Outdoor pastimes of an American hunter — John Shaqi
Outdoor pastimes of an American hunterRoosevelt, Theodore
General
Outdoor pastimes of an American hunter
Roosevelt, Theodore
Hunting -- United States; Hunting -- West (U.S.)
Over half the cats we started escaped, getting into caves or deep holes
in washouts. In the other instances they went up trees and were of
course easily shot. Tony and Baldy would bring them out of any hole into
which they themselves could get. After their loss, Lil, who was a small
hound, once went into a hole in a washout after a cat. After awhile she
stopped barking, though we could still hear the cat growling. What had
happened to her we did not know. We spent a couple of hours calling to
her and trying to get her to come out, but she neither came out nor
answered, and, as sunset was approaching and the ranch was some miles
off, we rode back there, intending to return with spades in the morning.
However, by breakfast we found that Lil had come back. We supposed that
she had got on the other side of the cat and had been afraid or unable
to attack it; so that as Collins the cow-puncher, who was a Southerner,
phrased it, “she just naturally stayed in the hole” until some time
during the night the cat went out and she followed. When once hunters
and hounds have come into the land, it is evident that the bobcats which
take refuge in caves have a far better chance of surviving than those
which make their lairs in the open and go up trees. But trees are sure
havens against their wilderness foes. Goff informed me that he once came
in the snow to a place where the tracks showed that some coyotes had put
a bobcat up a tree, and had finally abandoned the effort to get at it.
Any good fighting dog will kill a bobcat; but an untrained dog, even of
large size, will probably fail, as the bobcat makes good use of both
teeth and claws. The cats we caught frequently left marks on some of the
pack. We found them very variable in size. My two largest—both of course
males—weighed respectively thirty-one and thirty-nine pounds. The
latter, Goff said, was of exceptional size, and as large as any he had
ever killed. The full-grown females went down as low as eighteen pounds,
or even lower.
When the bobcats were in the tree-tops we could get up very close. They
looked like large malevolent pussies. I once heard one of them squall
defiance when the dogs tried to get it out of a hole. Ordinarily they
confined themselves to a low growling. Stewart and Goff went up the
trees with their cameras whenever we got a bobcat in a favorable
position, and endeavored to take its photograph. Sometimes they were
very successful. Although they were frequently within six feet of a cat,
and occasionally even poked it in order to make it change its position,
I never saw one make a motion to jump on them. Two or three times on our
approach the cat jumped from the tree almost into the midst of the pack,
but it was so quick that it got off before they could seize it. They
invariably put it up another tree before it had gone any distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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