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Hunting with a house cat?

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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.   >:D>:(

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?

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