On a cool winter morning in the desert southwest, my wife and I decided to go predator calling armed only with a camera. (Her first calling experience). We went to an area that has a large population of gray fox hoping to get some good pictures of a fox leaping in to the tree after the Whirling Woodpecker Decoy.
We set up on a bluff at the entrance to a narrow canyon. I put the woodpecker decoy in a small bush with an MP3 player at the base of the bush playing the recorded sound of a woodpecker in distress. We were setup about twenty yards away on a rock outcropping. My wife was about twenty feet to my right. I had the camera. The caller was playing the woodpecker blues and the Whirling Woodpecker decoy was whirling for about two or three minutes when I noticed something run by my wife and stop just in front of her. I couldn’t see what it was because of the thick brush in front of her. But she sat dead still. After a minute or so it came through the brush toward me and I could see the distinct face of a mountain lion.
The lion would look at me then at the woodpecker. It did that for a few moments then out of the corner of my eye to my left running toward the call was a gray fox. I couldn’t decide where to focus the camera on the lion or the fox so I focused it on the bush with the decoy and call box. The fox ran right up to the player and picked it up in its mouth and at that exact moment the mountain lion pounced on the fox.
In a split second the lion leaped twenty feet, dust flew, the fox yipped and it was all over (for the fox anyway). The mountain lion ran about ten yards stopped with the fox in its mouth and looked right at me as if to say “thanks for breakfast! I was so excited I could hardly sit still. My wife sat perfectly still and calm though the whole ordeal. Being her first time out she just thought this was what always happened when predator calling. I wish! Chalk up another great calling experience thanks to the Whirling Woodpecker Decoy.
You can purchase the woodpecker at www.zebuhuntingblinds.com
