Distinguishing juvenile cougar track from bobcat?

O

Okanagan

New member
This may be a really dumb question. Does anyone know how to distinguish a bobcat track from a small cougar track in a quick and sure way? Twice in the past few weeks I've run onto small tracks while looking for cougar in the snow.

The first was the size of a large bobcat, travelling alone. From the length of stride I was confident that it was a young cougar recently booted out on its own. I'd tracked a bobcat the day before and though its pad was almost the same size, the bobcat made short strides when walking, with tracks much closer together than the juvenile cougar. Fortunately I had many tracks in sequence to evaluate.

I'm not the brightest bulb as I've demonstrated here occasionally, and over this past weekend while looking for cougar tracks I came on a medium sized bobcat track at least six hours old. That area doesn't have many bobcats. 60 yards father I found tracks from an average sized cougar, not as fresh as the bobcat.

I worked on the cougar track and cut it six times in the next four hours. Curiously, I also found bobcat tracks, sometimes 100 yards from the cougar, never closer than 40 yards, always fresher by many hours. At one place where I had a line of tracks, I thought that the bobcat had an unusually long stride, but decided it had run a few steps. The last time I cut the tracks on a quarter mile hike in the forest, the "bobcat" tracks, always the same sized bobcat, were within two feet of the cougar's. Duh....

A number of times I've found tracks of a mother cougar with kittens, close together, obviously a family. This one didn't compute.

My son has tracked cougars a lot and he told me it sounded like a juvenile cougar that had been recently kicked out by its mother and was following her.

I feel a little foolish to have worked on those tracks for so long without realizing what the smaller cat track was. Any tips on how to distinguish bobcat from juvenile cougar appreciated.

Now I wish I'd photographed the small tracks because I have some bobcat track photos to compare.
 
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Even a 5 month old cougar will have a paw print bigger than the majority of bobcats. There feet and as you stated stride will be much longer as well.
Younger cougars also should have ma's tracks close by as well, normally you don't see young mt lions travelling by themselves at the stated size you described unless something happened to ma.
 
Some perceptive posts. Thanks.

I've done some more thinking on it and talked by phone to one of the good lion hunters here on the forum. He reminded me that mama cougars don't usually kick out young ones till they are nearly as big as the mother. I've seen mama lion tracks with a couple of young whose tracks were 3/4 the size of their mother's. As ADC says, this would be an awfully small cougar.

The lion hunter has seen bobcat tracks following a cougar. He can chime in if he wants to say more about that.

So, it's kind of a puzzle, like nature throws at us. The section of long stride still has me doubting my initial call of bobcat but that seems more likely than a really little cougar on its own. As ADC said, maybe a young one lost its mother and was was looking for companionship? Will probably never know now but will tuck it away as reference if I ever run across a similar track combo.

Tracking big cats makes for interesting rambles in the snowy woods however it turns out.
 
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I found a young lion's tracks in the snow here a month ago, about 3-1/2" spread on the prints. Followed it for a mile or so. It seemed to be looking for and stalking gray fox tracks. In September, I had a bobcat show up to a fawn call and glass me from two hundred+ yards out. Two lions also came in to that call-- and the bobcat slinked off. I don't call nearly as many foxes and bobcats as I once thought I oughta in places with a lotta sign that also have lions in residence. (The reason are becoming clearer).

The print of even a smallish 6' tip-to-tip ~75 lb juvie disperser lion my neighbor killed a couple of winters ago (as it was attacking his Queensland Heeler!) I measured at 3 -1/4" relaxed without any spreading of the toes-- much, much larger than any bobcat found hereabouts, and surprisingly big given the scrawniness of the lion.

Lion kits seem to grow big paws rapidly, like puppies of big dogs that are going to eventually grow into their paws. Also, most kittens here are born in early spring here (to coincide with fawning season a couple of month later) so any that would be out and about now would be about 9-10 mos old.

A fully-furred lynx paw in snow *might* be nearly as large (but being much lighter in weight, would have me looking at the depth of the impression, and stride length).


LionHo
 
LionHo, good to see your post!

You had a bobcat come in first and then cougar? That's got to be unusual and the behavior of the bobcat is really interesting.

I gotta start measuring tracks. Your numbers are really helpful.

Lynx tracks are pretty distinct from other cats in shallow or crusted snow. The tracks have a halo around the pad made by the fur around the foot, and they look way close together for such big imprints. A few times I've ID'd a lynx track in snow when driving 40 miles an hour, just by the distinct pattern and size combo. And as you said, they don't sink in as much, so that it doesn't take much crust at all to support them.

As to my original post, I've settled even more into thinking that it probably was a small cougar following the big one for some reason. It may have been an orphan or maybe got seperated from it's own mother and was catching up, but that last one seems unlikely from what little I know of cougar family behavior. Bobcat is just not very likely in that area. Cougars aren't all that common there either. Lynx are the most probable cat in that area but nothing about either track said lynx. The larger track held my interest most of the day and scuttled my plan to drive a 50 mile loop of logging road to cut a lynx track. Now the snow is too deep, and all I got out of the day was a curious combo of tracks.
 
Okanagan,

[Say, if I told this story already, don't stop me, okay /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ]

Imagine my surprise when I thought I had two bobcats coming in after positively ID'ing one sitting on its haunches 200 yards off a couple of minutes into the call.

One of the animals coming through tall grass split off N into the canyon to my left. The other made a beeline for me and turned out a hundred yards later to have a long tail and be a nice female lion. She sat and watched me for a good ten minutes from 50 yards... (busted from the gate by using a mouth-blown fawn call) Yet she kept casting glances into the ravine at my back running up from the canyon. I'm thinking, so what if that second animal wasn't just a bobcat? What if it was momma, the better hunter teaching her daughter how it's really done? Rather than wait for such a plan to fall together, I got up to get some better pictures instead (did I mention I was armed only with the 200-400VR Nikkor that day?)

Six days later I came back looking for the pair of Serengeti shades I'd dropped. Didn't find them, but did call in another lion, this one a large and tattered old male-- right up that ravine!

Both instances, lions showed up not but five-ten minutes into the start of the stand.

As a footnote, re: your tracking, I might add also that among mountain lions there's sexual dimorphism to be taken into consideration (that is to say, females are much smaller than males).

LionHo
 
I just recently got my first lion pics on a trail camera. A big female and a very young spotted cub. The size of the feet on the cub was almost as big as its mom, just not nearly as deep in the sand.
The cub couldnt have weighed more than 40 or 50 lbs.....mom was at least 100-120
 


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