Three years ago, I had an eagle roost in a dead tree about five hundred yards from me. As I was taking pictures of him, I realized he was staring straight at the boat prior jumping into flight and gliding right at the TDB. I forgot I had laid a wigeon on the blind grass on the rain roof to finish cooling and bleeding-out. He broke-off his approach at about fifteen yards when I stood up... Seven years ago I had winged a pintail that I watched fall and die about two hundred yards out. He was on a perfect track to blow right back into my spread to pick him up with minimal retrieval effort...until an immature eagle swooped in picked him up about seventy yards from the edge of my decoy spread. We have three pairs that work that shoreline where we hunt. We place our carcasses on a stretch of deserted beach for them to feed on along with the migrating turkey vultures rather than pack our dead birds in a dumpster to eventually end-up in a landfill. Last year I found an errant wigeon decoy that had blown away when the anchor line parted just below the knot. Beyond all the herring gull and heron peck marks and the mink damage was a distinct talong pattern in its back from being grabbed by an eagle working the shoreline.
Only have had one owl encounter. That one involved a great gray owl that decided I shouldn't be retrieving a wounded black duck he was eyeing that I had knocked down. Fended him off with my gun barrel when he came in with talons out and wings flapping. The real downside on that retrieve was that it was in knee deep muck that I did not want to send the dog into. Getting out of the boat and into the button bush stand was straight forward. I grabbed the bird and tossed it back to Arland to catch. I had to get him to run the canoe in as close as he could get to crawl onto the bow and drag my legs out to work my way down the gunnels and roll-in, bringing along a nasty gray-green marl coating which never did work out of that wader fabric.
