Predator Scouting » Wildlife Callers

Mountain Lion Scouting Video – Scent Station Behavior

Posted April 21, 2010 By Mark Healy and has 2 comments.

For mountain lion callers, scent marking areas are key to successful cougar locating.

Dave Martens and I have placed trail cameras in dozens of locations that have rendered great photos & videos of mountain lions. It wasn’t always as easy as it is today for Dave to locate a lion hot spot to place a camera. Dave’s many hours in the field and the experience that’s come with it, allow him to quickly size up a long ridge or hardpan wash bottom and hang a camera that will produce lions nearly 100% of the time.

Some guys will say, “hey, I’ve taken lots of pictures of lions on my deer cameras on such & such waterhole”. That’s great and we love to get pictures of lions anywhere, but keep in mind we rarely put cameras on waterholes. We’ve had much of our success calling lions well away from waterholes and we’re more interested in how lions travel in their territories and where they go to lay-up after they’ve been to water.

There is, however, a feature that we always look for when scouting for lions. When we find it, our success in finding lions travelling through the area has been 100%. That feature is scent marking areas, or as well call them, scent stations. There are times when we locate a small area that is literally covered in a wide variety predator poo — and poo from many other critters as well. The spot that you’ll see in the video is one such place. Since finding this location we have taken still photos and videos of several lions, fox, bears, and other predators. This location, which unfortunately is well off the beaten path, if called frequently will eventually produce a lion.

Have a look at the first video of a fox, bear, and coati, using the scent station:

Then, have a look at this female lion (we’ve taken many pictures of her) and the way she behaves on the scent station:

Just like humans, where there are ladies the guys seem to just show up. We’ve taken a few photos of lions much larger than this female that we hope to someday call. We have worked diligently in the area to find the best places to call from and be able to see lots of open areas and tight cover. Now it’s a matter of getting the stars to align and be there calling when one or more of the mountain lions are home.

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Thank you all for reading and good hunting,

Mark Healy

Mark@WildlifeCallers.com

Categories: fox, mountain lion, Predator calling, Predator Scouting

Tags: Arizona predator hunting, bobcat, calling mountain lion, cougar, cougar calling, cougar hunting, fox, gray fox, Hunting, Mountain lion, mountain lion hunting, predator callers, Predator calling, predator hunter, predator hunting, Predator Scouting, scouting, wildlife callers

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

Posted December 31, 2009 By Mark Healy and has no comments yet.

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

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

Categories: bobcat, Books & Education, Predator calling, Predator Scouting

Tags: Arizona predator hunting, bobcat, bobcat calling, bobcat hunting, bobcat scouting, Hunting, predator call, Predator calling, predator hunting, Predator Scouting, wildlife callers, Wildlife Photography

Mountain Lion Video – Female Scent Marking Behavior

Posted October 23, 2009 By Mark Healy and has 7 comments.

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