ALTAMONT — Bob Haines is not a man who would go out looking to shoot a bobcat, but he’s got one all the same.
In the 25 years that he’s been hunting in the woods behind his house, near Altamont, he’s never seen a bobcat, said Haines. On a Sunday evening a few weeks ago, though, as he was watching the "transition from daytime life to nighttime life," he noticed a bobcat wandering through the trees.
"I’ll be honest with you," he said, "when I first saw him, I wasn’t going to shoot him." For Haines, hunting is more about being in the woods, staying still, and watching everything around him than making the kill. "It’s an opportunity to see animals you wouldn’t normally see," he said.

The bobcat was an unusual sight, one that he just watched for a while, he said. Two hundred yards from there, his dog and cat chase squirrels into the woods, he thought. That’s what made him pull the trigger.
If he had seen the cat in the Adirondacks, shooting it would never have crossed his mind, he said. If it hadn’t been so close to his house, Haines said, "I’d have just watched him mosey along the ridge."

He’s only shot three animals since his brother-in-law taught him to hunt — two deer and the bobcat. He felt guilty after he shot.

There is a bobcat hunting season in this part of the state, said Dr. Ward Stone, wildlife pathologist for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation. Oct. 25 to Feb. 15 is open season for bobcats in the Capitol Region and the Adirondacks. Central and western New York, however, have no open season; the cats are protected year-round in that part of the state, he said.
"I’d say we’re darn lucky to have them," said Stone, of the higher population in the eastern part of New York. Bobcats don’t pose any major threat to people, he said, and, since they eat small rodents, they keep those populations in check and, by doing so, help to reduce the spread of illnesses like Lymes disease.
Bobcats will sometimes eat a pet, said Stone, but "they’re not the threat that a coyote is to a dog or a cat."
Simian, Haines’s dog, is pretty small, he said. "You’re going to laugh," he said. "We’re told that she’s a combination Lab-Chihuahua." He added with a sheepish smile, "She looks like a 15-pound Lab."
There is now a cautious pride mixed with his lingering guilt when Haines talks about his bobcat, which is going to be mounted so that the unusually vibrant colors on his spotted belly will be visible. "A lot of big game fur is very coarse," he said. "This cat’s fur was very soft."
"I’m not a trophy hunter," said Haines. "I wasn’t wowed until everyone else started saying, ‘Wow.’"

— Laura Anderson, an intern from Farnsworth Middle School, contributed to this story.