Bobcats prey on Deer

That is interesting.

I've never seen a cat kill a deer, but I did see a doe chase off a bobcat that was getting close to her and her fawn.

A guy who hunts on our place said he saw a bobcat chasing an adult doe. The bobcat didn't live to finish the chase.
 
I've read of bobcats eating fawns, and that large males can and will kill adult deer. I have a friend that found an adult doe partially covered with leaves. The deer had been fed on, but in the leaf cover of the hardwood forest there were no tracks or scat around to help identify what was feeding on the deer. The fact that it was partially covered with leaves led me to think of a cat, either bobcat or mountain lion. We have both species, though mountain lions are pretty scarce. There also was no way to tell what actually killed the deer, though my friend said the area around the deer was disturbed and he felt the kill had been made right there by whatever was feeding on the body.
 
Me and two other guys watched a rather large male bobcat take down a perfectly healthy 1 1/2 year old buck.It may not happen often but it happens! 1 other time I saw a large tom eating a large doe,not sure if he killed her or not ,but the only marks on her were on her neck and around her anus where he had been eating .She was still warm!
I rattled in a large tom once near the same area where I saw the tom take down the buck. I think it is a learned dinner bell responce by predators that hear deer fighting! I have rattled in lots of coyotes!
 
Two stories:
I saw a bobcat sneaking along the edge of a mountain road ahead of me as I came around a bend. The large bobcat was so intent on what was below him that I rolled almost up to him before he turned to look. I jumped out with my bow about ten feet from him as he scooted over the edge. 15 feet below the road a fawn and doe whirled around from where they were coming uphill on a deer trail that crossed the road right where the cat had been crouching. No question in my mind that the cat was within seconds of pouncing on the four month old fawn.

This past Fall I was rattling for whitetail in timber when birds started pestering something off to my left. The bird ruckus approached and I should have thought "cat" but had my mind on deer. The sound funneled into a swale of low ground crossing in front of me and stopped. I couldn't see the bottom of the swale, which was covered in low buck brush anyway. A standing deer would show so I'd not set up to see more. At the 14 minute mark I shot a buck on the other side of the swale.

When I walked to where the buck was standing when hit, straight between me and the buck, in the middle of the swale, smoking fresh BIG bobcat tracks showed in the inch of patchy snow. The cat had come down the bottom of the swale from the left. Directly between me and the buck, so that the bullet went right over his head, his tracks turned straight away from where I'd shot and left on a run. My conclusion: I think a bobcat was stalking the rattling sound. No conclusion as to whether he expected to kill a deer, but I'd guess he was open to the idea.
 
I've seen a doe with a fawn, defend it from--and ultimately chase away--a bobcat. Bobcats prey on fawns often enough that certain does seem to really despise them, and I've a hunch this accounts for why does become so aggressive towards prey sounds occasionally. I'm also pretty sure that most adult deer are fully capable of dispatching a bobcat with a swift kick, absent the element of surprise.

LionHo
 
Last year when I was bow hunting in my tree stand, I had a big bobcat come out about 60 yds away. I sat down facing me, then got up and walked towards me and sat down behind some a fallen tree about 20-25 yds from me, looking out into a open field. I was really wishing I had a gun then. He sat there for about 2-3 min when he turned his head at the sound near a fence line. I instantly thought "deer". Sure enough a younger buck walked out...I guess he was about 2 1/2 years old and looked to weigh abut 110 to 120. The whole time the deer is walking to me the bobcat was slinking around the brush pile. The buck walked right under my stand and looked up at me, but didn't see anything, so just continued on. Then the bobcat made it around the brush, and the deer caught sight of it, and dashed around to the other side of the tree, so I had a shot at both while both of them were looking at each other. The bobcat looked like it was getting ready to give chase, when I decided if I didn't take the shot now, I was going to lose a chance at both. I decided to shoot the bobcat, and hit it at 25 yds. It was a 30-34 lb male. My biggest at the time. Everytime someone tells me that bobcats don't kill deer, I tell them about this story.
 
Another bobcat deer yarn. I suspect that bobcats aren't all that successful sometimes at killing deer but they try when opportunity arises. My son and grandson and I were camped in a snowplowed helicopter logging landing one weekend, cooking breakfast after a morning call for lions, when the three year old grandson pointed and exclaimed, "Deer!"

That was mid winter and a mule deer doe fawn of that year was standing about 40 feet from our fire, panting with sides heaving. She caught her breath and went on up the opposite canyon side from which she'd come, in snow knee deep to me.

No humans were anywhere in the watershed above us, and her tracks showed that she'd come down an unplowed road anyway, that joined our road from a side canyon. I hiked up her backtrail to see what had so frightened her, and to see if perhaps her mother had fallen to a lion.

100 yards from where she reached our camp, I came on extra large bobcat tracks following the fawn at a bound in the deep snow, where she had run down an open hillside from pine timber above. It is very open country, dry pine, steep, with John Ford movie cliffs and sandstone massifs here and there. The cat had turned back at that point, just at the edge of seeing our camp. I sweated my way up the hill and then along the rising ridge top which the deer had run down with cat in hot pursuit. Within another 50 yards or less I came to a narrow spot on the ridge top where the tracks of half a dozen deer scattered from a narrow spot where the ridge trail squeezed between two boulders in an S turn of head high rocks and tree trunks. That is where the bobcat unsuccessfully jumped at the deer, scattering them and chasing after the fawn in the knee deep powder snow.

I worked on up the ridge another 75 yards to a good calling ambush, set up my homemade remote caller and called in an extra large grey bobcat. I got two glimpses of him, one way out as he approached on a lope, and the other up close and a bit longer when he left. He sat in front of me for many minutes looking at the call but partially hidden from my sight. No excuse. I did not notice him till he moved to leave and he was out of sight in two steps.
 
Couple years back a hunting buddy and I combined our dogs and turned them out on a big bob track. We had pups in the race so my buddy walked the track while I leap frogged ahead on the sled. While walking he came across two deer, the second slightly fresher than the first but both pretty well cleaned up.
We figured maybe old lion kills that the bob was going to because of the birds.

Anyhow, I'd pick him up and move him closer to the dogs when I could and then keep the dogs in hearing. I ended up in front of the dogs and waiting to see if they were moving up or down a canyon. Before the dogs came in hearing I noticed a small group of deer moving up the canyon sorta spooked. I walked down and found the bobs track and walked it a little ways up the canyon, hit the deer tracks bounding out and found a drag mark. The bob killed a young of the year fawn and I'd jumped him off it.
The dogs treed him bout a hour later, he was 29 lbs. The fawn, in Dec. had to be around 90 lbs.

We kinda think the other two kills might have been his also. But can't say for sure.
 
While in an archery shop in Flagstaff AZ, (Bull Basin Archery) I watched a video taken from a G&F helicopter survey of desert Bighorn sheep. The helicopter had scared the sheep in one direction and as a ewe jumped over a rock outcropping a really big bobcat lunged out and caught this ewe by the throat. The helicopter was so close it was blowing sand and the cats fur all around. The cat held on the to sheep for several minutes until finally the helicopter scared it enough to let go. Very cool footage.
 
Dang, I would love to see that footage. I saw a golden eagle take a mule deer fawn one time. The fawn was new born and jumped up as we walked by. The eagle had been waiting on a nearby cliff. In no time it had the fawn and took off.
 
I understand bobcats are much the same size as lynx and lynx are known to be serious predators on reindeer (all ages). When they get far enough south to meet fallow deer they do kill them on a regular basis. A guy that kept 15 fallow deer in a fenced area of a few dozen acres lost all his animals to one lynx not far from here about 10 years ago. It took the lynx about two weeks. The newspapers kept reporting as the deer got picked off and the owner was not allowed to do anything.

Lynx are super powerful predators on roe deer, killing all age deers and effectively running a roe deer population down to a fraction in a few years. Roe deer are small, adults often weigh 50-60 pounds live weight. They do simply not stand a chance. One famous tracking is recorded where one lynx killed 13 roe deer in a couple of miles one night. Another example, an old man I talked to, had winterfed about a dozen deer outside his house and one morning saw a lynx waiting for the deer. As the deer herd came the lynx attacked and the man said it had two down before the last deer was out of sight. One week later the lynx moved on and there were two surviving deer left. But the survivors do get somewhat better odds after learning to watch those cats. In Sweden the two hardly existed side by side before. As the lynx is returning to areas the roe deer has populated in their absence, the deer are not holding their ground.
 
By the way, PC, I couldn't read that article. Was the maximum weight ratio 1:8 specific to bobcats?

Just curious. I talked to a guy that found a moose nearly killed by a wolverine once. The snow was about 6 feet deep and the wolverine jumped off the back of the moose as the guy came driving his snowmobile. It had gnawed a hole through the ribs of the moose where it's lungs showed, as the moose couldn't buck it off in the deep snow. That would be some predator/prey weight ratio! But then again that would be a bit like a sprint world record with a tornado wind to help... (And the moose was still faintly alive too.)
 
I recently read an article written by the chief furbearer biologist here in Missouri about Mountain Lions. In the article he mentioned that many of the deer kills people here were reporting to be from Mountain Lions were in fact caused by bobcats. I found that interesting and it does add more verification to the fact bobcats do kill adult deer as well as fawns.
 
I witnessed a really big bobcat stalk three yearling does up in the badlands of NW Nebraska last deer season. The cat made it's attack just as the does went down into a deep badland cut that was on private ground so I didn't/couldn't slip around and see the outcome. But, it sure was neat to watch.
 


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