Bobcat Turkey Kill: The Aftermath

The day after we saw the resident Bobcat kill a Wild Turkey, we looked around for signs of the turkey carcass.

Before systematically searching, Gary decided to water the two baby Incense Cedar trees that we recently planted on the property. After watering the first one, he noticed that the little berm around the second one was disturbed and the dirt pushed over to one side of the tree. A little prodding revealed...a fresh turkey leg!

Turkey leg unearthed from its cache.

Bobcats are known to cache excess food for future consumption, so this seems likely to be a snack stored for later.

Then we walked over to the area that we saw the cat with the turkey. There was a mass of feathers at what must have been the initial attack site. We did not witness that event the other evening.

Turkey feathers of all kinds.

Then we checked out the spots where we saw the bobcat with the turkey in its mouth, and saw more feathers.

At one point we saw the cat spit a bunch of smaller feathers out, in the spot shown above.

Then we followed the trail of feathers to the edge of a thick area of vegetation which would be almost impossible to penetrate (for a human), so we gave up.

The leg was several hundred yards downslope from these feather areas, so the cat was busy during the night (if it indeed was responsible for caching it).