Last night....

Woke up this morning after a restless night. Didn't really hear anything during the night although I listened out the open window several times. Window has a direct line to the turkey roost about 200 feet away and is right next to the bed. Looked out this AM and thought I had the sucker! So...to recap...I had a dead turkey hanging about 3-4 ft off the ground from an A-frame roost that is overall about 8' high. Trail cam pointed at the roost and 3 leg hold traps under the bird. This morning one trap is sprung and nothing is in it. The A-frame looks like a tornado hit it and is in a pile on the ground. Whatever it fell on lost it's taste for turkey because the bird is laying there in the ruins. Neither Labradork made a peep. Maggie was in her crate in the hay building but Jack was tied to his doghouse 100' feet from the roost and in full sight of it. Neither dog will attack a human but they go after everything else. I told Mrs Dave this morning that whatever did that either scares Jack or they know each other well enough that Jack ignores it. Looks like a bear except we don't have them here and it would not have left the turkey.

Now here is the weird part. Lots of pictures on the trail cam of me setting the traps. Second to last picture is of me standing with a flashlight checking my set. Final picture on trail cam is in full daylight and shows the pile of lumber and nothing else...nothing that would have moved and tripped the camera. I said it before, some predators have a way of not tripping the camera.

The other strange thing was that the box trap with the chicken in it was not touched. We have a lot of raccoons and at least one skunk. Dogs have killed all the possums.

SOOO....1) Scares or is friends with the dog 2) Strong enough and tall enough (or can climb) to tear down a 2x4 A-frame. 3) possibly scares off other wildlife. I am thinking a big male raccoon because he leaves the geese, goats and (so far) the tom turkeys alone. Just not sure why the dogs leave him be.

I'm feeling a reality TV show here . Woods monsters of Michigan.

Maybe sprinkle flour on the ground to see tracks?

your too far north for a loup garou, so, my guess is a cat, bobcat lynx, possibly even a cougar? as to why it didnt trip the camera i dont know, the other thing that comes to mind is a large owl, but it have to be twin engine large id think to take on a turkey

Any tracks, or claw marks? If not, next time hose down the area to make it muddy enough that tracks will be made.

(quoted from post at 06:15:27 06/12/14) I'm feeling a reality TV show here . Woods monsters of Michigan.

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oh god, please no more reality shows, i beg of you.

lol how about one where they actually catch something on it, that would be different!

I agree with you there. One person I know said "I don't need reality TV...I have my own reality."

OH....EM....GEE

Do they pay money? I want a pole barn! I should call MonsterQuest! Or maybe I could get Dr. Pol to drive down and autopsy the turkey? Never occurred to me to cash in on this deal. Maybe I should rebuild the roost and let the turkeys back out....film at 11.

Yeah, no...it's a moveable roost and there is lawn underneath it. But I think Mrs. Howell may be onto something....

To far north or not I still think it is a rougarou (Roux-Ga-Roux)

Funny...I dreamed about bobcats last night. No lynx around here and I am pretty sure a cougar would send the goats into such an apoplexy that the entire neighborhood would wake up. Probably eat one of them too. At this point it would be OK with me if he ate Jack...lousy watchdog.

He doesn't care what it does when it is alive but once I shoot it and bury it he will sure as heck dig up the rotting corpse every day until it is gone.

Do I need silver bullets for that? Cause I can hardly afford a brick of the regular .22's right now.

My first reaction was "great, that sounds like something my wife would say". On second thought, if I laid a sheet of plywood under the roost and sprinkle THAT with flour, I THINK I may just outsmart ole wiley whatever-it-is tonight. Be hard to hide the traps but I am not sure I need to. It would be a relief to see coon prints. I put a couple dozen coons minimum under ground every year. Hope that roost falling didn't scare him off.

Sure sounds like bigfoot to me.

We have had something taking kittens here the last few years. Adult cats seem to be ok, and eyes closed kittens last a while, but the time they start exploring a bit, or momma moves them, the kittens disappear.

Have not figured it out yet.

Paul

What makes you think you don't have bears?

Black bears have made a HUGE comeback, nearly as well as turkeys.

Sure sounds like bear sign to me.

try a coon cuff - baited with marshamallow - not hidden - you want it to see it.

Apparently Aliens.

call turtle man, he can BS his way through anything

paul, hawks will do a number on kittens up to about half grown cats. we lost a bunch of barn cats to a red tailed hawk. saw it carry off a kitten.

Paul,

A few years ago we had something eating kittens of the "exploring age" out in our barn. It ate everything except the spinal column and the tail.

We thought maybe it was a raccoon eating them, because daughter found the remains of one kitten part about halfway up the elevator part of our old corn picker.

Last week our small framed young cat moved her first batch of 2 kittens next to the house, couple days later kittens and small mother were gone, kinda big roughed up area in the flowers where a battle was, and blood stain on the sidewalk. I'm a bit disturbed about the young adult getting finished as well.

2 years ago, had a kitten left, put it in a chicken wire cage in hay barn and let mom in and out a couple times a day. One night mom was out, and whatever it is tunneled under the cage in the straw, found a weak spot in the wire, and kitten was gone. Dug out of the cage..... Hole in the wire was about the size of a big cat to squeeze through....

Only once have I seen a couple paws left, otherwise entire kittens are gone, no nothing left not fur not nothing.

I can't make sense of what critter is doing this, I hear of coyotes maybe but they don't fit the tunneling under cage deal, actually hay barn is closed enough only a cat or small raccoon fits in; hawk couldn't do the tunneling. Many other predators leave Bits and pieces, here there is nothing no evidence at all. This has been going on 5-6 years now. We have skunks, raccoons, possums, wood chucks, weasel and mink have been known to come from the ditch nearby.... Many Tom cats wander by. But nothing fits the different types of disappearances...

I need to get a game camera up, but it is always when the mom has move their kittens it seems, so hard to set up.....

Really frustrated with the young mom disappearing this past week. Hard to lose the kitties, but that mom kinda lived on the house door step, greated me every morning the past year and a half, petite long haired quiet gal liked me but didnt want to get real close......

Also lost an orange late fall kitten 2 weeks ago, it was a tad slow of a kitty, finally wandered out of the machine shed after living there all winter. Would rub its nose on my chin when I didnt shave, wanted nothing to do with me when I was clean shaven. Loved to hook. Its paws in my pants and go along for a ride.

Need a dog, but frankly at this point would be worried about a pup, and dog doesn't quite fit our lifestyle right now, wouldn't get the attention it needed......

Been kinda bummed this week.

Paul

Well, just leaving aside the fact that it doesn't break into buildings, kill goats or geese and that we are surrounded by other houses now...

When it killed the last hen it had to climb across the lower roost with the heavier toms on it to get to the high roost where the hens sit. Have to think a bear would be more opportunistic than that.

Now 20 miles away on the farm the neighbor reported a bear came out of the wetland at the back of his property just east of my SE field. Scared his horses and then left. I set cameras and watched all the lanes for tracks. Never saw a trace.

Don't have one but thinking of ordering one. Looks like a useful thing and safer around the other animals.

We have had three of our cats pass in that awful winter. One was a rescue that had only been here for a few weeks. The other two were very old tomcats that were well loved. Hated to see them go. The last one we rescued and I had him in the house all winter. I NEVER let cats in the house but made an exception. Kept him alive thru Spring and he had a couple days of warm sun outside with his friends. He cried to be let out and would go straight to the hay building and the other cats. Daughter took him to work last month and they euthanized him. It was best...but sad.

Do like I did a few years ago. New kittens started disappearing every other night that the mother had hidden under the car parked by the mobile home I stay in. I lit up the yard with two halogen shop lights and crawled up on the roof and sat by the swamp cooler about eleven at night. About ten after four the next morning the mother cat rounded up the two remaining kittens and got underneath me next to the wall of the trailer. I looked around and here comes Miss Coyote trotting over to the car looking for more kittens. I waited until I had a clear shot and gave her four loads of birdshot in the rear end. Problem solved.

bigfoot

Nope, had him scheduled to be at my place last night... Bryce

No idea what kind of critter you're dealing with, but something isn't right with that game camera. It should have a menu where you can dial up the sensitivity so it will trigger with smaller animals than a human. I also set mine so it takes three successive pictures at close time intervals. Often picture number two or three is much better than picture number one. You should have had several revealing pictures in the time it took for that thing to wreck your a-frame.

I hope you figure out what you're dealing with. Let us know what it is and how you get him. Good luck with the hunt!

Alf with a 6 pack in him . He said he would be back !!

We're in SW Ohio. 3 thoughts: 1.Bobcat. About 99% sure I saw one in the headlights in our long lane one night. Too big, tail too short to be a housecat. 2. New coyotes. Have read that a new, bigger coyote mix is moving E-SE, last I heard was at least in the MI/IN/upper OH area. Is a coyote-wolf cross, coming out of the northern tier of the country. A few winters ago, coyotes took down a full-grown deer in our lane after a big snow. No doubt what did it, plenty of tracks & scat. 3.Owner-released cougar/other big cat. Person I worked with saw a black one in her backyard (suburb) fencerow one dusk, couldn't believe it. She's a geek, convinced herself she'd just been startled and inflated it in her mind, never said anything to anyone, dismissed it - until a couple of months later when her neighbor very quietly and almost not wanting to get the words out, asked her if she'd ever seen anything like a huge black cat in their backyards at nightfall.

Call for the Turtle Man! He catches anything and everything! (Of course, late-breaking news says that you have to catch the critter yourself, cage it and hold it until Turtle Man has time to arrange for cameras and have a script written. Then you turn it loose in a restricted area and allow old Super Turtle-Man to come to the rescue. )