Osceola Turkey Faces off with Coyote on Trail Cam!

. If you hunt turkeys and know anything about coyotes you will find this to be one interesting picture.


You don't see a turkey and a coyote in the same picture very often. Actually, I would bet you have probably never seen it your self and probably not even seen a picture like this before.

(click on photo to enlarge)

This photo was caught on a trail camera by my friend Rick Edwards and was taken in central Florida. Everything had to be exactly right to catch them at the same time in the same frame, pretty much a miracle! Here in Florida it is legal to feed game and I believe Rick was using a feeder in combination with the trail camera. This is a great way to get some really good pictures and a lot of them. I have literally thousands of photos and will be posting them as I have time.

One of the things that make it such a miracle that Rick's camera caught both animals at the same time is that the camera would have been taking pictures of the turkey as it milled around feeding and would time out in between shots for typically one minute. Turkeys are constantly moving and seldom stand still so the camera would immediately take another photo as soon as the time out period was up. At that instant the coyote would have had to come into the frame. It is possible the turkey had seen the coyote coming and had been standing still watching it and possibly the coyote tripped the camera but it would still be unbelievable timing regardless. If you have ever been fortunate enough to see a coyote in the woods you know they seldom stand still either. They are almost always on a trot or lope. Many cameras do not have a fast enough trigger time to even catch a coyote in the frame before he's gone.

Many thanks to Rick for sharing the photo. I know he has more and I’ll be prying them loose from him to post here!

Turkey season opens Saturday,

Good luck, send me a picture!

Larry S.

Hunter Harvests 19 PT. Velvet Antlered Doe!

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I received an email from one of my friends today with this story of a 19pt. Antlered doe. I hear about one of these oddities every once in a while but they are pretty rare and thought everybody might like to see it.

The hunters name is Mike Tomey of Lewis County, West Virginia. The deer was killed on a Friday of the first week of the buck season near Sleeth’s Run, near the Gilmer-Lewis County border.

The hunter was aware of the deers presents and had numerous trail camera photo’s of what he thought was a non-typical buck.

It was a Friday afternoon and pretty miserable out and the hunter had decided to call it a day and was on his way out of the woods when he walked up on the deer. He anchored the animal with one shot but was pretty surprised when he got to the deer and saw just how many points he (she) was sporting.

Apparently he field dressed the deer and realized something wasn’t right but did not know the deer was actually a doe until he got home and a neighbor saw the thing and pointed it out.

The bad thing was it’s the biggest set of horns the guy has taken and…..it’s a doe!

Apparently a doe does not create enough testosterone to cause the antlers to come out of the velvet stage. I believe they just continue to grow at a slow rate for the entire life cycle of the deer.

Her fawns must really catch hell from their little fawn buddies!

Best of Hunts,

Larry

Primos Diaphragm Sonic Dome Turkey Call Review

Another Spring Gobbler season is upon us and its time to be tuning up your calling and getting all your gear right and tight.

In my opinion, the mouth diaphragm call is the best turkey call ever invented for turkey hunting. Any call that a turkey makes can be duplicated on this type call including a kee kee.

Most of my Diaphragm mouth calls are in need of replacement so did some poking around and picked up some news calls to try.

One of the better calls I found was the new Primos "Sonic Dome Series", double reed, no cut. Right out of the box it fit my pallet better than any other call I have tried to date. In fact it fit so well i used it as a pattern to trim my other call to.

My personal preference in a mouth call is a twin reed with no cuts. I find the cuts make it difficuly to purr on which is a finishing call I rely heavily on. Also, more than two reeds or cuts are almost impossible for me to gobble on.

This call can make both raspy and clear calls and a range of soft and loud calls. Cuts are also nice and sharp.

My method of gobbling on a mouth call does not work with the dome style call but then again, I do not incorporate that call to much.

If your looking for a new call give this one a try, it a winner!

Best of Hunting,
Larry Stephens