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Quirky sounds, maybe called a cat of some kind

Started by Okanagan, September 16, 2016, 01:56:10 AM

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Okanagan

Code's youngest brother, Zay, and I have been hanging out for three days, exploring back roads, hiking, shooting a few grouse, etc.  This afternoon as we drove a grassy  quiet old logging road on a warm afternoon with my driver side window open, the road bent around a point and as soon as we cut around to the other side of the ridge I heard a jaybird raising a ruckus up the steep forested slope.  Hmmm... It sounded like a ferocious scolding, which IME usually means cat.  The bird was not scolding us. I stopped and looked up the slope about the time the bird quit racketing and flew, and a second later I glimpsed movement scooting up a rock slide chute beside a cliff wall some 25 yards up through the trees. My impression was cat, and likely a bobcat. 

I started to drive on but my grandson urged me to try to call it back.  I called a cougar back in a similar roadside encounter one time so stopped and gave it ten minutes of serious calling while both of us watched the slope above.  It is a series of ledges and low cliffs mixed in a mossy slope under medium open forest that was logged 50-60 years ago, with some thick patches of alder and vine maple brush.  5 minutes into the call series (using HuntnCarve's gorgeous maple closed reed hare distress) both of us heard a distinct stick snap 30 yards up to our right, in the thickest patch of brush.  Only one sound, way too quiet to be a deer/hoofed critter on that slope of drying fallen leaves and sections of rock rubble.  It was too furtive and invisible to be a bear, and though it could be bobcat, it sounded much heavier.  At 8 minutes I started glassing intently every inch of the slope, looking through holes in brush, at ledge rims, big ancient stumps, tree trunks, etc.  We never heard another sound nor saw any movement and maybe quit too soon at about 12 minutes.

It all may have been nothing but my imagination but IME what birds and other animals tell me is pretty reliable and has put me on game a good number of times.  Zay was plumb intense and convinced that some kind of critter sneaked close to check out our call sound and us.  A circumstantial tale with little substance.   :biggrin:


Dave

What a great experience for Zay.  He gets to go back and relive it in telling his older brothers. Tell him it's the best hunt I've been on this year. 
You're a lucky man, Clyde!!! Thanks for posting it.

HuntnCarve

I think I may have voiced that call "Sasquatch"? :confused: LOL!  All kidding aside, there was undoubtedly some kind of animal there.  My bet would be a bobcat.  I've seen them sneak in like a whisp of smoke, then vanish that fast.  Sounds like Zay will be hooked for life on calling.  A great experience for the young man.  And to share it with his grandpa, all the better.

HuntnCarve
Dave

pitw

Heck of an experience and thanks for posting it up.  Always fun to see what a call can do for us.
I say what I think not think what I say.

Okanagan

#4
Quote from: HuntnCarve on September 16, 2016, 06:40:55 AM
I think I may have voiced that call "Sasquatch"? :confused: LOL! 
HuntnCarve
Dave

:alscalls: :doh2:  Sasquatch call!

Actually, you are right that a bobcat is way the most likely.  It is fun to interpret wildlife sounds into something intelligible, and be right once in awhile!  This one has to remain in the probable category at best, and many people would say I'm reading meaning that is not there into purely random bird sounds. 


FinsnFur

Just think how high your goosebumps would be if the Bluejay squawks turned into blood gurgling squawks and then ended abruptly. :holdon:
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Okanagan

FWIW I went by that spot last Monday late afternoon looking for an easy deer, and there was a fresh cougar track in a muddy patch on the road.  Cougars roam so far and so much that the track means nothing re our call, and I'm sure that Zay and I were messing with a bobcat.  But looking at the shape of the mile wide bowl in the side of the mountain, sound would carry over a large area of excellent deer and cougar habitat, and I decided to do a cold call there for a lion one of these days.   

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