Successful Hunting Today, but not me!

[TWHBC]

While driving in to an early morning doctors appointment in Iowa City I was about 3 miles out of town heading in with the sun just up.
In front of me a bald eagle crossed the highway at about 10' in altitude. He/She had a nice cottontail hanging from its talons!
Rabbit was limp and dangling so it wasn't a frozen roadkill! Eagle was struggling a little to stay up, but made it across the highway, and was crossing a cut cornfield as I drove on. The eagles around here are usually seen fishing or dining behind a pig confinement facility on a pig carcass left out!
Nice to see nature doing its thing!

[gamekeeper]

That's something you don't see every day.......

[GunnyMack]

I saw a baldy feeding on a fresh road kill deer, it's head was red from body cavity blood.
It was standing on the rib cage with a look of 'don't F with me!'
We have one hanging around our club fishing property. So much for the 950 trout we stocked!

[Old No7]

Pretty neat to see!

This summer, we had a large Bald Eagle swoop down just 10' behind the stern of our boat and grab a 12" salmon that we'd just released... And I'd just turned off the GoPro video camera too -- darn it!

Old No7

[Griff]

One of the pleasures of mowing the pastures is watching the yellow tail hawks picking off the field mice after they scurry around dartin' for one pile of hay to the next... trying to avoid the brushhog!

[Ben_Rumson]

Recently saw a sparrow hawk nab a red squill out of a nearby tree and fly off. Looked very cool!

[InTheWoods]

Don't post as often as I should on the site, but the topic sparked a recent 'free meal' event I witnessed. I occasionally leave the scope sighted .22s in the house and take out an ancient Remington Rolling Block #4 in .22 to bag squirrels around my place. A couple of weeks ago I shot a squirrel that was about 35 yards away and about 10 yards up the side of a tree. The squirrel was hit hard (looked like it died instantly) and fell to the ground. It bounced once and was immediately picked up by a large barred owl that was probably hunting the same squirrel as I was. In a blink of an eye, my squirrel was gone and the owl had a free meal! Kind of fun to see.

[crs]

In THe Woods - the great horned owl is a serious predator. One of them had stolen 3 or 4 pups from a big litter until my friend saw it and his 12 ga put an end to the raiding. They will also hunt wild turkeys at night, knocking them to the ground gor the kill.

Also saw a bald eagle once on the edge of a New Mexico prairie dog hole: he did not seem to be worried abut three guys shooting at prarie dogs just 100 yards from him. Must be the "bull of the woods" syndrome.

[765x53]

I once watched a baled eagle chase a hen pintail as she frantically twisted and dived to get away.
He caught her on the wing and she instantly went limp.
He didn't have any trouble carrying her away.

[GunnyMack]

I watched a golden eagle carry off a gut pile from a buddies elk in Colorado, it landed amongst a bunch of buzzards. They scattered it grabbed the guts and got off the ground, flew out of sight. THAT is a big bird!!

[Blaine]

Pretty neat to see!

This summer, we had a large Bald Eagle swoop down just 10' behind the stern of our boat and grab a 12" salmon that we'd just released... And I'd just turned off the GoPro video camera too -- darn it!

Old No7

Yup....I always be fishing all day, and the only steelhead I see is in the osprey talons...right where I just cast.

[Shrapnel]

More rare than seeing an eagle take small game is to actually get your camera out and capture the picture...