An 83-year-old turkey hunter sitting motionless in camouflage between two trees was attacked by a bobcat that mistook his slowly moving head for prey. The bobcat bit his neck and clawed his face before releasing and walking away, likely stunned by the hunter's size.
83-year-old Claude Strother has been hunting turkeys for most of his life. Though he’s traveled the continent bagging various subspecies, he’s particularly fond of hunting the hardwood bottoms near his Mississippi home. Strother was hunting in one of his favorite close-to-home turkey spots earlier this year, he tells Field & Stream, when a bobcat leapt in from behind and bit down on the back of his neck.
“I can only walk about 100 yards,” said Strother, who is battling stage-four lung cancer, “but I decided to get out on the opener to a spot about 25 miles from home and watch this beautiful hardwood bottom for a couple of hours.”
Strother sat down between two small trees and began scanning the woods for movement while working a box call. “There wasn’t anything moving but my head back and forth,” he said, “and that’s when it happened. He saw my head moving and hit it wide open.”
Strother said the attack was completely unexpected. He hadn’t seen or heard the bobcat approaching and getting into attack position behind him. “He bit into the back of my neck and wrapped his claws around my face,” he recalled. “He released before [his claws and teeth] went all the way to the bone. I think it stunned him as much as it did me. He had no idea he was attacking something as big as I was.”
Strother’s first thought was that someone had him with a baseball bat. “After he released me, I turned around and he was just trotting down the road,” he said. “I set the table perfectly for him, the way I was sitting. I had my old Mossy Oak camouflage on. To him it looked like there was nothing there but a head moving slowly back and forth. They’ve got a lot of power when they hit.”
With the bobcat sauntering away, Strother called his turkey hunt quits for the day and sought medical help from a doctor friend nearby. “I was bleeding pretty bad with scratches across my face and bite marks on the back of my neck,” he said. “I went to the doctor in Gastonburg. She cleaned me up and sent me to Selma for rabies shots.”
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Undeterred, Strother told his daughter later that day that he planned to head right back to same spot the following morning. She told Field & Stream that her dad has killed 247 turkeys throughout his life, including two Royal Slams and 8 Grand Slams. He has also called in 75 birds for friends and has journaled every hunt in detail since 1974.
Strother’s attack illustrates an often-overlooked hunting risk: predators mistaking motionless, camouflaged hunters for prey. His positioning between trees with only his head moving slowly back and forth created the perfect illusion of vulnerable prey to the bobcat. The fact that the animal released immediately upon realizing its mistake shows that most wildlife encounters result from confusion rather than true aggression. For hunters spending hours motionless in the woods, maintaining situational awareness of your surroundings—not just your quarry—remains critical even in seemingly safe situations.
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