A tale of a bobcat hunt to be remembered

“When the cat fell from the tree I felt a huge adrenaline rush,” Sam Frost told me. “Alex and I were whooping and high fiving. We called out to the guys on the road, and told them that I had my bobcat.”

“Hearing Archer’s cute little voice over the radio was so special,” Sam continued, speaking about her young son who accompanied the hunting party that day.

This all started 10 years prior when she started applying for a bobcat tag. When she drew the tag this year she had the 2nd season, which runs from December 26th to January 31st.

“The snow conditions down here weren’t good,” Sam’s husband Travis told me. “Then one of the guys found good snow north of highway 70.”

The next day was the day the crew could hunt, and that meant Travis getting all the gear prepped and loaded with some last-minute planning. They headed north at 3:00 a.m. the next morning arriving before daylight, and started looking for tracks.

While out looking for tracks, Paul Carlson got his truck stuck in the ditch and Travis had to backtrack to pull him out. Meanwhile, Adam Carlson and Alex Davis found a good track. They decided to start the track and put Travis’s dog Blue and Adam’s dog Spot down on the track around 10:00 a.m.

Sam and Alex Davis donned snowshoes. She slung a shotgun over her shoulder and Alex manned the tracking device as the two headed into the woods following the dogs’ trail. Travis and Archer stayed on the road with Adam and Paul to help track the dogs and stay ahead of the chase.

“The dogs cold trailed the cat for about two miles before they jumped it,” Travis told me. “The dogs looped it for about 15 minutes before the cat treed.”

“We hadn’t even walked a half mile when the dogs treed,” Sam said. “We took a direct line to them from that point, which was just over a mile. The snow was knee-deep up to waist-deep. There were blowdowns and bent over trees blocking us everywhere.”

“Alex was leading and breaking trail, and he fell through snow deep enough that I had to help him get out of it a couple times” she continued. “We came to a creek bed that was heading towards the dogs, and we thought that would be better to walk on. Alex fell through the ice and I tried to scramble off the ice but was too late. We were both standing in waist-deep water.”

“We would trudge, break through, pull ourselves out and walk until we needed to break,” Sam told me. “It would seem like we walked for a half mile but the GPS told us we only went 50 yards. We both kept saying that nobody would know what we went through today, and we would start laughing.”

“Alex started setting goals, like he would say ‘I want to be here by this time’” said Sam. “We ended up getting to the dogs within five minutes of when he said we needed to, so I guess it worked.”

“One hundred fifty yards from the dogs Alex had me lead and break trail, since I might have to take a quick shot,” she said. “He pointed to a large pine and said I bet that’s the tree – it wasn’t. Then he pointed to another and it wasn’t. Then we saw three large tangled spruce up ahead further and he said I bet that’s it.”

“The dogs had the snow all around the trees completely packed down, but we couldn’t see a cat anywhere in the three tangled spruce,” she told me. “It was very deflating.”

The dogs continuously treed on that spot for the entire two hours it took Sam and Alex to reach them once they started barking treed. They were still excited and they continued to circle those three spruce. Because of that Sam and Alex kept searching the trees.

Sam said, “I didn’t know if this was slick tree (when the dogs are treeing and no quarry is in the tree) and the cat got away or if they treed something other than a bobcat. It was tough.”

“After about five minutes of looking I thought I could see something that looked like a cat’s face, but I wasn’t sure,” she told me. “I was backing up to get a better look and that’s when Alex said he could see that bobcat just as I realized it was the bobcat too.”

“It was such a relief to see. Alex started pulling the dogs back and leashing them to a tree,” she recalled “We went to the other side of the tree to get a better view for a clear shot. Alex gave me the go ahead to shoot so he could videotape it to show Archer.”

With the cat on the ground and after their little celebration, Sam and Alex prepared for the walk out. The rest of the crew started breaking a trail into them carrying much needed water. They had run out well before they got to the tree. Alex picked up the cat and Sam carried the shotgun. “They met us a little less than half the way out,” Sam said. “Then different guys traded off carrying the cat and Alex and I took off the snowshoes and followed the broken trail out. The look on Archer’s face when I made it to the road was incredible.” It was 2:15 in the afternoon by the time they got out. “I had never had such a physically exhausting hunt,” Sam told me. “Elk hunting in the mountains is hard work and tough, but this was harder than that. Hunting alone for bow deer is great,” she said. “But getting a cat in these conditions, with our small group, one of our dogs doing so well, and having Archer along was just an adrenaline rush. This was by far my most rewarding hunt.”

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A HUNT WELL WORTH THE EFFORT -Sam Frost poses with her felled bobcat following a long but rewarding hunt.SUBMITTED PHOTO