As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
One of my dreams in life was to hunt and trap cats. It has always puzzled me when I hear people say how pretty they are. I am sure an ocelot or a lynx is pretty if you are a grown adult behind a window, but if you are a bunny with fangs in your neck or Pa Ingalls on his way home in the dark and having a lynx try to kill you, the admiration for pretty loses a great deal.
All cats are predators and next to killer whales and horned owls, there is no greater destroyers of life than a cat. Tame cats are the chief reason American songbirds are having such a hard time of it.
Suffice it to say, I have always had an affection for high desert bobcats. As Indian tigers are off the market in too many Indians and doing Sasha Siemel with a zyaga on a jaguar has too many jungle ticks, my ambition is trapping bobcats.
Desert cats are pretty with white stomachs and definite black spots with a lovely color. Arkansas cats are those ugly colors, so the idea is to get something pretty as I have found that women in furs always look better than predators in furs. They last a great deal longer too on women.
So I read a great deal and found an ancient copy on cat trapping. As I read some trapping sites sometimes, I am often disgruntled in how stupid the experts are on those sites in lure recipes like something Hawbaker made public that did not work 60 years ago for profit.
That is the reason I publish things like that here for record, and as trappers are in too short of supply, they might amble about this electronic fire with the ghosts of Wayne and Bobbi Negus, and have some delight in cooking up a cat lure.
I am not sure about the rotten part as cats hate rotten, but as my other fantasy of making a lure with whale oil is probably not going to ever appear, unless I have some Eskimo reader who is not put off by me not calling them Inuit, who in native rights killing, could some how dump me off a gallon of blubber oil, just to see how things would go.
Any way here is the recipe I am not convince on......like catnip. We have catnip growing up the weed patch in the brier patch. Our cats never paid a whit of attention to it. We called it stink weed as it stinks of the mint family without the nice mint scent......I like spearmint.
So anyway, it makes a tea if you dry the leaves, and I think I drank that once or maybe golden rod tea without such good effects.
Meanwhile back in the lure making festivities.
"The BASIS of the scent may be any kind of fish, but oily varieties, such as sturgeon, eels, suckers, and carp, are preferred. The flesh should be ground in a sausage mill, (I would put it in a glass jar with a screen or cloth to keep out the maggots.)
This preparation may be used 3 days after mixing, but it is more lasting and penetrating after a month.
Fish scent alone gives excellent results, but several modifications have been found highly effective. To the decomposed fish as a basis may be added mice, beaver castors, musk glands from minks, weasels, and muskrats, and the bladders of coyotes and bobcats. Oil gives body to the scent and to a certain extent prevents freezing. If the mixture appears too thin, glycerin, brains, fish oil, butterfat, or other animal fat, such as that from woodchucks and ground squirrels, may be added."
Young, Stanley Paul, 1889-1969; United States. Department of Agriculture.
For those who do not know, brains are cholesterol or fat. So calling someone a fat head is right as all are fat in the skull.
We continue on.
"Oil of catnip, diluted in the proportion of 35 drops of the pure oil to 2 ounces of petrolatum, has proved an effective lure in bobcat trapping. As this is a fine oil, the petrolatum is used Catnip Oil to give it body, and this tends also to prevent loss of as a Lure the scent when exposed to rain. Pure catnip oil is manufactured at a few places in the United States, but if the pure oil is not obtainable, the leaves of the catnip plant may be boiled to a pulpy consistency in water, and this will produce a mild tincture of catnip which can be drawn off. Catnip in this form has been used as a lure by some trappers with a fair degree of success. A few drops of the mixture of petrolatum and pure catnip oil, or of the tincture, should be placed on the scent spot every third day.
Young, Stanley Paul, 1889-1969; United States. Department of Agriculture.
I really want to trap those damn mountain lions and the old boy who was directing how to accomplish that spoke of catnip too being effective up in British Columbia. Secret in that keeping it fresh I am not sharing though, but cats are finicky things in what works one day it is said will not work the next.
In the salad days, they used tin pie pans fluttering in the breeze or strips of things, as cats are sight hunters and that attracted their attention. In the little sonic era of squeekers they were using electronic things to draw in a cat.
From what they say, a modern 3 or 4 offset would work for a trap or a 60 inch snare for the smaller cats. The pumas require that old 4 1/2 Newhouse or the new #4's which can also fill in for wolves.
I have no patience for wolves either. I prefer them all dead, and the baby moose and caribou calves alive to delight me.
Odd how people never say cat shit, wolf shit or bear shit is pretty, when that shit is made up of all those pretty bunnies, birdies, bambies and Braunschweigers.....just checking on the last one to see if you are paying attention as no German liver bologna was hurt in the making of this post.
Cats like me though for some reason even if I hate cats. Is like the neighbor over clear to hell and gone has this cat Percy. Percy loves me. I always stop and have a talk with Percy and Percy rubs on me and we get along great. I actually was thinking of taking Percy with TL and I, but as he is owned, but roams the world in not paying much attention to the owner other than food, I guess Percy will end his days here.
Off the cat track........
I imagine the above remedy would work for canines too in that weasel musk. That Tim Caven out of Minnesota makes a mice paste for trapping lure too. I am all for that as mice stink and all, but I just could not see wasting a grinder on ground mouses.....not like you would ever want to use it again after you turned out mouseburgers......well suppose the neighbors could use it in my being kind to them, and after they ran a deer through it, it probably would be good to go again until next trapping season.
Thing is lure is better the years it sits, so if I could find a neighbor, who would not break my grinder, afford to shoot a deer and have the compunction to butcher it, it just might work out. Think I would have to find the neighbor first though, as those electric grinders are like 500 bucks for a semi good one, and I could just see the deer slayer forgetting to bring back my grinder I was kind enough to have them clean the mouse shit out of in grinding up their deer with it.
People are so ungrateful.
So I figure when I could go cat trapping and probably have those damn coyotes and other things that need culling getting in my sets. Yeah cats run the base of cliffs and I know all that secret knowledge, but just the same, I wonder how long it would be before I would hook up a cat and have it all snarling at me, diving at me, as it hides and I almost step on it, and trying to claw my leg off. Not like they inhabit the country like Obama voters after all. They always are spread a bit thin and should be spread thinner if theye are eating on Percy or your pet chickens.
As I got the lure recipe posted above, and as this all lured you to this post and had you lingering around long enough to get caught, you can see that trapping folks is not much different than trapping pumas. Lord God I bet it would be hell times ten if tigers were aplenty and I could put a #5 Newhouse on one or maybe a #6. Them old sambar and black buck would be most thankful as the jungle shook with that storm of cat fury.......or furry cat.
That sounds about it and time to move on to check the next set I got out for people.
agtG
