Hunting with a house cat?

[boomhowzer]

Has anyone used their house cat to help them hunt?

My cat comes hunting with me on a regular basis and she has proven very useful in the field when we work together. She's not like a dog. I can't command her around and she doesn't chase animals in circles or follow trails, but she'll jump into a pile of brambles and flush out a rabbit no problem. Not to mention she's a lively but nonthreatening distraction for larger game like deer or turkey. She's a climber too, she runs up trees after squirrels and a few times they've jumped down and scurried right towards me!

She's also a great lookout. If she finds high ground or a fence post to perch on, and I can see her, I can read her body language to see if anything's coming our way. She has spotted game before I have on multiple occasions, but instead of alerting me with a bark and spooking dinner, her eyes get big, she crouches low and she waits. On two occasions, I've actually seen deer and turkey run toward her, like they wanted to play! It wasn't hunting season, so I didn't have my bow, but it did change how I view the interactions between different rungs of the animal kingdom and how they can help us hunt.

I've done a thorough search through the pantheon of hunting literature and all I've come up with about hunting and cats was in Howard Hill's Hunting the Hard Way. In his chapter called 'First Aid to the Hunter', he describes how he learned to stalk game by watching bobcats in the Everglades. There is also an Egyptian petroglyph that apparently shows people hunting with cats (I wasn't convinced), but other than that, nothing. So please, someone tell me they've heard of hunting with a house cat? or tried it yourself? Or maybe someone out there is a master that will take us under their wing and show us they way of hunting behind a cat.

[Digital Caveman]

Watch out for ticks and your neighbors cats.

Cats are nice when they are your own and when they think you are their own.
We had feral cats back when I lived in Michigan and they terrorized out chickens and rabbits.  Lucky for them I didn't have the bows I do now.   >

[JW_Halverson]

Indeed there is a long and storied history of hunting with cats. The Egyptian pharaohs famously hunted large game with cheetahs. Cheetahs also were used in hunting in Pakistan and India.

https://youtu.be/NevenDIp95A

[WhistlingBadger]

Interesting!  I wouldn't take my wife's cat hunting, except possibly as a target.  Sounds like you have a winner!

I learned a lot about stalking by watching a Siamese tom named Scud that lived at a lodge up in the mountains where I worked.  Despite having no natural camouflage, he regularly caught birds off the mowed lawn up there, just by moving when they moved and freezing when they looked up.

[boomhowzer]

JW, that was an amazing video! I've also seen one where a large cat on a leash catches a pheasant, but I couldn't find it to post :/ I have had only mild success with this type of hunting with my cat. She brought home a 13-striped ground squirrel last week, which is probably the best meat there is, even though there's never much of it. She's young though, so I'm hoping she'll come home with a wabbit one of these days.

I also like the the "move while they move, freeze while they freeze" comment. There really is a lot to be learned from watching cats. When my cat gets close to a bird, she makes this strange clicking chirp noise as if she's trying to call the bird in. I don't know, maybe she learned it from me while we were out hunting turkeys. I haven't seen any other cats exhibit this behavior though. How about your lawn cat, WB, did he/she try calling them in?

[mmattockx]

When my cat gets close to a bird, she makes this strange clicking chirp noise as if she's trying to call the bird in.

Sounds like chattering. I have had cats that would do this when watching birds outside the window.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILFCDPjwSBw


Mark

[boomhowzer]

That's it! That's the sound!

But before the sacred 'Shooting and Hunting' section of the PA forum turns into a dissertation on cat psychology, has no one really ever hunted with their cat? Okay, here's just one example of how my cat allowed me to take a shot on a deer that I wouldn't have been able to take without her. My wife and I were in a make-shift hunting blind in some bushes on the edge of a meadow. It was mid-October and a herd of 7 deer came feeding through the meadow heading toward us. The cat was perched in a tree above us but when she saw the deer, she climbed down and sat on the edge of our blind. The deer heard her rustling around in the leaves. They all stopped and stared at us, but when they saw it was the cat making the noise, the deer went back to feeding. An hour went by, the deer were moving at an ungodly slow pace and we were getting antsy in the blind, as in, we had to change sitting positions because legs were falling asleep and butts were getting numb. We were quiet as we could be, but the cacophony of two bows, two quivers of arrows, dry, crunchy ground and snapping twigs would have normally sent the deer running for the hills. Not this time though. This time it didn't seem to matter how much noise we made, the deer would just assume it was the cat and keep on munching. Finally, they moved to within 20 or 25 yards of us, still having no idea we were there. I was able to raise up and take a shot at a buck, but missed over his back. The deer didn't move, all 7 of them looked toward the blind, they were alerted now, but none of them ran and most just kept on eating. Then one moved in range of my wife and she shot and missed (hence is the state of our deer hunting prowess). She swore a little under her breath, and that finally did it. All we saw were white tails heading for the hedges.

Poor shooting aside, there is no way those deer would have kept their steady march through the field in our direction with all the noise we were making if it hadn't been for our cat offering a diversion. I can't be the only one out there who has witnessed something like this, right? Anyone?

[JW_Halverson]

Some hunters will post "confidence decoys" of different species in their spread. Duck hunters in particular will use a great blue heron on a shoreline near their dekes because of the herons are known for being very skittish. Goose hunters have put foam archery deer targets on the edge of a field.

I suspect your cat gave the deer something innocuous to blame for the noises you generated. You may be onto something

[boomhowzer]

"confidence decoys"

That's wonderful, I've never heard of those before.

Like the blue heron and the white tail deer are the prodigal 'canaries in a coal mine' for migratory waterfowl. Maybe someday someone will carve up a foam house cat to use as a 'confidence decoy' for deer hunting.

I'm new to hunting, so the more learned tactics are completely foreign to me. I've read lots of books about it, and I've sat out in the woods for a hundred hours the last couple of years, but nobody has really shown me the way. I started out two winters ago with my grandpa's old fiberglass recurve from the 1970s (Indian Seminole, 45# at 28" shot a 500 grain arrow 180 fps). This fall will be my second deer hunting season, but my first with a homemade bow and arrows. I'm obviously very excited about it, but the cat thing just happened one day last winter. I was out wandering around in the snow, looking for rabbits. My cat was still a kitten, jumping in my foot steps out to the back of the lot where I piled up some sticks and grass to make a little 'rabbit hotel'. The cat didn't hesitate and I didn't need to coax her, she just climbed into the pile of sticks and less than 5 minutes later a rabbit popped out and I got a running shot at it. Missed, but the next time I went out hunting, I just followed the cat around and that's kind of all I've been doing since. Its amazing what she can do for a novice hunter like me, but what happens when one of you guys/gals with more experience follows your cat around with your bow one afternoon? What can an expert hunter find in the ways of working along side a cat that I can't see because of my naivete? Maybe something brilliant! Maybe we'll enter a new age of hunting, where the K-9 no longer holds court on human-animal cooperation and the feline will get her moment to shine as the quiet, brave, and unassuming hunting companion of the future.

[Digital Caveman]

Cats can assume quite a lot. 

The difference is that you take your dog on a hunt, but the cat takes you on the hunt. 

BTW, have you ever tried to call a cat off a trail?

[boomhowzer]

Ha! I haven't called a cat off a trail. Actually haven't seen the cat catch a trail. Once the prey leaves, she just watches it go, she rarely chases after it and if she does, most small critters can out run her and she has no interest in pursuing prey by the end of her nose.

One of the squirrels I killed last year was chased up a tree by the cat. Cat started climbing tree, squirrel jumped down, ran in my direction and when the squirrel realized the cat was still in the tree, it stopped on a stump long enough for me to shoot him through the heart with a blunt tipped arrow. I would call this my only confirmed kill as a result of hunting with my cat. Many an arrow's been loosed, but only one little red squirrel made it to the grill.

You're right, some control must be relinquished to the cat. But I think she knows what's going on when I get my bow in my hand, and she is surprisingly eager to follow me out into the woods. She often wanders away, but I have a clicking noise I make with my mouth that she responds to. Or at least she recognizes as me seeking her attention. She does come running sometimes, but it certainly isn't a surefire way to call her to my side. Compliance is completely on her terms. That's the interesting part of utilizing a feline companion, you have to completely change the paradigm of expectations and strategies for getting close to game. There are pros and cons, and I'm only just beginning to figure out what they are.

[JW_Halverson]

There is a reason folks say dogs have masters, cats have staff.

[boomhowzer]

Part of her staff? I haven't collected a pay check yet. I did manage to get a picture of her working a turkey though!

Turkey season ended three weeks ago and I hadn't seen one walk through the yard in probably a month until today. In the picture, the cat is leaving a bramble of maple shoots where she had been sitting for the last 5 minutes or so, watching the hen. The turkey, for her part, sort of alternated between foraging under the apple tree behind her and approaching the cat, clucking and purring (turkey purring), and then backing away again. I didn't get a picture of them at their closest because the cat was completely hidden in the maples, but I would say they got within 5 feet of each other, maybe closer.

Neither animal was afraid of the other, and when the cat left, she didn't run away. The turkey, at least while she was focused on the cat, was completely oblivious to the rest of the world and I was able to sneak close enough to take the picture. Probably out of bow range, me being such an amateur, but progress! In fact, that was closer than I ever got to a turkey during turkey season!

The scene ended with the cat hearing a rustle of leaves near our wood pile and going over to check it out while the turkey wandered off into yonder hillside. Maybe this fall it will end with the turkey in my oven, its feathers on my arrows, and its foot at the end of a string (the perfect cat toy).

[WhistlingBadger]

That is really cool.  My wife has a very small tabby that use to stalk rooster pheasants and foxes.  Both seemed like a really bad idea to me, but what do I know?  Anyway, the fact that she's still with us tells you that she never caught up with either one.  ha ha

To answer your question from a while back, no, Scud never made a sound when he was on the hunt.  I think his owner didn't feed him much, so he wasn't messing around!

[boomhowzer]

Yeah, we feed our cat plenty. If you watch the video that mmattockx posted, the Indian royalty use hunger to persuade their cheetahs to hunt gazelle. I wonder if I kept my cat's food bowl in the cupboard for a day or two if she would go after a turkey. Probably not a big male, but maybe a younger one. That'd be quite a sight. A turkey and a house cat? Get your popcorn ready.