Does that happen around your place to? must be the altitude. We have accidentally and very seriously/mortally scared many raptors around these parts for decades. Naturally there have been investigations but noting could be shown that the warning pellets were from our good-intentioned charity work!
That has never happened around here that I know of. BUT I do know of a guy that happens to work in the medical field so he knows something about this stuff, and he said he tried scaring a hawk away once while the hawk was in a dive for his chickens. He said the retort from the pellets leaving the end of the barrel scared the hawk so badly it misjudged it's dive to the chick. The poor hawk had misjudged the dive so badly it broke its neck when it hit the ground at full speed.
He told me he did everything he could to save it but nothing worked... As I said he Is a medical profession so I am sure he did too.
