GC
Well-known member
Awww... d a m n it. My son and I went screaming today. Went to a big block of public land and as we were easing south down an old logging trail through the timber at the first hint of light a 6x6 bull elk was easing north along the trail headed right to us. We spotted him coming and stepped to the side of the trail and took a knee. The big boy walked up to about twenty five yards and stopped when he figured out we weren't just another pair of stumps. We got a hard stare and he turned and walked through the timber down a secondary point leading off the hardwood ridge we were on. Nice start for the morning!
We continued on to the edge of a big over grown clear cut. There is where we made the first stand. No takers there so we skirted around the edge and worked our way to the bottom of the cutover. Following a point of land down toward a brushy spring creek bottom, as soon as we got to where the super thick brush thinned some on a little flat bench above the spring branch, we set up for our second set. About five minutes into some woodpecker distress on a Sceery AP-6 a bobcat appeared from thin air (they are magical like that!) and jumped onto a fallen log about 40 yards away. The cat ran down the log and stopped with his front end blocked from my view by a tree. I snicked the safety off my AR as quietly as I could and brought it to bear steadying the green dot in the Leupold where I thought the cat would come into view. But... he didn't. I started lip squeaking and I saw the cats rear end hunker down low but still couldn't see the front of the animal. I increased the intensity of the lip squeak and the cat crept forward and I got the little green dot right... just... perfect. The cat had stopped and was looking me over intensely, the dot was perfect, the trigger was being pressed... and my son sitting on the back of the tree shifted ever so slightly.
At that movement the cat spun to jump off the back of the log and I couldn't stop the trigger. When the shot broke I knew it was too far back on the turning bobcat. I watched the cat half leap, half fall off the log. He hit the ground hard and thrashed around a couple seconds, recovered and jetted into the spring bottom and across the flat below. About 25 yards across the bottom there is a cave dug out under a house size rock formation. There is a series of these big rock formations along this creek and several of them have a cave like opening at their base. I think I missed my follow up shot as the bobcat streaked the short distance to the cave.
We waited an hour watching the cave mouth for movement. Going there I realized there was no way to get into the small opening and get the cat out. I cut a 7' sapling and trimmed it up, poking the sapling in there as far as I could didn't get any reaction from the cat and I couldn't tell if I was making any contact with it or not. It makes me sick to lose an animal. I take every precaution to prevent it and it is a very rare event for me. It's very hard to walk off and leave it like that.
Reluctantly we went on. We made one more stand about a half mile farther down the bottom and only managed to attract a couple deer. They ran up to about 60 yards and stared, then nervously snorted and high tailed it away. We saw a couple more deer, lots of hog sign, an armadillo and my son sniped a curious crow off a limb that came to some mouth made crow distress. There was also plenty of coyote sign along the old logging trail. We had a good morning in the timber, however losing the cat will haunt me for awhile...
We continued on to the edge of a big over grown clear cut. There is where we made the first stand. No takers there so we skirted around the edge and worked our way to the bottom of the cutover. Following a point of land down toward a brushy spring creek bottom, as soon as we got to where the super thick brush thinned some on a little flat bench above the spring branch, we set up for our second set. About five minutes into some woodpecker distress on a Sceery AP-6 a bobcat appeared from thin air (they are magical like that!) and jumped onto a fallen log about 40 yards away. The cat ran down the log and stopped with his front end blocked from my view by a tree. I snicked the safety off my AR as quietly as I could and brought it to bear steadying the green dot in the Leupold where I thought the cat would come into view. But... he didn't. I started lip squeaking and I saw the cats rear end hunker down low but still couldn't see the front of the animal. I increased the intensity of the lip squeak and the cat crept forward and I got the little green dot right... just... perfect. The cat had stopped and was looking me over intensely, the dot was perfect, the trigger was being pressed... and my son sitting on the back of the tree shifted ever so slightly.
At that movement the cat spun to jump off the back of the log and I couldn't stop the trigger. When the shot broke I knew it was too far back on the turning bobcat. I watched the cat half leap, half fall off the log. He hit the ground hard and thrashed around a couple seconds, recovered and jetted into the spring bottom and across the flat below. About 25 yards across the bottom there is a cave dug out under a house size rock formation. There is a series of these big rock formations along this creek and several of them have a cave like opening at their base. I think I missed my follow up shot as the bobcat streaked the short distance to the cave.
We waited an hour watching the cave mouth for movement. Going there I realized there was no way to get into the small opening and get the cat out. I cut a 7' sapling and trimmed it up, poking the sapling in there as far as I could didn't get any reaction from the cat and I couldn't tell if I was making any contact with it or not. It makes me sick to lose an animal. I take every precaution to prevent it and it is a very rare event for me. It's very hard to walk off and leave it like that.
Reluctantly we went on. We made one more stand about a half mile farther down the bottom and only managed to attract a couple deer. They ran up to about 60 yards and stared, then nervously snorted and high tailed it away. We saw a couple more deer, lots of hog sign, an armadillo and my son sniped a curious crow off a limb that came to some mouth made crow distress. There was also plenty of coyote sign along the old logging trail. We had a good morning in the timber, however losing the cat will haunt me for awhile...
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