If at first you don't succeed - fly to Texas...

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goody523

New member
I am a relative newcomer to predator hunting - bought a FoxPro 32 at the end of last season and have been reading this forum as well as a bunch of books, videos, etc.. I have been out 6-8 times in various places near where I live (SE Michigan) but have never called in anything. To be honest I wasn't sure there was much around to call in but I figured I might as well give it a whirl to see if I could learn anything. Since I wasn't exactly sure what to do and I wasn't getting any feedback it was tough to decide how to improve on my techniques.

Anyway, last week I had to fly to Dallas for a sales call and I figured I'd bring my calls, guns, etc. along as I have a college buddy who's dad owns a ranch about 1.5 hours north of Dallas and he said we could try hunting coyotes and wild pigs. I got done with my sales call and headed up to the ranch to see what I could do. On the very first set-up I called for about 5-7 minutes and caught something moving in the thick brush. After another minute or so this bobcat came running through the edge caller right towards my call (didn't even have my decoy along).

bobcat.jpg


After the bobcat we got responses from a bunch of coyotes, but never had any luck actually getting a shot. However, getting the responses still beat the heck out of no feedback at all.

So now I've figured out two things:

1) Predator hunting is a blast when there are actually predators around to call.
2) I need to go on more sales calls in Texas.
 
congrats on the cat how big is he? i love texas as well of course i should sense i live here and all where north of dallas was it i live an hour west
 
I don't know exactly how big he is since I didn't weigh him, but I would guess somewhere around 25-30lbs. I know he was a heck of a lot bigger than the ones I saw mounted at the local Gander Mountain near where I hunted. I would have had him mounted (the fur was absolutely beautiful) except I was hunting with my .270 because I was primarily there for the hogs and the side you can't see in the photo is a complete mess. I should have had my .223 with me (or even my .17), but if I would have had them out I would have seen a 400 lb hog. Since I never had any success calling before I really didn't expect to see anything - much less a beautiful bobcat. Next time I'll know better...
 
Just North of Ann Arbor. Haven't found anywhere near my place that seems to be worth a damn, but I have feelers out with a bunch of different people and I'm trying to locate someplace a little closer than Texas to try my hand at this. Everyone says they have coyotes all around, which I am beginning to interpret as "they heard one howl one time 6 months ago", but I am going to keep banging away until I find some good spots. I figure that's part of the fun of the whole thing - figuring out the good spots to go. The nice part is everyone is pretty open to letting you try, unlike asking for deer hunting permission which is next to impossible unless you have a hand full of $100's while you are asking. If you're near my neck of the woods and have any ideas I'm all ears.
 
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