Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Vulture vs. 300 MPH Jet Fighter - In-cockpit video

Speed and plump targets are dangerous combinations.

Years ago when I was in the Marine Corps flying the F/A-18 I was running a VR route (low level route) at 500' AGL over coastal North Carolina and was doing 610 knots indicated airspeed. I had a turkey buzzard pop into view like the one in the video except much quicker since I was doing almost 3X the speed. What saved me was it hit the bow wave off of the radome which pushed it away and it went down the left side of my canopy about 2' away. I slowed down.

I have a friend that hit a turkey buzzard doing about 400 knots in an F-4. The surgeons picked feathers and bones out of his shoulder for the next two months.

Pheasant 2.5 pounds at 55 MPH = 253 foot pounds
Turkey vulture 3.5 pounds at 300 MPH = 10,530 foot pounds

Uffda!

I think the bird was hit from the rear too...

Say, do you know the last thing to go through that bird's mind?

Its a$$hole.

John

So from the bird's point of view it took 21,557,000 foot pounds up the wazoo.

Turkey tried to fly, I tried to stop. Hit my 2001 Saturn in the fender, shattered it. I was down to 30+ mph at impact. Solid bird.

We had a solid piece of polycarbonate bulletproof glass in front of each of us (Pilot and NFO) in the Prowler and every bird strike we had that penetrated the cockpit came through the thin side window on the forward canopy. Weird, just the airflow moved them that way.

I hit a turkey buzzard on a low-level at 420 KTS at 200' AGL and like the Phantoms old engines, the J-52P408A motor we had just shrugged it off with a few bent compressor blades. No engine indications at all. We climbed and brought it to idle but didn't shut it down and took it back to NAS Oceana where we were on a det. No idea until the ADs dove the duct afterwards we had trashed the motor. Gotta love turbojets.

I was lucky in the Viking with that huge windscreen. Had several bird strikes in my career, all during low level flights ~ 360KTS. One small bird hit the leading edge of the wing and severely dented it. Amazing. we did have one hit the base to the tail where the ECS turbine inlet is, thrashed it...

I hit one at 60 mph and it shattered my windshield.
At 300 it could get ugly.

We hit a stork or some similar large bird at first light on our way back from a night patrol just North of Qui Nhon along the S. Vietnam coast.

Big thump on the port wing leading edge even at a modest 180 cruise but fast enough to destroy the deicing boot and make a mess.

A moment of minor excitement during a cross country ramble. Turkeys in Iowa aren't terribly bright? 55 mph on a 2 lane black top. $1800 for repairs....




Contrary to urban legend the kung-fu kick will not stop a p'up.

Possibly but not likely. Happens too fast and they're already quite busy - even it it's scanning the sky, they could be scanning a different part of it.

Awesome photo!

Why get the truck repaired?

Let the coyotes chew the turkey off, spend $1,800 on beer.

Is that a shot out of a A6-B cockpit?

I ride by a lot of vultures feeding on the roadside almost every time I take my Vulcan S (motorcycle) out.

This is exactly what I fear.