http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070109/NEWS/70109041/1001Officer frees bald eagle with his best shot
By PERRY BEEMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
January 9, 2007
12 Comments
An Iowa conservation officer freed a bald eagle stuck on a tree branch and hanging upside down at Lake Red Rock last weekend with a single rifle shot.
Remarkably, the eagle flew away with renewed freedom and at least a chance of survival.
Wow, now thats what I call sharpshooting! exclaimed John Pearson, a state botanist who, along with two friends, found the distressed eagle in the tree Saturday.
The officer, Jason Sandholdt, was off duty and eating lunch in Knoxville on a break from hunting deer with a muzzleloader when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called from the reservoir southeast of Des Moines. Pearson had been kayaking with Brian Lange and Scott Evans of Knoxville on a warm January day when they found the bird hanging from a branch about 60 feet above the lake near the Elk Rock State Park ranger station.
Sandholdt, who like Pearson works for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, responded with state colleagues and county workers. With binoculars, they could see that the bird appeared to have caught a single talon in a knothole in the branch when it landed. Apparently, the bird tried to take off, losing its balance. It hung from the talon, upside down.
Because the bird was hanging over a cliff and high in the air, ropes and ladders seemed out of the question as rescue tools, Sandholdt said. Many in the group thought a mercy killing was the best option.
Sandholdt asked for a chance to free the bird with his muzzleloader, figuring at best the bird would fall into the lake and have to be rescued for rehabilitation at a clinic.
Its safe to say no one had any confidence that I could do that, Sandholdt said of his proposed sharpshooting. My buddies were waiting for a poof of feathers.
Sandholdt bent a tree sapling over to use as a brace. He used the guns scope to take aim the the .50-caliber muzzleloader, not perhaps the weapon of choice for sharpshooting. The bullet traveled 60 to 70 feet, cleanly through the edge of the knothole. Sandholdt figures he hit the talon, too.
There were accusations of sheer luck, said Lange, one of the kayakers, said of the single shot. He added: It was really a heroic shot.
The eagle flew away. Officers waited for it to collapse. Instead, the bird kept flying, disappearing over the horizon. No one is sure of its odds for survival, but it faced certain death before the rescue, Pearson said.
Sandholdt didnt get a deer that day. The eagle got his best shot.
What a shot it was.
