow.... LEt me know if your SOLOING it next time it snows.. I thin kTomorrow is suposed to be another storm ?!?!?! At least thats what the wife said....

I got your message in a movie theator.. WENT to see "BLACK NIGHT" (GOOD flick BTW).. ANYWAYS.. I was telling the WIFE I had a HARD on to get a cat becasue OF the snow.... SHE just teased me like she usually does.... :( then I got youtr message in the movies .... UGGGgggggg I knew all of you guys would be hitting thew hills...

ANY word on WIRT or his BUDDY ?!?!?! (I always forget his name.. In the construction biz).... ANYWAYS... GOOD luck tomorrow..... AND We'll talk later BRO !!!!!
 
No, I have'nt spoke to brad since mid-summer, but I need to get ahold of him, hes suppose to have some excellent areas to hunt bobs for me.
 
Gato, excellant story and pictures. You guys that can cat hunt and bear hunt w/ hounds make me jealous. We can apparently run bobcats around hear but, we never get any snow and I would have no idea how to hunt a bob in dry conditions. There seems to be several bobcats this year. I have seen two early in the mournings while out hunting and several of my buddies have been seeing them also.
 
Gato you the man :D
Great story and pic's.From watching the wether reports you and catman have more snow than you need. :cool: Keep an eye over your shoulder I mite be comeing along :D :D

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ November 26, 2001 15:17: Message edited by: Tobey ]</font>
 
Hey Tobey,if you decide to head out west dont forget your buddy George on the way.Seriously Tobey.if you want to head out and have room let me know.If you can wait till Jan1 its better for me but if you can line something up please let me know.Dont look like we will have much for snow for DEc 1 does it ???
Your uncle dan called me tonight.He is getting out of everything.Selling all dogs and equipment !!! Said he and his buddys from NH treed 111 bears this year.And thats not including cubs and jump outs.Thats pretty good with a 6 week training season and about 6 weeks of hunting HUH????LOL

<FONT COLOR="#800080" SIZE="1">[ November 26, 2001 16:00: Message edited by: George P ]</font>
 
Excellent story and pics Gato!! Thanks for posting them! I am getting the fever, we are finally getting a little snow here!! It sure is nice when you get the ocassional "easy" tree!
 

Forum statistics

Threads
110,805
Messages
1,935,122
Members
34,883
Latest member
clamwc
Back
Top