White-tailed deer (remains)

I hadn't thought about that Emily! Definitely no bears or panthers but I just googled Williamsport Lake TN and "Bobcat", & came up with a hit http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnolyshoote... Looks like we may have found our culprit!

Karen, are there panthers, bears or bobcats in the area? I think it is more likely that a large predator (like a cat) dragged the deer up the tree. I agree with Gordon that is was not the eagles that dragged the carcass up the tree. Just like many animals eagles are opportunistic and have been known to scavenge! This deer was an easy meal for them! Very cool find! It is always eerie when you come upon something like this!

I think the assumption that it was faced with walking under the branch or leaping over it limits the scenarios that the deer was facing. For instance, if it was being chased by a predator--or fleeing a human--bounding is a normal behavior and it may have simply misjudged height or distance, its capabilities, etc. The animal appears to be too large for an eagle to carry, which seemed the direction the conversation was going. So, I shared a personal experience as to one other possible explanation. There are other possible explanations, including that a person may have put it there. It reminded me, however, of the one that I found because of the strong similarities. It is probably impossible at this point to know why it ended up where it did; we can only conjecture....

I'm not saying it's not possible, but WHY would a deer try to jump over that tree branch instead of just walking under it? Perhaps a person put that carcass in the tree.

What a strange mystery!

That makes perfect sense Gordon. It was lodged about 5' above the ground. How sad.

This is a whitetail deer carcass, but it is almost certainly too large for an eagle to carry up into a tree. I generally figure that an eagle can only carry about 1/3 of its own weight (which is why they don't fly off with babies, an old urban myth) and a large eagle will only weight about 14 lbs. There is another alternative, depending upon how high it is off the ground.... I once found a deer carcass like this lodged in a fork of a tree and it appeared that it had misjudged a jump and landed in the crotch of a tree fork with most of its body through the crotch, but with it's hip bones lodged against the limbs. Unable to get down it must have died a pretty horrible death. We often don't think about it but accidents happen to wild animals just as they do to people. That may have been the result here.

Looks like a deer....wow! Eagles are strong, if that's what did it! There is a small herd of elk in the Smoky Mts.

Yes Arya, we thought it was probably the remains of an eagles kill as we spotted 5 in the immediate area. There are no wild elk in Tennessee so maybe it was one of last year's white tail fawns.

The markings on the feet mostly resemble a deer. Its possible, it could be a Elk yearling.

Most likely the Eagle carried the leftover carcass to that branch to feed.