Virginia hunter gets single day in prison for killing 20 juvenile bald eagles and hawks in poisoning scheme: authorities

A Virginia hunter got a slap on the wrist for poisoning over 20 young hawks and bald eagles during migration season to stop them from preying on ducks, which he wanted to kill for sport, according to authorities.William Custis Smith was sentenced to one day in prison and received a $9,800 fine for killing 20 “juvenile” red-shouldered hawks and bald eagles in 2023, which he claimed were “encroaching” on his duck hunting impoundment, according to court documents.“He’s a big duck hunter, and he was in the process of trying to really get it going [and attracting ducks],” Virginia Conservation Police Master Officer Brian Bratton said of Smith in a statement.“He was killing the hawks and eagles because they were killing all the ducks he was attracting to his impoundment.It was the time of year when the hawks are migrating through,” Bratton said, adding, “He was very aware it was illegal.”Smith baited the migrating raptors with rotting fish heads he had poisoned with the insecticide carbofuran and set up pole traps — which are designed to ensnare birds’ legs, according to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources.Investigators found a “fresh carcass of a juvenile bald eagle” on the bird killer’s Delmarva peninsula property and seized it as evidence shortly after opening their investigation, which was spawned from an anonymous tip, according to court documents.Agents installed a “plot watcher camera” near the illegal pole trap and documented several birds being killed, including one that struggled for over seven hours before Smith beat it to death with a pole, court documents stated.A necropsy report on the bald eagle revealed the presence of carbofuran, an insecticide that was banned in 2008 because of its toxicity to humans, according to the documents.“This particular poison acts so quickly that nine times out of 10, when an eagle, hawk or whatever eats something, it acts so quickly that they die with whatever they’re eating st...