Rare Predator Sighting

[Ketchup]

As much time as i spend in the woods, i see a few every year.  A few years ago while sitting in my stand around the end of Oct. i watched for over an hour as a mom a kittens played 45 yards from me. They "2" would jump on her back, wrestle around together, run 5 yards away, then repeat jumping on mom. I have had several chances to shoot one with my bow, but have always passed. Now a yote is toast.  Just something about the cat that lets it walk when given a chance.  There are more around than people see.  We coyote hunt quiet a bit also, and call one in every year.  Most sits when calling yotes is 15 to 20 minutes.  The cats cone in much later, usually in that 35 to 45 minute mark. Just alot slower, and harder to spot while they are in stealth mode working into the call. 

[Johnsfolly]

Bobcat and gray fox are two predators that I would like to harvest and get mounted. I would love a mount with the bobcat reaching up for a flushed quail. The fox I would want mounted in a reclined position. One year I had a gray fox within 10 to 25 yards of my stand and gave me sgot opportunities on three different sits for deer. I never saw it after the opening of furbearer season. The one time I saw it climb 10 to 12 feet up a hickory tree to look up at a squirrel nest in that tree. That was pretty cool to watch.

[Quillback]

Saw one this summer on the bank when I was fishing at Table Rock.  First and only time I have seen one in the wild.  It was on a steep rocky bank with some brush around, matched right in to it's background, if it had remained motionless I probably never would have noticed it.

[tjm]

See one or three a year in or within a hundred yards of my yard. would see more or more often if I paid better attention they hide pretty well.  I have walked to within a few feet (20-30?) of them before seeing them. Have had dogs that would tree a lot of bobcats while coon hunting, they are not as rare as fox.

2207 were harvested in Mo in the 2015-16 furbearer season, CITES tags are mandatory so there are good records. For information on where they are  in Mo see this pdf pages 13-18     https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/downloads/2016Furbearers.pdf 

[Al Agnew]

On 11/10/2017 at 5:27 PM, tjm said:

See one or three a year in or within a hundred yards of my yard. would see more or more often if I paid better attention they hide pretty well.  I have walked to within a few feet (20-30?) of them before seeing them. Have had dogs that would tree a lot of bobcats while coon hunting, they are not as rare as fox.

2207 were harvested in Mo in the 2015-16 furbearer season, CITES tags are mandatory so there are good records. For information on where they are  in Mo see this pdf pages 13-18     https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/downloads/2016Furbearers.pdf 

Many years ago, the furbearer biologist at the time for MDC told me that they found out bobcats are a lot more abundant than they thought.  They were doing a study of the Peck Ranch area, and thought when the study started that there were probably around a half dozen bobcats on Peck Ranch.  They ended up trapping 29 different bobcats there in a month.

[fishinwrench]

Critters are good at staying hidden if they want to.   There's a woodlot of less than a square mile just East of my house, and from the sound of it when they all start yiping and barking at night there must be 25+ foxes living on it.  But it's rare that we ever see one. 

The same with skunks.  Never EVER see one on foot, but come February the roads will be littered with dead ones. Happens every year.

Heard a bobcat squalling just the other night, but I haven't seen one in probably 10 years.

I'm 54 years old, been in the woods and on the rivers my whole life and still wouldn't know a whippoorwill if I saw one.  

[tjm]

Whippoorwills look a lot like dead leaves and nest right on the ground on a single dead leaf. Sorta like the killdeers  nest on gravel. I've had the privilege of  finding three whippoorwill nests in my life time and saw the eggs and later the chicks. Likely the same pair in different years, as the nests were within five yards of one another. The hen did the hurt wing flutter to draw me away from the eggs but I didn't play. I was about one step away when she flushed straight at me then fluttered off crying.

My guess is that they could wait two-three  years and trap that many more off that Peck Ranch area, nature moves to refill any sort of void and that is very good habitat.

[tjm]

About critters staying hidden, a few years ago another forum; a person posted a picture she had taken of a bald eagle perched in a big tree; thing was below the eagle  and to one side was a grey fox resting on a large limb that she never saw until she was working with the photo much later.  Cats lay out on limbs like that too, and folks don't often look up the way they look down or around.

[Johnsfolly]

I haven't heard a whipporwill in probably 5 or 6 years. Used to hear them quite a bit in the spring. Maybe I have moved to new places or they just aren't as abundant. The latter would be a sad situation.

[Quillback]

Bird dogs are real good at finding hidden critters.  I've had several instances where a dog will get 'Birdy' on a patch of tall grass, a few feet away, and out pops a deer that without the dog finding it I would've walked right by and never knew that deer was there. 

Pheasants, especially hens, are real good at hiding in plain sight.

I never saw skunks either or porcupines until I started bird hunting with dogs.  These are two species of critter I would be happy to see disappear from the face of the earth.