Wildlife Callers

Mark Healy of Wildlife Callers and Bob Bogaard of the Phoenix Varmint Callers head into Arizona’s Unit 23 and call this fine Arizona bobcat. 

Side note: I gave the video camera a rest for the weekend, and I’m glad I did.

As a couple of Globe – Miami natives, it was fitting that Bob and I headed toward Roosevelt Lake.  We only had Sunday to call and although neither one of us had been calling in this area for a few years, we both grew up hunting and fishing in it.  With our previous knowledge of the roads, we’d waste little time looking for predator sign and setting up to call. 

Big Front Shoulders on this Male Bobcat

We were on a “cats only hunt” and agreed to let everything but mountain lions and bobcats walk away unscathed.  Our first two stands of the day were disrupted with truck traffic, cold howling wind, and people camping (I think we scared a few people out of their sleeping bags with female cougar growls – whoops). 

Needing to put distance between us and recreating people, we drove several miles into the mountains.  We found a long hardpan drainage coming off the top of a high peak and rolling downhill for at least a mile or more.  It was choked with brush and was littered with game trails and animal tracks.  There was plenty of fox scat present, I grabbed my caller and we set up. 

About six minutes into the stand the dry wash exploded with activity. 

I called in three gray fox and was able to keep them running around the speaker for several minutes.  After they disappeared back the way they came, I turned up the volume and three more grays arrived.  I had them running circles around the speaker, when one or two of the original foxes showed back up.   There was a frenzy of activity and fox barking going on when in walks a curious coyote.  The coyote walks up to three of the unsuspecting foxes and tries to latch onto one of them.  There is a short, but wild chase that the fox wins.  The dejected coyote, still hungry, runs back to give chase to the other two.  Those foxes successfully disappear into the brush and the coyote stands above the speaker for over a minute, seemingly mesmerized by the sound changes I’m making.

Finally, all of the canines decide to leave and the wash bottom is empty once again.  I continue working with various mountain lion and bobcat sounds, when this thirty to thirty-five pound bobcat steps over a dirt bank and walks directly at the bush the speaker is hidden in. 

Tom Bobcat and Mark Healy with his DPMS AP4 .308

The bobcat’s arrival time was 32 minutes.  A single shot from my DPMS AP4 .308 cleanly killed the bobcat and the Lapua Scenar 155 grain bullet made a very small entry and exit wound.  This is the largest Arizona tom that I’ve taken, and he should make a fantastic full-sized mount. 

I was using my Wildlife Technologies electronic game call.  Some of the sounds used on the stand were:

• Adult Cottontail
• Gray Fox Distress (Adult & Juvenile)
• Bobcats Fighting
• Gray Fox and Bobcat Fighting
• Several Bird Distress sounds
• Adult Javelina Distress
• Whitetail Fawn Distress
• Ravens Fighting
• Snowshoe Hare
• Lamb Baby Distress
• Jackrabbit Distress
• Redtail Hawk Screams

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I’m headed back out,

Mark Healy

mark@wildlifecallers.com