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Injured eagle rescued, heading for recovery thanks to local hunters

Dickinson County News - Staff Photo - Create Article
Milford residents Rodger Linn (left) and Wade Waltman (center) aided Amanda Hase (right) of Forever Wildlife Lodge and Clinic last month as she rescued an injured bald eagle near the Horseshoe Bend Wildlife Area. Linn and Waltman began to suspect the bird was injured after spotting it multiple times while scouting for deer. (Photo submitted)
By
Seth Boyes - News Editor

An injured bald eagle found last month in southwest Dickinson County has a good chance of recovering, thanks in part to a pair of local hunters who displayed not only keen eyes but warm hearts.

"He's in a nice place now, and they said he's getting stronger and stronger," said Rodger Linn of Milford, one of the hunters who helped rescue the injured eagle. "There isn't a better feeling than that."

Linn said he and his friend Wade Waltman of Milford had been scouting for deer near the Horseshoe Bend Wildlife Area earlier this year. The hunters initially didn't have much luck — Waltman sent his friend a text one day joking that he had only managed to find a bald eagle during his latest search.

But it became less of a laughing matter as the sightings continued.

Waltman saw the eagle in the same general area over the next few weeks — often perched on low limbs or fence posts. Initially, Waltman wondered if the bird was simply fond of the Horseshoe Bend, but when the two hunters came to retrieve their deer stands, Linn decided to creep a bit closer and investigate.

He said, had the animal simply flown off, he would have shrugged the continued sightings off as an oddity. But the eagle hopped down from its perch as he approached it, and it was then the hunters saw the bird dragging its wing — clearly injured.

"He was smart enough to be by a little runoff of water coming out of a culvert on the turn of this road," Linn said, noting the bird likely road out subzero temperatures on the ground that month. "If he was catching mice, I don't know."

Linn began making calls, both to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and to a local facility near Center Lake called Bird Haven. He said both were limited in the services they could provide for a federally protected bird like a bald eagle.

"I wasn't going to go home and go to bed that night and not keep thinking about that bird," Linn said. "It just touched me, being a hunter. You've still got a heart. My biggest thing was just that it was a bald eagle."

The 56-year-old remembered a time in his youth when there was concern the national bird might go extinct — only about 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles were believed to exist in 1963, according to information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Through federal legislation and public awareness campaigns, that number was almost 9,800 by 2007. Linn said he still marvels at the bald eagles he's seen in the area during the last five years or so.

The hunter said he took it upon himself to return to the wildlife area and throw some pieces of steak and chicken out for the eagle to help sustain it while Linn and his wife continued to call various facilities for help rescuing the injured animal — Linn himself worried some another predator like a coyote might attack the downed eagle.

"It's our national bird," Linn said. "It just ate at me. He can't sit there like that. I didn't care if I was going to get in trouble for feeding it or not."

Eventually, they were directed to Amanda Hase, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator with the nonprofit Forever Wildlife Lodge and Clinic in Sioux City. Hase said she received a call from the local hunters the evening of Jan. 14 — a weekend marked by frigid winds and blowing snow — and made the 100-plus mile journey to rescue the eagle.

 

Amanda Hase with Forever Wildlife Lodge and Clinic in Sioux City held the injured eagle — dubbed "Dickinson." Hase said, rather than assign rescued animals more typical pet names, the clinic names the animals under its care after the city or county where they were rescued — and where they will hopefully be released after recovering. (Photo submitted)

 

Hase said eagles can often be difficult if not dangerous to catch, and she stressed that the general public should never approach or attempt to touch injured wildlife, adding that proper training helps avoid injury to both the animal and its rescuer.

"The eagles are very smart — I don't think I've ever picked up an eagle that hasn't known what's going on," Hase said. "They're going to fight. They know to go for your face. They know what to do, and they can be pretty tricky."

Linn and Waltman guided Hase to the area where they'd last seen the injured eagle, and they helped distract the animal while Hase captured it — wearing thick gloves to guard against the bird's sharp talons, of course.

"Just by grabbing him, I could tell — weight-wise — that he was not where he needed to be," Hase said, noting the eagle may have been too undernourished to put up much of a struggle. "He was so light."

She then performed an initial evaluation of the bird on the hood of her vehicle, confirming its wing had indeed been broken. Hase said it was difficult to say for sure what might have injured the eagle. She doubted the eagle had been struck by a wind turbine blade — turbine strikes typically cause much heavier breaks she said, and there are no turbines near the area of Horseshoe Bend where the eagle was found. She said eagles are more often injured by passing vehicles or by flying into electrical power lines.

The eagle was then taken to the clinic and placed in what Hase called an ICU pen — a small enclosure meant to prevent the eagle from overexerting himself during recovery. There, he was given antibiotics and food.

"He ate 3 pounds that night and started bouncing back pretty quickly, with a pretty good, solid attitude," Hase said.

 

Photo submitted

 

The eagle was later moved to a facility in Caroll called Saving Our Avian Resources — or SOAR — where Hase said the bird will eventually transition out of his ICU cage and into a flight cage once he's regained the necessary muscle and fat.

"He'll be able to be in there comfortably, mingle among other eagles, stretch out his wings and build up some of that stamina to be able to fly again," Hase said. "And it may take him a while. It could be several months before he's able to get up. Time will tell if he's going to regain that or not."

She went on to say she's optimistic the eagle will recover.

"He was down so long while that wing was broken, and then it healed on its own in the wrong spot — it healed wrong, but it broke in the right spot to heal," Hase said. "So he actually has a pretty good chance at regaining flight."

Hase said, once the eagle is able to fly 100 feet or so on his own, he'll likely be released back into the wild.

"That's all I'd hope for," Linn said last week. "I was just hoping he wasn't going to get put down or something. I was hoping he'd be strong enough to fly again, and if not, at least be able to live the rest of his life in a place where children could see him and enjoy him in a zoo or something.”

Linn encouraged the public to keep their eyes open as they venture out in nature and contact local wildlife personnel if an animal seems to be in need.

"If you go by something in the wild a few times, it doesn't hurt to just make a call to somebody," Linn said.

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