One in a million odds probably, but read on a state turkey hunting forum where a guy did get bit by one while turkey hunting yesterday morning. He had pictures of the bite on his upper arm, so is probably the real deal.
The guy and his dad had just set and made a few calls when it happened. Said the coyote didn't hang on long and got away too quick for a shot.
I've had one come in and make a mad dash at the gobbler I was calling and another just come in looking for the yelps I was making.
Just posting this for something to keep in your heads while calling turkeys..never know.
That's certainly understandable. A coyote hears turkey calls, sees some movement, and rushes in for the kill. It's probably a wonder it doesn't happen more often.
My cousin had one come in and nail his decoy in Kansas years back, he said he laughed so hard he couldn't get a shot off.
I could see that
Some years back my wife was using a bleet call and a coyote jumped out of the bush at her till it realized she wasn't a deer.
Hoyt-that is incredible. I also think this is a good safety lesson as far as being ready for anything when you are calling turkeys! Thanks!
Kenny :bigsmyl:
I had a coyote sneak in on my last year while I was calling for turkey's. He ended up being my first kill with a trad bow :goldtooth: :jumper:
I'm bettin the worst part of it is takin the dang rabies shots!
A hunter down along the CO/NM border called our office to complain that a bear grabbed his decoy and ran completely off with it - he asked (with tongue firmly planted in cheek) if the state DOW would reimburse him for his loss? :biglaugh:
Have to give a turkey call a try next time I go coyote hunting.
A few years agoe I was hunting with my brother on some land he was leasing,we had a yote come rollin in on our decoys.Kinda cool to see,but we were unable to get the shot in time.
I can beleave that.
my first year of elk hunting i was hunkered down on a main game trail squealing on a diaphragm elk call making some ungodly poor cow calls, and had a coyote come at a full run and almost ran me over. he came sliding to a halt 3 feet in front of my face, laid his ears back and snarled at me. :scared: :scared:
I was so startled by it, i growled right back at him and swung my bow at the same time.... i never connected with him, but i parted his hair, and he jumped and ran.....
definitely needed clean shorts after that close a call.... those things are scary up close and personnel. they got really bad breath too.... :scared:
Swung the bow instead of pulling the string! Classic. Lol. Guess you never know exactly what you'll do untill the moment arrives. The first one I ever shot, I howled in at night with a 22 mag. Got so excited, I ran right up to her. When I got about 5 feet from her, she tried to get up, but couldn't. She laid her ears back, and opened her mouth as wide as she could, looking very mean and showing me just how big those teeth really are! I never shot a bolt action so fast! I shot three times, and anchored her with the only hit at five feet in the neck. Here's to good times, fond memories, and clean shorts!
I think I'll rather have a Yote pounce on me then a Mountain Lion...You won't be a mouse toy with the Yote but that cat will toss you around like a play toy before he really clambs down...Kirk I wonder if that Yote went back to his den and told his litter of pups the same thing about you? :biglaugh: Probally said " I saw the sickest looking Squatch I ever laid my eyes on today" Hardly had enougth meet on them bones for me so I let him go and then he had the nerve to throw a stick at me and give me a buzz cut"
Several years ago my son killed his first turkey and a bobcat came in and stole the turkey. I chased the bobcat for a short distance and he dropped the turkey. I have also had coyotes come to turkey calls.
2 years in a row my cousin has had timber wolves come into his turkey set up in central WI. They came in fast after he started to call. He said no fear (on their part, not his) after they saw he was there.
Dave
It happens quite frequently. Ive had yotes come into goose decoys many times but never while turkey calling. I have called in red fox while turkey calling.
Last year I called in a big fisher!
The thing came in the decoy and got back to the brush in split seconds
No shot from my natural blind
I heard from a friend of a friend of a cousin of someone getting attacked by a bobcat hunting turkey. The bobcat snuck up and pounced from behind, but no real damage, or at least that was the story.
I saw the tables turned once. A yearling deer was feeding out in a field. A coyote started to go after her, but the doe didn't run, and charged the coyote and chased him out of the field.
Three years ago I was working a bird on a bench ijust above me and I could see him g0ing back and forth but he wouldn't come down the twenty yards I needed for a shot . Suddenly he went quiet and I didn,t see him. He was so hot that I knew it wasn't my doing. About five minutes later a coyote came at a fast pass toward my calling position. I never really wanted to shoot a coyote before and not since, but I did not hesitate at that time. Full disclosure, with turkeys in the spring, I am literally a run and gun guy.
My wife had a wolf come within 5 feet of her while calling moose.
Finding a little something to eat is serious business out there. As daylight broke one morning, I realized I was sitting right next to a gut pile, and a couple of minutes later I almost had a yote in my back pocket, on account of it. Had a owl take my hat off while calling varmits one night. When you go to calling, you never know what might answer...
Good thread - I love the stories. My brother was stalked by two mt lions in MT while calling elk. He figured he sounded like a sick cow and a mom was going to show a kit how it was done! He stood up at the right time and spooked them from behind him. From then on he only called with a big tree at his back, lol!
I had a red-tailed hawk try to land on my head when I was dozing - I mean sitting with focused quiet - in a tree stand in MI once. I am not sure which of us was more startled!
This is part of his post.
"We didnt hear a single bird gobble off the roast this morning, and it was getting daylight so we decided to set up in a cedar thicket. We got all set up just as it was getting daylight. I got all settled in and made a few soft yelps and clucks. About 3 minutes later I caught something out of the corner of eye. As soon I turned my head I seen a huge coyote on a dead sprint lunging at me with his jaws wide open. I threw my arm up in the air while trying to yell and roll to the other side. He grabbed me by the upper arm close to the shoulder. He didnt hold on long. After he let go I jumped up and tried to get a shot off on him but he was outta there like a bat outta hell.
It was by far the craziest thing I have ever happen to me in the woods. I'm pretty sure he going for my head when I threw up my arm and rolled outta the way he ended up just getting my arm. This all happen in about a total of 3 seconds. I wasn't even for sure if it happen. I was in total shock. I'm glad my dad was there me to keep me calm. It was so fast my dad didn't even get a shot at him. When it all happen, my only thought was how am I going to get this thing off me.
I'm guessing he thought I was a turkey. We had some decoys out in front of us but I'm assuming he never saw them. I think about the time he was biting me, he realized I wasn't a good prey item and let go pretty fast and took off.
I was wearing two thin under armor type shirts and a hoodie and he still broke skin. I didn't think he broke the skin until I got and took my shirts off. I went to the hospital and got some shots and some antbiotics.
Here is a pic with the bite marks."
Somebody mentioned to him that he should send the experience into Outdoor Life and see if they would put it in that section they have...(nobody remembered exactly what they call it and I don't either..This Happened to Me..or something like that.) Anyway he was trying to get the address so he could send it in.
Kennym is right...no fun getting those shots I would think.
Great stories on this thread. I will add one.
Was watching 3 turkey from my deer stand one fall. A doe and her fawn then started working toward me near the turkey. A coyote came in and busted up the whole party. Really cool to watch. I got a shot off at it but missed cleanly.
Mother doe returned to the scene within seconds and began calling her fawn that she was separated from in the fray. She was literally right there where that coyote had been bleating her head off.
Baby fawn came in from the exact opposite direction the coyote left. It never called back to momma. It just waited for visual contact and they moved on.
I had a hawk nail my decoy and once a bobcat snuck up and sniffed the decoy for a few seconds and then sprayed it?
I was turkey hunting with my Dad a few springs ago in Southern CO. We knew there was one big chocolate color bear and a sow with two dinky cubs hanging out in the area, kept seeing their tracks and had seen the big chocolate boar the year before. You could lay a dollar bill inside the width of his paw print. Makes you a little edgy in oak brush/cedar country. We started to call from a sandstone rockpile over looking a meadow. Had one gobbling and coming in from below but I kept hearing something moving around behind us. Next thing we know we hear a woof behind us and a big chocolate colored direr leaving behind us. He had snuck in within ten yards before seeing us or catching our wind. Got our attention to say the least. Never did get the gobbler.
I live in pretty close proximity to coyotes. Seems like I'm always chasing them off the deck or out of the garden. Last week they started yanking the plastic bags out of the shot-out core of my wafer target and spreading them around and they ran off with two broken arrows that I found later without their feathers. I generally lose about a cat a year to them and I get 2 or 3 of them a year just poking a barrel out of the sliding glass door. There is a group of four hanging around and one of them is three legged. I'm not fond of them.
When I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I was bowhunting in a treestand. I'd been there a couple of hours, just sitting, moving my head occasionally, when I saw movement from the corner of my eye. Not movement on the ground, movement CLOSE. It startled me and I half turned my body toward it. A red-tailed hawk veered away a couple of feet from my head. If I hadn't seen it and moved more than my head, I would have gotten nailed. The hawk obviously thought the movement of my head was a squirrel or something else in the tree.
I'm a falconer now, so I know just how much power is in those feet, and believe me, you don't want one to clamp down on you.
Another one.
The first coyote attack was in Kentucky, this one was in Maine.
MACHIAS, Maine — Opening day of turkey season turned out to be a bit more than Bill Robinson had in mind Monday when he set out his decoy at dawn's first light.
"I'll never forget looking up and seeing a jaw full of teeth coming at me," Robinson said Tuesday, the day after being attacked and bitten on the right arm by a coyote. The wild canine sprang while the Maine Guide was hunkered down in the brush, using a mouth-call to lure a turkey into the open while hunting on private property near the Washington County community of Cooper.
"I had placed my turkey decoy in a field in front of me and then positioned myself in some cover," said Robinson, 39, who lives in Edmunds Township, near Dennysville. "It was about 10 minutes after dawn, and right beside me was a short, thick spruce tree that had grown so thick you couldn't see through it. That coyote came up the edge of the field and was one side of that tree, with me on the other.
"The distance involved was only about four feet," Robinson said. "But that tree was so thick that he couldn't see me, and I couldn't see him. He was determined to have turkey for breakfast and was also determined that the sound he heard was a hen turkey."
Robinson said the coyote "came in high," a hunting maneuver designed to ensure his feathered prey couldn't fly off.
"When he bit down on my upper arm, he went through four layers — a heavy jacket, a sweatshirt, a long-sleeve shirt and a T-shirt," he said. "As I peeled off each layer there were two holes in each one. When I got to my arm, it was just burning and bleeding out of two holes."
Once the coyote realized it had jumped a human, not a hen, it sprinted away.
"It turned and ran 100 miles an hour across that field," Robinson said. "It was as shocked and surprised to see me, as I was to see it. I took a shot at it, but it was too far off by then. I turned it around for a second when I hit him in the haunch with a few pellets from my turkey load, just to say goodbye."
Robinson packed up and headed to the nearby home of a friend, Joe Gardner, who is a district game warden. Gardner examined and took pictures of the wound before counseling Robinson to seek medical attention at the Down East Community Hospital in Machias, where he began a two-week regimen of precautionary rabies vaccine injections.
Robinson was given seven shots Monday, four in his right arm, where he was bitten, and three in his left. There are, he said, many more shots in his near future.
"I walked into that hospital with one sore arm and left with two," he said Tuesday. "But I don't blame the coyote. It was doing what coyotes do, hunting. My guess is that coyote was perfectly healthy and was not rabid. He was big, probably 50 pounds. I'm just glad it didn't grab my neck."
So is Gardner, who has been friends with Robinson since they were boys.
"That was a first-time event for me," said Gardner, who patrols the Pembroke area. "I've heard people tell stories about coyotes coming into an area where they are calling turkeys, but then running off when they realize what they're hearing are hunters, not turkeys. I told Bill that he must be really good at calling turkeys."
A Maine Guide for eight years, Robinson said he'll be turkey hunting again soon.
"I'll be a little more prepared next time, in terms of not positioning myself where there's a blind spot," he said. "It was a freak thing. And an unforgettable thing."
Two seasons ago I was deer hunting out of a big pine when I saw 3 Turkeys working there way toward me,one jake stopped at about 15 yards,just as I was starting to draw a grey fox busted out of the brush and made a try for the jake.The turkey flew and I made a Texas heart shot on the fox,in the back and out the front,would rather have had the turkey.
In 1992 I was bow hunting Rio Grandes near Hutchinson, KS. I was watching a small flock that were 100 yards or so away.
While I was looking throught the binos a coyote ran into the field of view. I hadn't seen it until then. The turkeys ran off a ways and the coyote just veered off. It was pretty wild to be looking through the glass and have a visitor pop in!
Just testing them I guess to make sure no one was hobbling.
I was working in Nova Scotia a couple years ago when the young folk singer was attacked and killed by coyotes which is VERY rare.
Hikers called the incident in as it was happening, I heard. I guess they weren't close enough to help. I wouldn't think it would take much to run a coyote off?
There have been some articles I read about attacks in North Jersey. My buddy and I have experienced them following us out at night when dragging a deer one year they were on both sides about 20yrs or so. I little light flashing and louder than normal talk made us feel like we kept them at bay. Depending on the harsher the winter/ unavailable food I think the braver they get. Thats all part of hunting.
In my county a few years ago a guy had a lion knock him over , no harm no foul though. They figured at the last second the cat figured out he was no turkey. That'll wake you up LOL