Wildlife Callers

Bobcat Caller Education – Two Good Books to Help You Locate & Call More Cats

One of our blog readers asked if there were some good books we’d read and would recommend for guys looking to improve their bobcat calling results.  Yes we do - here are two good reads. 

Hat Tip to Alan N. of Sonoita for the great question.

 

You might wonder why we’re recommending trapping books.  Well, both of these books are dedicated to successful bobcat locating and are full of information on behavior, travel patterns, terrain, and how to read land formations to locate more cats.  Knowing that trappers must know bobcats well enough to get a bobcat’s foot in less than a six by six inch spot to trap it, then it stands to reason their locating & trap placement tactics will get us close enough to call them (or smack ‘em with a hammer).

 

Bobcat Trapper's Guide by Mitchell Ricketts

Bobcat Trapper's Guide by Mitchell Ricketts

The Bobcat Trapper’s Guide by Mitchell Ricketts gives a lot of information on bobcat habitats across the United States.  The level of detail this book offers about bobcat behavior and how to identify what the author calls “key activity areas” is outstanding.  I keep this book in my calling equipment box.  This book as available from Amazon both new and used. 

 

 

 

The Competition Line Bobcat Trapping Guide & Gray Fox Refresher by Tom Miranda is not as data-driven as Ricketts’ book, and has several photos of terrain, travel areas, lay-ups, and practical advice on how to locate more bobcats.  This book is an easy read and one that I keep with me in the field.   Be advised, Miranda talks briefly about bobcat terrain across the US, but the focus of this book is mainly in the western US.

 

 

As always, thank you for reading and posting comments.  If any of you have any book recommendations, we’d like to read them and put them on the blog.  Please put them in your comments.

Subscriptions to the blog are FREE.  Just put your email address in the “Subscribe” box on the upper right side of this page. 

May all of your stands be productive in 2010!

Mark Healy

mark@wildlifecallers.com

Predator Calling Comes to the Phoenix International Sportsman’s Expo

John Kirk of International Sports Expos and Mark Healy of Wildlife Callers Blog assemble a panel of professional callers for the first-ever predator calling expert panel discussion at an ISE event!

 

Panel Showtime! Saturday Feb 27th at 1:30pm

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As further evidence that the predator calling industry is growing, the ISE, the western United States largest and best hunting, fishing, outdoor sports, and adventure travel show will host an hour-long predator calling panel discussion.  Panel members include:

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Traffic Jam Bobcat – While Others are Commuting Ned Burris Goes Calling

Ned gets caught in a typical Arizona traffic jam last week and takes full advantage of his delay getting home. 

 

We appreciate veteran predator caller, Ned Burris sharing another success story with us.  There are several informational calling tactics & take-aways in this post. 

 

Have you ever been driving on the freeways/highways around your hometown and thought wow, that would be a great place to make a stand?  The brush looks right, there are no homes nearby, there’s a good water source, you’ve seen a few coyotes and small critters killed on the road nearby, but you’ve never taken the time to call it or had your gear with you when the urge strikes and time permits.  I’ve been there too, and here’s how a serious predator caller makes the most of his opportunities. 

Ned Burris - AZ Predator Caller

Ned Burris - AZ Predator Caller

Ned Burris was headed home from work last week in west Phoenix and like every other work day, he jumped on the freeway and headed east.  Traffic on the AZ freeway system is never good at 4pm, but this particular day it was exceptionally bad.  Ned knew he was going to be stuck for more than an hour trying to get home.  Most people would have cranked up the radio, or called their aunt they haven’t talked to in a year and crawled along the freeway.  Ned, on the other hand, hit an exit ramp and got back on the freeway in the opposite direction.  In just a few minutes he was past the residential sprawl on the west side of Phoenix and looking for places to call. 

Ned, who knows how to maximize opportunities like this, keeps a few hand calls in his truck, a reliable 20 gauge shotgun, and a camo jacket.  He exited the freeway in some agricultural areas that were surrounded by thick stands of salt cedars and mesquite trees.  He’s called around areas like this in the past, and knows that bobcats love to lay-up in the thickets around the fields.  Today was no exception.  (more…)

Mountain Lion Video – Female Scent Marking Behavior

Dave Martens of Wildlife Callers Blog captured this trail camera video on one of his cougar scouting circuits.

 

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Over the past two years, Dave Martens has done an outstanding job of adding trail cameras to our mountain lion scouting areas.  He’s found that cougars, while they do sometimes walk the same paths as deer and other animals, often take their own paths and travel “off trail” from the rest of the game. 

In this video, you’ll see a female cougar (we’re editing another video of her that confirms it) scent (urine) marking a boulder in a hardpan wash.  We recently posted a photo of a large male (tom) cougar here – http://tinyurl.com/ykh755y - travelling in this same hardpan. 

 

 

 

We put the trail camera back in video-mode and left it on the hardpan.  We’re hopeful that the big tom cougar will come back through the area to check her scent marking.  The female cougar has been back a few times.  When we’re done editing the rest of the videos we’ll get them posted. 

Calling mountain lions consistently requires scouting.  It’s taken Dave several months of field work to really begin to understand the way mountain lions travel in our hunting areas.  With the research that we’d done on radio collared lions and their propensity to travel the same areas over and over, we believe that his detailed field work will pay off over many years of cougar calling. 

Comments and questions are always appreciated!

Goin’ callin’,

Mark Healy

mark@wildlifecallers.com

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PredatorExpo

Holy Mountain Lion Batman! – Why We Scout

We’ve always said that year-round scouting is a critical piece of cougar calling success.  This is why we scout – patiently. 

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In a previous blog, we posted this scouting video from one of our trail cameras.  The video shows a young lion walking down a hard-pan dry wash bottom

 

 

We noted right away that this lion was still fairly young and not going to be a ”shooter” for a couple more seasons.  However, we thought the area looked promising and this particular drainage should have a more dominant lion in it.  We were very right…

 

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