Golden Eagles often run afoul of man.

According to data collected by the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW), during the last four years over 25 golden eagles have died due to shooting, colliding with motor vehicles, electrocution, striking power lines, and unknown causes.

Fryrear Canyon itself, which eventually leads to Dry Canyon, is jinxed when it comes to golden eagle nesting success. Five years ago, two nestlings were shot to death in a cliff nest near Fryrear Butte.

Three years ago the tree nest down-canyon also failed. When OSP game officers checked the bodies of the adult female and two nestlings they found no evidence of shooting. Later lab results showed the eagles died from poison, apparently used to kill ground squirrels and gophers.

In spring of 1954 I received a call from OSP game officer Avon Mayfield of Bend about the shooting death of a golden eagle nestling near the old Santiam Military Road, close by the present Fryrear Transfer Station.

A person can stand on the cliff adjacent to the huge stick nest in the top of a yellow pine and look right at the nestling. That day some low-life looked over the sights of a .22 rifle and killed it. I recovered the body for OSP, and if my memory serves me correctly officer Mayfield arrested the person who killed the eagle.

Golden eagles will never have it easy. If they're not being shot, accidentally poisoned, or having nests destroyed by vandals, they're electrocuted by unsafe power poles. I once picked up eight dead eagles under a transformer south of Burns -- three bald and five golden.

Five years ago I found three dead bald eagles under a transformer near Hampton Buttes and one golden eagle drowned in a livestock-watering tank.

Yes, the power companies changed their pole designs immediately -- they're always good about that -- and the tank was modified, but that doesn't bring back eagles.

It isn't anyone's "fault" that eagles are electrocuted. It's the way eagles hunt that gets them into trouble. Contrary to popular opinion, eagles rarely soar about searching for prey. A soaring eagle is usually going from one place to another.

A hunting golden eagle generally perches on a high rim, tree -- or deadly power pole -- watching for the telltale movement of a jackrabbit. At a half mile they can spot one moving, and within moments crash down upon the hapless animal, powerful talons either piercing vital organs or crushing the prey.

Jackrabbits are hard to come by these days, and many empty golden eagle nests are silent witness to the effects of the rabbits' disappearance.

When bobcat fur was king of the fur market in the '70s trappers were out in force. The promise of big bucks attracted all kinds of people, some not very professional in the way they worked their traps. Consequently, eagles were caught and because of the sloppy trapper's ways often the eagle was either dead or horribly maimed when it was (finally) found in the trap.

I had a trapper call me and apologize for catching the eagle he had in his garage. He just couldn't kill and bury it like other trappers were doing and only wanted to see it saved. I went to his house and found one of the most magnificent female adult golden eagle I have ever seen -- before or since.

The eagle's mutilated foot was beyond repair so I took her to a veterinarian who amputated it and placed a breakaway cast and bandage on the stump. That same day I banded the eagle and turned her loose. Eight years later I got word from the banding lab that the one-legged eagle had been found by a California Fish and Game Officer -- shot near the Oregon border.

Now the specter of possible chemical contamination has reappeared in the eagles' domain. Last year I banded a baby golden eagle in a nest near Pine Mountain that had no upper beak, just a stub. That scares the daylights out of me... In almost 40 years of banding golden eagles I have never seen a deformed nestling.

The "whys" of that discovery have so many frightening ramifications that I shudder to think of them.