A army veteran of two tours in Afghanistan has again picked up a weapon on behalf of freedom.
On Thursday Jason Galvin took shots from a .22 caliber rifle to free an eagle that had become tangled in a rope, hanging upside down from a tree 75 feet off the ground. Now this is an amazing 4th of July story.
“It was very windy and I was just waiting for the right shot,” said Galvin who spent 90 minutes firing roughly 150 shots while mowing down three branches, and finally the rope, holding up the eagle.
“They just couldn’t get up there high enough and they just unfortunately deemed this was going to be a loss.”
“Right then I thought, ‘Man, that just doesn’t look good.
As he assessed the situation Galvin joked that he might have to shoot the eagle down. His wife responded in a more serious tone. “Yup, that’s what you’re going to do.”
Before pulling the trigger, Jason Galvin cleared his idea with Phil Mohs, a conservation officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
“He told me he was a veteran in the service and he wouldn’t do it if he couldn’t do it safely,” said Mohs, who gave Galvin the go-ahead to start shooting, already having concluded the eagle would die in the tree if left alone.
Mohs watched Galvin’s progress through a pair of binoculars. “I was like, wow, he’s an excellent shot.”
Each time he fired, Galvin said he could see through the rifle scope the eagle staring back at him. “It was slow precise shots. When it was perfect, I’d take the shot and then I’d wait, take the other shot.” .
Galvin said the eagle’s rescue was an emotional experience, telling the station that there were ‘a lot of tears’.
‘When it finally came down, it was breathtaking. It was a beautiful moment.’
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