Further Thoughts on Wildcat Hunting

Over the last two months I have been murdered by reader e-mails and comments over a post I released two years ago about bobcat hunting. In five years of publishing content online through various forums and websites, I've covered at least a little bit of just about every kind of hunting in this country and others, whether it was based on personal experience or commentary on an issue. Combined, the topics of these posts haven't attracted this level of vitriol. Why after two years has one little article attracted this much attention? Is it because of my ascending stardom among the Outdoor Community? 

Yes, probably. This post has hundreds of hits a day now, which is great because it generates traffic, but judging by these sentiments, not all that sure I'm hitting my demographic.

Anyway, I published a couple of the comments; deleted those that crudely diminished my manhood - in both an ethical and anatomical sense - and those so poorly written they made me weep for our education system. All of them signed, "Anonymous."

Bold.

Look, it's quite clear few of these people actually read the post. In it, I argued that while bobcat hunting is fine sport, and they require management on certain lands, it's not like I'm out to butcher every one I run across - the reasons for hunting them are separate and apart.

But there is really no value in rationalizing with these folks.

Let's go ahead, though, and run through some of the major points surrounding bobcat hunting.

1. It's legal, at least in Florida and most of the Southern states. They are not endangered or considered threatened in any way.

2. Calling in a bobcat is the outdoor equivalent of a scary movie. You know that scene in those horrible flicks when a character is washing his face in the bathroom sink and looks up into the vanity to towel off and startlingly sees the image of a child with cold, frightening eyes standing behind him in the reflection? That's about what it's like to be in the middle of a calling session and realizing the cat is right there, and you're not sure how that came to be true so suddenly and quietly.

3. Bobcat management is a somewhat debatable practice, but most folks believe that the removal of a few a year will help turkey, small game and songbird populations - when combined with other land management tools. I've seen them on properties follow flocks of turkey like blacktips shadow schools of mullet along the East Coast beaches each summer. It's not healthy to wipe them all out - and you never could, anyhow - but taking a limited number each year is wise.

4. Nobody really eats bobcat. Now, I say nobody with the full intention of realizing someone out there probably does, but it's not common practice which turns off plenty of hunters and non-hunters. I feel no need to justify my actions today; I shot a lot more when I was younger and more blood-thirsty. I have a mount I'm very proud of. I've let several walk since my last post about the matter, but I'm going predator hunting this weekend and may very well be holding up another one by Sunday evening because of the three other reasons described above.

So there it is. I realize that bobcat hunting doesn't sit well with a lot of people - especially in a world where some members of our citizenry place felines on a pedestal, though domestic and feral cats are among the gravest pestilences that have ever struck our native ecosystems.

There's some temptation to argue back with the knobs who leave these comments, but most would be over-matched and the balance wouldn't care. I'm OK if you disagree with me. Promise.

Just don't expect me to be insulted over it.

"You're the worst kind of human being. You surely will be shot and skinned in your next life. ENJOY!!! " -  Anonymous

Raccoon Games

“Boy, I wish I could’ve caught him doing it. I’d have given anything to catch that %!@#* doing it. It’d been worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.” – Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction, on someone keying his Malibu.

I purchased a Wildgame Innovations 6.5 Gallon Bucket feeder from the Wal-Mart in Sebring a month ago. I typically prefer bump feeders for ease-of-use. No battery changing or wires coming loose, and if anyone steals it, well, I'm out a bucket, essentially. But this one was on clearance, and we have a new lease in need of a few corn slingers. So I hung it in a stand of blackjack oaks to let it dust the forest floor with that magic gold, hoping deer or turkey or hogs would find it.

When I went to check it a couple weeks back, I found it hanging in the tree gutted like Drew Barrymore in the first Scream movie. The battery compartment door had been pried open, the alligator clips and all points of plastic chewed through. I knew the culprit already, but the wads of wiry white and brown fur wedged in the chain suspending the rig above the ground told the whole story.

Raccoons are a menace.

Most properties in the state I’ve hunted have a healthy raccoon population, but this lease is Ground Zero for ringtail activity. The land is bordered on two sides by orange groves and a swamp on a third. The trail cameras have worked overtime catching them at night sifting through corn piles – which makes me wonder why the Hell they’d destroy a feeder when I’m feeding them! These coons are well-organized and mobilized. And we fired the first shot.

Back in January, PJ and I set out for an evening of predator calling. PJ has a FoxPro digital call. With no luck on the coyotes or bobcats, we snuck down to the swamp right before dark and switched his call to a Fighting Raccoon noise. Basically, the sound is what you’d expect to hear if you dropped a plugged-in boombox into a bathtub, a cacophony of whistles and pops and grunts – everything but the white smoke.

I laughed when I first heard it, but it did work. Within a minute a coon rushed out of the myrtles and stood on his hind legs before PJ dusted him with a 12-gauge. Since then the Raccoon Army has grown vengeful.

I noticed it first in mid-February. I’d left my Covert Cam deployed for two weeks without checking it and couldn’t have been more excited to review the SD card to see what had arrived at my blue bump feeder. Over the course of some 800 pictures, the raccoons had managed to turn my camera 360-degrees around the small oak it hung on. A photo would reveal a tuft of whiskers, and the next would be pivoted 30-45 degrees in a counterclockwise position. No joke, this continued until they had completely spun it around the tree, tufts of fur caught between the bark and the straps of the camera. As you might guess, this ruined any useful pictures, though I did get a nice butt shot of a deer in the upper right corner of a photo that was framed around a vine twirling up an oak branch.

Thankfully they did not destroy the camera though I’m pretty sure they used it as a urinal on more than one occasion.

We fired the next salvo. PJ obtained live traps and set them near the feeders. He promptly caught and dispatched 3 coons. But then ethics took hold. There was a period of time when none of us would be able to visit the lease, and no one wanted to catch a coon and have it suffer in a trap for a week or so. Like England’s failure to control Hitler at the start of the war, we missed an opportunity to stave off further destruction. It was my new feeder that paid the price.

The thing is, raccoons are not only destructive to feeders, they are pretty rough on turkey and quail populations, as well. Notorious egg thieves, raccoons can really devastate upland bird numbers, especially in areas without healthy populations of these game birds. This land doesn’t have many roost trees and isn’t ideal turkey hunting property, but the nesting potential here is high. We’d like to improve that, as much as four guys on 150-acres are able to do. Predator control is one way to accomplish this.

We’ll probably get back into trapping them this summer when everybody is back in town from far-flung turkey exploits and can reliably check the cages. I’d like to use that predator caller and my .17 HMR and make a real hunt of it. Either way, it’s doubtful we’ll make any huge impact. As I’ve said, there are a ton of them, and raccoons are pretty sharp creatures that adjust in a hurry.

I’ve thought about just sitting in a stand by one of the feeders. Oh, it’d be so worth it for them to destroy another feeder...if I can only catch them doing it.