calling cougars

[deaner]

finally saw my first cougar few days ago while deer hunting, but it slipped into the timber too fast for me to do anything about it.  the area i found it in got some fresh snow and is thick with cougar tracks.  lots of deer and snowshoe hares in the area, and judging by the tracks the cats seem to be hunting both.  anybody have any opinion on which call might be more effective, fawn distress or snowshoe distress?  looking for any tips from people who have successfully called in cougs

[billythekidrock]

Rainshadow is your friend!

[gramps]

I called and shot a cougar a couple yrs. ago with a foxpro caller and a dummy rabbit decoy.  The whole story is on this forum in Feb'10.
I was using a fawn in distress and a cougar whistle sound.   I and a friend have made as many as 50 +  calling sets a winter for the past several winters so the success ratio is pretty poor.  If you can find fresh sign of a cat then your odds are much better.  i have called a lot of times (without sucess ) just because i know there are cats in that area off and on all winter.
Last week I called in a really nice bobcat in the mountains(5700 ft elev.) using a goat distress sound.  There is not a goat with in 30 miles of where this cat was.  I don't think the type or specie of the animal sound really matters as long as it sounds like an animal in distress. 
Good Luck.

[deaner]

bobcat to goat distress?  never wouldve expected that.  yeah im just going to have to give it a shot.  got up in area im loking at after fresh snow few days in a row.  soon as i saw the cat i went and looked at its tracks in the snow.  next day more fresh snow and saw a track of similar size (may or may not have been same cat)  with two sets of smaller cat tracks im assuming are from almost grown kittens.  next day ,more fresh snow and a fresh set of cat tracks much larger than the others.  tells me 4-5 cats in that area.  one of them has to be hungry right?

[gramps]

Cats can travel a large area, but will come back as though they are working a 'route'....may be several weeks between trips.  find a place you like and start calling....sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more for them to show.  The bobcat mentioned above came in after calling for 30 minutes straight.

[Jonathan_S]

Yeah, if they're anything like Robert Cat, call steady and keep a close eye because they'll just appear.  Give it at least 40 minutes at any stand and more like an hour if you're on fresh sign.

Decoys work well because they'll give you grace when you move your gun.

[deaner]

okay so i just looked at the game regs and there is nothing in there that says baiting cougar is illegal, has anybody tried this? if not for hunting even for trail cams?

[snowshoes22]

track them if the snow/tracks are super fresh it has been working over here on the eastside the last couple years.

[deaner]

yeah im looking at getting to a spot i saw one and have been finding tons of tracks in the snow.  want to go try calling on the 20th when deer is over, but also wondering if putting deer scraps in front of a trail camera might not yield me some positive results, or if they wont come to bait like that?  id love to get some pics even if i cant manage to call one in successfully

[JimmyHoffa]

okay so i just looked at the game regs and there is nothing in there that says baiting cougar is illegal, has anybody tried this? if not for hunting even for trail cams?

I've tried it with no luck that I know of.  A buddy got one of those freezer deals that came with tons of meat.  His roommate unplugged it so we were unsure if it was any good.  Anyways, we put out a huge pile of meat, fish, hot dogs, etc right outside a small cave where we found where a coug killed an elk.  Then moved back from the site a few hundred yards to watch during the day and had game cams on it during the night--nothing showed.  After we left it may have come to eat.  I've been taking grouse carcasses lately, but no luck with those either.  I think they want the live bait.

[deaner]

well screw it ill dump a pile of deer scraps in front of a trail camera in the cougar infested spot anyway, and hopefully ill get something on the camera other than ravens and magpies.     still think im going to go there to try calling them on the 20th.

[gramps]

I have about a dozen pictures of cougars feeding on carcasses that they did not kill.  A friend of mine has photos of cougars feeding on an animal that was not killed by the cougars and the animal was ripe as can be and full of maggots.
Sometimes they are not too fussy.

[buglebuster]

What about tying a goat to a tree

[gramps]

I don't know if live bait is legal, but a goat distress sound works well.

[runamuk]

finally saw my first cougar few days ago while deer hunting, but it slipped into the timber too fast for me to do anything about it.  the area i found it in got some fresh snow and is thick with cougar tracks.  lots of deer and snowshoe hares in the area, and judging by the tracks the cats seem to be hunting both.  anybody have any opinion on which call might be more effective, fawn distress or snowshoe distress?  looking for any tips from people who have successfully called in cougs

we were running fawn distress when we called in a cougar, we had been using both fawn and rabbit it was on one of the fawn sets that the cat snuck in on us