Carson Bender, 19, of Wisconsin Rapids is an avid hunter, including for white-tailed deer and wild turkey.
But to his knowledge he had never been hunted.
Until April 18, that is.
Bender went turkey hunting that day on private land near Nekoosa, Wis.
For Bender, who works as a mechanic and is also taking arborist classes at Mid-State Technical College in Wisconsin Rapids, it was the first day he had free for hunting during Wisconsin’s spring turkey season.
The first turkey hunting period, for which Bender had a Zone 1 tag, ran April 15 to 21.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Bender said he got out before first light April 18 and set up at the edge of a small woods and a hay field. He placed two turkey decoys, a jake and a hen, about 25 yards into the field.
He was dressed head-to-toe in camouflage, including a face mask, seated at the base of a large tree and facing the field.
As the day brightened, Bender yelped periodically with a diaphragm, or mouth call.
To his delight, the early morning was also filled with wild turkey talk.
“I had gobbling from a couple directions,” Bender said. “And before long birds were in the field, working their way toward me.”
Six jakes, or one-year-old male turkeys, came toward Bender’s location. And then three mature toms strutted across the field behind eight hens.
At 7:45 a.m. a gobbler was close to the decoys and Bender had his shotgun on his knee, lining up a shot.
“I kid you not it was the most eventful morning I ever had,” Bender said.
What happened next only made it more so.
Bender said he heard squawking in the woods behind him, then it went silent and was followed by a soft crinkling in leaves behind him.
Rather than turn and look and risk spooking the turkeys, he slowly raised his phone and turned on the reverse camera in video mode.
To his great surprise, he learned he wasn’t alone.
A bobcat stood just three yards behind him.
“I pan over with the phone and the bobcat is just staring at me,” Bender said. “I was like, oh-oh. But I was still locked on to the toms in the field, too.”
Talk about having your hands full.
The video shows the bobcat standing so still it appears to be fake. Then it lifts a paw and slowly, stealthily advances toward Bender.
Bender is also stock still.
“I knew where the bobcat was and I didn’t know what it would do, but I was actually just about to take a shot at the gobbler,” Bender said.
Before he could shoot, the bobcat made its move.
It lunged at Bender, grasping his left arm with its paws. Bender shook off the bobcat, which he estimated weighed 25 pounds, and it ran away.
Remarkably the turkeys remained in the area and a few minutes later Bender was able to get a shot at one of the mature toms. He missed.
“I think I was a little amped up from the bobcat encounter,” said Bender, who was a trophy-winning trapshooter on his high school team.
Who could blame him.
He hunted until about noon but didn’t get any more opportunities at turkeys or visits from predators.
It’s not unprecedented for turkey hunters to be checked out by predators, including bobcats and coyotes, said Clayton Lenk, regional biologist for the National Wild Turkey Federation. But the predators almost always determine “something isn’t right” through scent or seeing movement that causes the animals to turn away before coming into contact with the human hunter, Lenk said.
And though Lenk did not have access to data on such encounters, he could not remember one in which a bobcat actually lunged at and touched a turkey hunter.
Bender, who was wearing a long-sleeve undershirt and a jacket made of a canvas-type material, sustained a scratch and two smaller skin breaks on his arm.
When he quit hunting at noon he called his girlfriend Julia Krueger of Wisconsin Rapids and told her the story. She convinced him to visit a doctor, who gave Bender a prescription for an antibiotic and “told me I’d be fine,” Bender said.
Bender captured the entire encounter on video. It’s going viral on social media, with more than 1 million views on Instagram.
Close inspection of the video shows the bobcat “side eyeing” the phone before looking back at Bender.
It likely was the first time it saw its own image and tussled with a turkey hunter.
Bender said he’s enjoying the range of comments on social media, including people bickering about what he should have done.
“It might sound dumb, but I wanted to kill that turkey that was strutting in,” Bender said. “It was a lot of action in just a minute or so but I never really felt threatened and went with my instincts.”
Speaking of which, Bender was back in the same spot the next morning, looking for another chance at a turkey.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bobcat stalks and strikes Wisconsin turkey hunter
Reporting by Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
