The one that almost broke us

My good buddy Stephen Ball has an outstanding bunch of Bobcat Dogs. I capitalized the title of them for a reason. He spends much time making them good and I sure like to go with him when I get the chance. One of the last times I went with him, we started a cat down on the bay at a friend of our's place. We like to hunt down there because we almost always catch something.....the bad part is that the brush is so thick you can't walk through it in most places.....you crawl on the ground on your belly to get around. It's a place to go while you are still young and want to do stuff like that. Anyway, we started this cat and had a heck of a race right through the thickest part. The cat ran a little ways and then treed so we crawled in to the dogs and we jumped her out. She ran a little ways further and treed again, so we crawled more and jumped her out.....repeat this about 6 times for almost an hour and half......we were exhausted to say the least and the dogs were looking at us for some relief. Finally we ended up right on the water with a pretty good sized bluff above us and the cat in a tree up the bluff (tree number 6 or 7 depending on how you count). We couldn't take it anymore. Stephen had to go get his .22 rifle from the truck while I stayed with the dogs and tried to keep them interested until he got back. Usually this goes against everything he stands for as far as making a sport out of it, but there was no other choice. In the meantime the flashlight I had died. I could use it for about 5-10 seconds at a time to shine on the cat so the dogs would hang around and that was it.

This was taken from my belly and yes those are Stephen's legs along with the pole we use to make the cats jump out of trees. First time we could stand upright in almost an hour.

Steve shot her only wounding her and that was all ok. What was not ok, was when she did a backflip out of the tree and landed on the ground right between me and Stephen.....that'll get you going. She reached out and grabbed Stephen's pants leg and he and I both looked like those cartoon characters who peel out in mid-air without going anywhere and then take off. We found energy we didn't know we had. Anyway, the dogs finally got her out in the open enough to gang up on her and the race was over. We got back to the truck and had to collect ourselves a little. Then we drove up the road a ways and turned'em loose. Can't wait to go again....

walker

Stephen Ball fresh from battle with the bay behind him.

Notice the sweated through shirt and wet pants legs from the knee down from crawling. Pretty good cat though.