Bobcats are cool, but like mountain lions, you just don’t see them very often. There’s pretty much two ways to hunt them — run them with hounds or call them like you call other varmints. Calling at night is the ultimate.

Here’s how you normally call cats. Set up in thick brush. Cats like to come sneaking in slowly under cover. Most times you’ll just see a patch of one sneaking in. It will stop and watch a while, many times sitting down on its haunches to study things. They come in super slow.

They like a lot of busy noise like a woodpecker chirping, and for a decoy, a white rag tied on the end of an electronic decoy works great. Coyotes are going to circle downwind to scent you — bobcats not so much so. But sometimes they don’t know the rules that they’re supposed to play by and do something off the wall.

A few weeks ago, I was varmint hunting in West Texas with Texas Best Outfitters and Bill Olson, the editor of Texas Outdoor Journal. We’d been calling a while when Bill whispered to Tom, “There’s a bobcat.” I looked around and there was a bobcat in the center of a 200×200 yard wide dirt field at 10:30 in the morning. What was he doing out there?

Later in the day, we were set up alongside a pasture road in some thick brush. Across to the left, another pasture road T-boned the one we were set up alongside. This bobcat responded normally. As I was scanning the area, a huge cat jumped out in the road and ran away diagonally before I could get a shot.

Obviously, he must have snuck up and been in the brush observing us and seen something he didn’t like and got spooked. Ugh, I had been using an Ameristep Throwdown blind but hadn’t on this set-up. He was the biggest bobcat I’d ever seen. I wanted a bobcat.

The day soon came to an end, and we headed back to the lodge and ate a good ranch dinner. Brisket, butter beans and homemade rolls that were to die for, and then a homemade dessert.

Our guide, Jr. Walker, is a varmint hunting fanatic. He enters all the varmint hunting contests he can. In fact, the upcoming weekend he was entered in two. We’d started hitting it before daylight that morning and he was still raring to go. Earlier he’d told me he’d take me spotlighting, so after dinner we took off again.

Jr. has a sweet set-up for spotlighting. He has a raised platform on back of his truck with seats and a padded rail around the sides to shoot off of.

He set the call out 30 yards from us and turned it on. At night, you’ll run a light around on the ground right out in front of you or on the horizon. The glow will pick up any eyes. You don’t want to hit them dead center with the light or it will spook them.

We did our first set-up, but nothing came in. We were just moving to another spot when Roy Wilson called and told us while he was driving to the cabin a bobcat had run across the road. We shot over to where he’d seen it and set up.

I don’t think we’d been there five minutes before Jr. whispered, “Here he comes.” I got a missile lock on him and Jr. killed the light a minute to see if he’d come closer. He turned the light back on slowly and the bobcat was setting on its haunches. He slowly started increasing the power and I touched off a round. The way it jumped and took off, it appeared like I had missed it. We jumped down and went to look for it. Oh no, not one drop of blood, and it was all white rock so any blood would have been easy to spot.

I had my good Coast HP7R flashlight but still couldn’t find any sign. Nada. I then thought I saw something 20 yards off to the side but didn’t want to build up my hopes.

I went over there and sure enough, there it lay. Wow, bobcats are beautiful. We sat and admired the beautiful pelt for a while and then took a ton of pictures. I could now go to bed happy. What a great day we’d had. Besides all the coyotes, Jr. had also lured in three bobcats.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.