Road forks and old road sites for calling stands

[Okanagan]

FWIW some of my obvious thoughts about using roads on calling stands, mostly with cats in mind.

I've done two Y fork stands in the past few weeks, one of them the stand where I got the lynx.  Most road forks aren't angled right or have too much vegetation or slope to the ground to be useable but I keep my eyes open for good ones when I'm looking to set up a calling ambush.

Both of the recent stands allowed me to sit a little ways down the stem of the Y and see up both forks of the road as far as needed.  Yet for the lynx stand I moved up the left fork of the Y too far to see up the other fork.  I moved up the left fork 15 yards because that position gave me a good view of higher ground across the road and the top edge of an 8 foot high cut bank over there.  I sat in a hole with my eyes near level with the deep snow.  I expected that a cat coming from the other side of the road would ease down the gentle slope under cover of brush to the edge of the cut bank, and sneak a peek down at the e-caller placed in the road ditch on that side.   There are many variations of this peek-over ambush and old roads often provide good ones, with or without a Y fork.

I preferred to be able to see the top edge of that bank more than I valued seeing both roads and that is why I moved up the left fork of the Y.  No calling stand ever lets you see all that you want and you have to make choices.  I would rather watch a small swatch of ground that has high probability of my target animal showing up there than to watch a big area with low odds of my intended critter crossing it.  Our natural inclination is to set up where we can see as much real estate as possible.  (In the event, the lynx came from my side of the road, crossed it quickly, crossed down through the ditch to get up on the cut bank and looked back down at the e-caller.  I'll take it. )

On my second Y fork stand where I called for a cougar the other day, I sat 20 yards down the stem road on top of a 6 foot high cut bank in a clump of brush into which I had cut a nest.  A small folding saw and shrub pruners help me to improve the environment in such places.  The whole area was clear-cut and covered with small trees and brush but with a good number of gaps and slots to see an approaching animal.  I had a great view along both forks of the Y, some view back past me on the stem and a good view of the end of the V point center wedge.  The e-caller was hidden in a brushy pit right at the point of the V in the Y.  Good ambush.  No snow, no tracks, and high probability that no cougar was within hearing range of the call.  No cougar. 

But IMO it was a good stand location and I keep such places in mind for a quick set-up in case I ever hit a cougar track in that basin.

[FinsnFur]

The path of least resistance I havent been around enough to cats to notice if that holds to them like it does a coyote typically or not. A few while down in Texas, but is there any path OF resistance down there? lol

[Okanagan]

The path of least resistance

Exactamundo!  Roads and heavily travelled deer trails are the only places for animals to walk through really thick thorny stuff like our impenetrable blackberry thickets.  Critters are used to walking the roads and a caller can count on it.

In our thick second growth swaths of Christmas trees, which may be miles across, roads are sometimes the only opening, though animals can walk through anywhere.

Two assumptions I did not make explicit in my first post:

1.  This kind of stand shines in thick stuff where the road may be the only opening.
2.  These are old abandoned roads with no traffic or as close to no traffic as possible.  Travelled logging roads also work, and I have called cats on them, but I've had things happen like a 4x4 with big tires roll right into the middle of a calling stand and stop to look at my decoy.  Hate  that!

[pitw]

Hate  that!

To me that would almost be a good thing as at least you know it's working.

[JohnP]

I use that exact same mentality when calling in dry washed out here.  We have plenty of long stems that fork and by sitting 30/40 yards of the "Y" you can see a long ways down both side of the wash.   

[FinsnFur]

To me that would almost be a good thing as at least you know it's working.

LOL, yah if your hunting traffic

[snafu]

Not being a feline-olo-gist. Everything I've read about them. I would opt for the path of least resistance, as well. As to where they tend to travel. Bobcats specifically, I've mainly seen their Winter tracks on frozen waterways vs heavy ground cover(little to no trails). As well as along the high banks of those waterways. Iffen you do happen to bag yourself a lion? Put an extra round in it for me. They give me irritable bowel syndrome?  lol

[Okanagan]

Not being a feline-olo-gist. Everything I've read about them. I would opt for the path of least resistance, as well. As to where they tend to travel. Bobcats specifically, I've mainly seen their Winter tracks on frozen waterways vs heavy ground cover(little to no trails). As well as along the high banks of those waterways. Iffen you do happen to bag yourself a lion? Put an extra round in it for me. They give me irritable bowel syndrome?  lol

Meandering frozen creeks are one of the best places for us to find bobcat tracks out here also.  The ones overhung with brush are the best.  Poor JohnP in Arizona probably doesn't get to track critters on frozen creeks much!

I'm not a cat-ologist either, but enjoy pursuing them in a duffer dabbling sort of way.  Wish you could go after them in a place that has good huntable numbers.  You'd get one.  I've called a fair number and I'm content whether I'm the one to pull the trigger or not, but expect that I will get a lion one of these days.   I will try to remember to shoot it an extra time for you!    We have cougars in these parts but haven't had any tracking snow this winter in the areas I've hunted.  I have made exactly one calling stand for a cougar this Fall/winter/spring season, purely on spec with no tracks to indicate that a cat was even in the area.  Also one lynx stand.  I think that I have made three forays of a half day to a full day looking for cougar tracks or sign but each time the snow level was higher than I thought when I left the house. I could do a lot more calling on spec but my old bones are lazy and just don't feel good a lot of the time so I'm looking for high odds before spending an hour on a calling stand.

In November while chasing whitetails I hit a lynx track no more than an hour old on a main haul road for logging and mine trucks.  It is a logging road freeway along the Kootenay River.  Fresh snow a foot deep but the cat's tracks were plain where he had followed the packed-down snow in a truck track.  Fresh tracks, could be high odds that this one is within hearing range and will come back to a call... except that the cat climbed up a 100 foot high natural cut bank when he left the road.  It was hard packed gravel, an old alluvial deposit cut away by the river at some time in the past, and the cat followed a steep ramp and bit of eroded chute to get to the top.  My grandson Code could have made the climb though it was a bit risky.  I could have many years ago, not now.  I went down the road a quarter mile to the end of the gravel cliff thinking that I would hike back along the top and call into the basin where the cat went, if there was one.  No dice.  No basin.  The cat had climbed into a maze of badlands type narrow canyons and ridges that lay parallel to the top of the cliff, a jumble of vertical terrain covered with boulders, cliffs, trees and brush.  I considered trying to call him back onto the haul road or the edge of the cliff above it.  The sound would not carry far over the cliff top and over the series of tight little ridges, plus there was not much option to set up hidden from people driving down the road.      I was headed to town for gas and hot food somebody else cooked-- and I kept going.   As I said, duffer dabbling kind of hunt intensity nowadays.