Felines are known for their athleticism, but a momma bobcat took it to the next level, making an astounding leap to catch a wild turkey in mid-air.
Selah Tenney who lives near Roseburg, Oregon, caught the moment on video.
The drama unfolded in front of a trail camera on a section of property that she and her husband, Bruce, have set aside as essentially a wildlife reserve.
“With trail cameras, it’s the luck of the draw. It’s being at the right place at the right time,” she told Cowboy State Daily.
For Tenney having the camera in the right place at just the right time paid off. Her bobcat-catches- flying-turkey video, taken in July of 2024, won the Trailcampro 2025 video of the year award.
Familiar Cats
Tenney and her husband raise sheep. But they leave a roughly 20-acre section of their property untouched as a haven for wildlife.
The bobcat in the video is well-known to them.
“We co-exist with all the wildlife. Because of that, we have three resident bobcats that we’ve gotten to know” (mostly through the cats’ distinctive fur markings),” she said.
“We particularly like the predators. They’re just so interesting. And we’re lucky that our neighbors, some of which have big ranches, enjoy the bobcats too,” she added.
The cat that made the amazing turkey-catching leap has shown up on many of their videos, mostly catching squirrels and voles.
Turkeys Good At Evading Bobcats
The area also has an “exploding” wild turkey population, Tenney said.
And as much as the bobcats might crave a meal of fresh turkey, the big birds are good at avoiding getting caught.
Tenney said she once observed a hen turkey fake out a bobcat by pretending to be injured while its young flew up to safety in a tree.
Turkeys as young as roughly two weeks old can fly well enough to get up into trees, she said.
Once the young turkeys were safely in the tree, the mother bird flew up to a safe roost, leaving the bobcat frustrated and hungry.
That’s how most attempted turkey hunts end for the bobcats, Tenney said.
While crows and ravens frequently steal eggs or hatchlings from the turkeys’ ground nests, the bobcats are usually little more than an annoyance for them, she said.
Inattentive Turkey Loses, Bobcats Win
The turkeys keep an advantage over bobcats by bunching up in flocks, Tenney said.
But on that particular July day, one young turkey got distracted while gobbling up bugs, and strayed away from the flock.
“She was just eating bugs and not paying attention to her surroundings,” Tenney said.
And that was the break that the bobcat – which had a young kitten at the time – had been waiting for.
Tenney said she never knows what to expect when she goes out to retrieve video cards from her trail cameras.
But when she noticed “feathers everywhere” surrounding that particular camera, she hoped that she’d captured something cool.
It wasn’t until she got back home and started reviewing the video that she realized just how cool it was.
In the video, the turkey seems to be climbing, desperately trying to gain a safe altitude. The bobcat leaps up and fully extends its body and stretches out its front paws to connect with its prey.
The turkey might have even carried the bobcat for a little bit in mid-air before the cat’s weight became too much, Tenney said.
That’s because the two creatures are quite a way away from the camera when they come crashing back down to the ground, and the bobcat deftly completes its kill.
“She fed her kitten well for a few days,” Tenney said.
Bobcat Is Still Around
She said that in addition to the bobcats, they have black bears and coyotes in the area, but they like to leave the predators alone.
After losing some sheep last year to bears and coyotes, they put “hot wire” (electric fence) around their pasture, and that seemed to do the trick.
As for the bobcat that made the spectacular leap, Tenney said she’s still around.
“She was pregnant last time I saw, because she was just really big,” Tenney said.
She hopes the momma bobcat and her new kitten might give her some more award-winning videos.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
