Bobcat Talk

                                                             By Bill Norman

“Whoa! That’s a bobcat and he’s looking straight at me.” I had been walking quietly when I first heard the faint scratch, scratch of cat’s claws on the live oak’s limb directly above me. With only fifteen feet separating our eyes, I slowly began to draw back my bow thinking I was sure to bag my first bobcat, and I owed it all to my boss.

Because my boss, a true Texan, claimed that deer hunting here in Texas was the best in the whole world, I had moved to Texas from Michigan in the spring of 1984. I knew my boss was a true Texan because he wore boots made by someone named M.L. Leddy under his Brooks Brothers’ suits. He said I’d see more deer, turkey, fox, coyote, bobcat, and just to make things interesting, an occasional rattlesnake in the wilds of Texas than I would ever see in a lifetime in Michigan. Being an avid bow-hunter, that sounded good to me.

Opening day of deer season found me in a tree overlooking the famous Brazos River south of Fort Worth. There were several deer in sight, including two bucks, the likes of which I had not seen in eighteen years of bow hunting in Michigan. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and was thankful that the $600 I had paid the rancher to hunt was proving to be a smart “investment.” I made no attempt to shoot a deer that morning, but I did try on several occasions to shoot at a turkey. Never having seen turkeys in the wild, I was quickly gaining respect for their outstanding eyesight and strong will to live. I learned that morning that turkeys can see you blink at fifty yards and can see you change your mind at forty yards.

I bagged neither a deer nor a turkey that weekend, but the trip was not a lost as I did meet a Texan who became one of my all-time best friends. Charles took me under his wing and showed me how “we do things in Texas.” More importantly, he showed me the value of a device called a corn feeder. He explained how a good feeder improved the odds of taking a deer with a bow from possibly 50-1 to 10-1, and in the case of turkeys, 500-1 to 499-1.

With the sun setting on the Sunday evening of the third weekend, I decided to call it a day. I was thinking about the drive home when I walked under the tree that harbored that bobcat. Surprisingly, I was very calm as I started to draw my bow. And then he did it. From somewhere deep within him he let out a growl that started very, very low and ended very, very high, and I quickly decided that was enough bobcat hunting for me!

When I arrived back at our camp area in record time, Charles was waiting to see if I had any luck. When I finished relating what had just happened, Charles laughed and said, “Bill, you let that bobcat talk you out of it.” And indeed I had.