Key 11:
Calling Bobcats Part 1
It’s the
Habitat, Stupid!
By Major L.
Boddicker
“Claude, you’ve trapped this cedar butte country, did you ever catch any cats here?” I asked.
“No, ten years I trapped coyotes, badgers, and swift foxes here. Never saw tracks or signs of bobcats,” Claude replied.
We were setting up to call about 100 miles east of the
“Sure is a great looking place for cats. Did any of the ranchers ever say they had seen cats here?” I continued.
“Yeah, maybe once in their life they had seen a bobcat. One rancher said an old female had some kittens in the haymow of an old barn on his place. That was 20 miles from here and 20 years ago,” he added.
“Well, the Cheyenne Ridge and Chalk Bluffs are only six miles from here. My guess is that they travel through,” I said.
“It would be nice to call one, but sure would be a long-shot,” Claude said.
The day was warm and windy with a slight southwest breeze. Dry as a bone, the grass was crunchy under our feet. We had called and shot two coyotes earlier in the morning and were expecting little response from them. But at every stand, true-blue callers expect something to happen.
I sat with my back against a large boulder, looking to the northwest out across 100 miles of shortgrass prairie. The earth’s living skin in this area is about 18 inches thick from roots to the tallest grass. Desolate.
It was Claude’s turn to call. He sat facing the southwest corner of the butte, looking over me into the cedars and rocks.
Claude starting wailing on the Crit'R·Call PeeWee with a nice, clear cottontail squall. The volume was authentic as was his cadence; he sure sounded like a cottontail.
Not expecting much, I sat daydreaming, looking at the far horizon thinking about absolutely nothing but whether or not a coyote might come loping in.
Five minutes passed; nothing but a few birds were fussing in the cedar trees. The warm winter wind was gentle on my face; it was almost a nap-time moment. Unbeknown to me, the birds had spotted something.
Blam! Blam! Claude’s Model 630, .223 H&K barked twice in quick succession.
“Dad blame it!” Claude exclaimed. “I just missed a bobcat.” Claude’s expletives are much milder than mine.
“Let’s go up and look. Sounded like you hit rock,” I said.
“Oh man, I can’t believe it. I picked up the movement out of the corner of my eye; it was standing on that big rock between those huge boulders.”
“That’s only 50 yards Claude, buck fever?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” he said.
We worked our way up to the spot which was a typical cat place in jumbled boulders where it could lay in the shade and be protected from coyotes and lions. Two light spots on the rocks showed us the impact points of the bullets, both were too low for a hit. No blood or hair showed that it had been a clean miss.
“No bobcats here, huh?” I mused.
“Well, this one must have recently moved in here,” Claude explained.
“Yeah, right.” I said.
Bobcats go where they want to go, so don’t be
surprised if they show up anywhere in the
Bobcats act like all other cats, except for African lions. They are basically loners. Males and females get together to breed, then split and rarely associate. Females keep their kittens for perhaps a year until a new litter is on the way, then they chase the yearlings off. Males will kill the kittens if they have the chance.
Bobcats may breed year around, but the primary season is late February-March with the litters of 1-4 being born in May and June.
DeWayne Jackson, who now works for the Oregon Game and
Fish Department, did research on bobcats in
He captured and radio-collared 59 bobcats over a 3 ˝ year period and tracked them. He found the males had a total home-range of about 30 square miles; a female’s home-range was 12 square miles. There was a lot of overlap between home-ranges so bobcats were more dense than home-range size would indicate. Bobcat home-ranges varied in size between seasons. During winter, the range size for males averaged 7.4 square miles, 4 square miles for females.
In
Jackson-captured bobcats showed approximately 80% were mature animals with 20% juveniles. That usually indicates a low harvest pressure on the population.
Laura Spess Jackson, De Wayne’s wife, did a study on bobcat diets at the same time. She analyzed 256 bobcat scats to determine what they were eating and preferred. She found that bobcats seemed to select for cottontail rabbits and packrats (wood rats) year around and kangaroo rats in the spring and summer. They ate a variety of small mammals but showed a very strong preference for these three species.
Survival of bobcat kittens is not high. Coyotes, mountain lions, dogs, great-horned owls, golden eagles, and other bobcats kill the kittens. Since bobcats are very specialized feeders on live rabbits, small rodents, and birds, they are very susceptible to drought and diseases which kill their prey, then they starve to death. Bobcats like to kill their own prey and will very rarely eat rotten carrion, like coyotes do.
Like most cats, bobcats stalk and ambush prey rather than running them down. Their colors and body form are perfect for ambushing and perfect for staying unseen when callers bring them in.
Bobcats like escape cover and are rarely found more than 100 yards from brush, rocks, trees, and features to which they can climb or hide from coyotes, lions, dogs, and other predators.
When I was buying fur, ranchers would bring in several
bobcats each year that they had found which had been killed and abandoned by
lions and coyotes. The bobcats’ hides were generally in good shape except for
the kill bites. Five of
First key: Call in areas where cats feel comfortable. If you can’t see trees, brush, rocks, old buildings, cliffs, and other escape cover, your chances are slim to none. They do not like large expanses of open prairie or cornfields. Call the edges or ecotones of the vegetation, rocks, creek bottoms, and trees.
Several years ago, Wally Brownlee from Target Shooter’s Inc., was visiting me. We went out for a hunt in the foothills. A stand was chosen geared toward coyotes but in great bobcat country. If I had had permission on the neighboring property, we would have located nearer cat habitat. Where we sat left a 350-yard gap of meadow for a cat to cross to get to us. As luck would have it, I called a big bobcat down the ridge. I expected it. It stopped about 5 yards out in the meadow and sat down to watch. It would not come closer to us across that much open ground. So, we watched it lose interest and walk away. Why did we not shoot? We would have been trespassing; otherwise we would have launched a shot.
Bobcats depend on their eyes and ears to locate their prey. Their noses are secondary. So do not hesitate to use decoys while calling bobcats. Fawn deer decoys, rabbits, mechanical critters, live or decoy birds, and skins fluttering in the breeze all can help bring cats in. A rooster in a cage works, especially a fighting cock that crows a lot.
Bobcats respond to a large variety of sounds, including rodent squeaks, rabbit squalls, guinea pig squeals, baby pig squeals, woodpecker, and other bird distress cries. They seem to respond best to higher-pitched sounds and lower-volume deliveries than do coyotes.
Second Key:
Patience. Bobcat callers need to be patient. Back in 1969, my cousin, Paul
Noeller from
Paul was new to calling predators, so he was still not quite believing it could be done. On our second stand, he was sitting about ten yards to my left. I was facing a northwest wind, looking down into a steep ravine full of tall red grass. I started squalling, and after less than two minutes one of the biggest coyotes I have ever seen, before then or since, popped up over the ridge to my right, less than ten yards away coming at a dead run. My rifle never moved from my lap; I just slid it to my right and pulled the trigger as the song dog lifted to jump over my legs. The .25-06 Ackley Improved made a significant hole in the coyote, and it died with its nose against my right leg.
“Hey, did you see this?” I asked.
“Yeah, you show-off SOB. I suppose you are going to tell me, you do that a lot!” he exclaimed.
“Of course, this calling just works great, like I told you, they just come running up like dogs, and you shoot them,” I added.
We both had a good laugh and inspected the scene.
The coyote could not see me until it was right on top of me, so had no clue. It was hungry from the cold and time between meals. If one wants to get close-encounters with predators, set up where they can’t see you until they are in your lap.
Our next calling was south of
“This is the place,” Shortie said, “I see bobcats cross the highway here several times a year. They love these cedar breaks.”
“Man, it’s cold!” I exclaimed, hoping for an excuse not to get out of the car. We had faced that -20°F for seven hours already.
“Well, let’s go,” Paul exclaimed. “I didn’t come out here to sit in the car.”
“Jeez, what a miserable day,” I groused.
We bailed out into the cold, closed my Cadillac doors quietly, and crunched out through the 18-inch deep snow. Dark was settling in; it was bone-chilling cold.
Crunch, crunch, we trudged up to the edge of a ravine. Paul sat just back from the edge to my left. I sat back under a cedar tree in the middle. Shortie sat against a small cedar to my right. At the time, I used a Boynton’s Famous coyote call. It was the predecessor to the Crit'R·Call.
The cottontail squall penetrated the dead still cold air. We were looking to the northeast at a large butte with scattered patches of cedar on its sides about 600 yards away.
“Hey, bobcat on the side of the butte,” Shortie whispered.
The dark spot bounded through the snow down the butte
and disappeared into some cedar trees below. That was about
For the next hour, I kept calling, high squeaky,
squally, low, slow gargally, whatever to try to get the cat in front of us. The
adrenaline was gone at
Blam! Paul’s 270, Model 70
“What the heck!” I exclaimed.
“I got the SOB, the damn thing jumped up dang near in my lap. I shot it just like you got the coyote from your lap,” he rattled off excitedly.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Shortie said.
The cat had worked its way to us through a labyrinth of ravines, sat below us for awhile, then decided to jump up to see what was going on. It landed three feet from Paul’s rifle muzzle. It was a big beautiful cat, which in 1969 was worth $.50 plus a $5 bounty.
