Syracuse.com - Michigan hunter suffers eye injury after being attacked by screech owl in his tree stand

[HuntingNY-News]

Jason Longbrake wonders if while out hunting Sunday morning, he became the hunted.

I don't make this stuff up. The bird did a number on this Jackson, Mich. hunter's eye.

Aaron Aupperlee, of the Jackson Citizen Patriot, wrote:

Jason Longbrake wonders if while out hunting Sunday morning, he became the hunted.

Sitting in his tree stand and waiting for the sun to rise, something slammed into his head. Whatever it was grabbed for his eye, Longbrake said. Moments later, he saw a screech owl sitting in a nearby tree.

“I don’t know if it saw my eye as something it wanted,” he said Wednesday.

Read the whole story.

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog

[Deerthug]

Ouch! That must have really hurt! He should have been wearing "sunglasses at night"

[Culvercreek hunt club]

THis actually happened to my Brother in Law too. The littel bugger flew towads his face 3 times. He was in a treestand in full camo including fase mask. Once he took his face mask off the owl never came back. He never actually made contact with him but was inches from his face. He is convinced the owl wal responding to the flashes of white as his eyes blinked. It was a full face mask with two eye holes.

[WNYBuckHunter]

Ive had owls fly around my head, land on branches near me and dive bomb me in the stand before.

[otis2]

Two years ago I had a young red tailed hawk come in at me while I was in my tree stand. He never made contact, but he was hovering just out of reach trying to get at me. He landed about 10 feet away on a branch and screeched at me. Once I removed my camo headgear he realized something and flew off.

[UpStateRedNeck]

SOME big bird buzzed me ( say 5 feet from my head ) this sunday in my ladder stand. Pretty sure it was a hooter. It was still dark, false down just starting to creep into the sky. I also saw a peregrin (which I've never seen up there before) doing some pretty fancy flying through the woods on saturday.

[Geno C]

it did a number on him

[HHC1]

Even owls don't like crossbows!