What About Bob?

I was walking along the rim of a small canyon in northern Arizona looking for elk when I saw bobcat sign up ahead in the duff under a juniper tree. It was a sun-bleached, white dropping. I didn’t give it much thought at first, but as I continued around the canyon rim I saw more droppings and then began looking specifically for bobcat sign. Over the next hour I realized that the place was loaded with bobcats. During the next five days, I spotted two bobcats and shot a six-point elk--and finding all that bobcat sign rated right up there with bagging the elk.

A couple weeks after elk season, I returned to the small canyon late one afternoon carrying a .243 and a predator call. There were a few inches of snow on the ground, and I found a big juniper tree about 50 yards back from the canyon rim that afforded a good view of the surrounding terrain. I backed in between the ground-hugging branches, scraped snow off the ground with my boot, sat down and got comfortable.

My plan was to call from this spot for 45 minutes, and I made sure I was as comfortable as possible to eliminate unnecessary movement. Unlike foxes and coyotes, bobcats are often slow to approach a call--think a house cat sneaking up on a bird or mouse. I began the calling sequence, carefully watching and listening between blasts on the plastic tube call. Several jays flew in and raised a ruckus of their own for a few minutes before moving on. I kept on calling, but eventually my mind began to wander; after 45 minutes had ticked by, not even a coyote had shown up.

It was starting to get dark, and I was getting cold. But before I got up to leave, I picked up the binoculars for one last look around--as I usually do before abandoning a bobcat calling setup. It was a good thing I did because through the glasses I spotted a huge bobcat facing me no more than 60 yards away. He was looking around and blinking his big eyes. I quietly put down the binoculars, slowly shoved the rifle out in front of my knees, then took up slack from the trigger as the scope’s crosshairs quartered the cat’s chest.

The .243 bullet smacked home and snuffed all of the cat’s nine lives with one shot. When I went over and hefted the bobcat by his hind legs, I saw that he was the biggest specimen I had ever taken. A local taxidermist later recorded the cat’s weight at 38 pounds.

Three days later I returned to the same juniper tree with a friend who had never taken a bobcat. It was almost a repeat performance. After 40 minutes of calling we were ready to call it quits when Bill spotted a cat approaching from 200 yards out. Bill dropped into a steady prone position and shot the cat. This one weighed a whopping 42 pounds. These two incidents illustrate at least three important points about calling bobcats.

First, I’ve been able to increase the odds of success by scouting for bobcat sign before calling. While you can find coyote sign simply by driving along four-wheel-drive trails, you have to hike to find bobcat sign.

Bobcats have pretty specific travel routes, and these are influenced primarily by terrain. For example, they usually travel within 10 feet of a canyon rim--or any small rim, for that matter. They also follow long points that taper off ridges onto the flats. If you find large juniper trees along these lines of travel, trees with deep duff underneath, it is a good place to look for droppings. Bleached-out, white bobcat droppings can be easily seen from several yards away.