FalconerKitty

Hunting groups should be the most vocal when protesting unethical and illegal practices anywhere in the world If hunters stay silent, they are implying a compliance. That is how the non-hunting public will perceive us. We need to monitor our own ranks and expose those who do not follow sound hunting ethics and laws.

The random slaughter of raptors is against the EU and there is a hunting season in Malta. These shootings are occurring OUTSIDE the legal season and is simply not enforced. The hunting community should be outraged that their image is tarnished in this manner. This abhorrent behavior is what gets hunting restricted and banned. I hunt, with terriers, hawks, guns, bows. Hawks are part of our ecosystem, there is a natural check and balance of prey-predator relationships.

In the US ALL migratory birds are protected, Here is a timely article written by writer Stephen Bodio that appeared in American Hunter Magazine.

I feel that this article is as timely now as it was when it first appeared in American Hunter magazine.

The Sport of Kings, by Stephen Bodio. From American Hunter Magazine March 1987, Vol. 15, No. 3

An English pointer is ranging ahead of three hunters in the prairie chicken country of New Mexico. Earlier they had watched as the big grouse dropped in the cutover field like ducks to a pond. But now the birds are scattered and invisible in the six-inch stubble. The pointer casts left, right, and skids to a stop, tail aloft, nose pointed rigidly ahead. The first hunter steps forward. But instead of continuing in for the flush, he stops and removes a leather cap from the head of a blue-gray bird perched on his left fist. The bird looks around, pulls up its feathers, shakes them down with a loud rattle, and bobs it’s head. It leaps into the air and cuts off at an angle to the dog, flying fast and low to the ground.

In a moment it turns and the hunters can that it is circling, gaining a little altitude with each sweep. They watch, check the pointer who is motionless as a stone dog, and peer into the stubble, willing the birds to remain in place.

The peregrine falcon, a bird once restricted to nobility, levels, beating and gliding in small circles perhaps a thousand feet above the dog.

And the hunter who released her runs forward, yelling. One of the others trains his binoculars on the falcon, as the third looks ahead to see the stubble come alive with forth flushing birds. As they erupt into the air with a startled gabble, the falcon turns and falls like a deadly missile, head first, wings folded, at a speed so great that is seems that she must smash herself against the ground. Instead, she levels out behind a prairie chicken and flies into it, so hard that feathers fly. The force of the strike impels them forward; for a moment they look like one huge, for-winged bird. Then the falcon tears loose and the grouse flutters down, dead in the air. The falcon climbs fifty feet straight up, turns over, and strikes again, hitting the fallen bird as it touches the earth. She rises once more, turns, and lands on her quarry.

Two of the hunters hang back as the first moves slowly in. The falcon bends over her prey, head low, a feather in her beak, instinctively protecting it against the intruder. Then training and recognition triumph, and she raises her head to follow his approach. He kneels and offers her a bit of meat. She yields gracefully, hops to the fist, and accepts the offering. After a moment he replaces the “hood”, puts the prairie chicken into a game bag hanging on his belt, and rejoins his companions.

What you have just seen is an example of modern falconry at it’s best. The so-called “Sport of Kings”, perhaps one of the oldest sports known to mankind, is alive and well in the twentieth-century America. Once restricted to the aristocrats of Europe and Asia, later kept alive by a handful of English gentlemen on the grouse moors of Scotland, falconry is now the obsession and devotion of over two thousand American from all walks of life. I know a millworker, several scientists, a veterinarian, two game wardens, a salesman, an oil geologist, and any number of school teachers to whom falconry is a way of life. They live from Idaho to Maine, Montana to Florida. Some go after snowshoe hares with goshawks an red-tailed hawks; some hunt starling and sparrows with tiny merlins an sharpshins. There are quail hunters who use Cooper’s hawks, and dedicated duck hunter with peregrine falcons. A lucky few even chase sage grouse with the great arctic gyrfalcon, worth a king’s ransom during the Crusades. All have one thin common: They are among the most dedicated of hunters.

Their dedication has been especially evident in the long struggle to restore the depleted peregrine falcon. Falconer have donated time, money, their own prized birds and expertise to this program – in fact, without their aid and dedication there might well be no peregrine falcons east of the Rocky Mountains. Now the return of the peregrine is one of the great “un-endangered species success stories of the late twentieth century. All is not rosy yet; the pesticides that impair the peregrine breeding persist south of the border, and certain populations must sill be monitored or supplemented with captive-bred young. Still it’s safe to say that the peregrine is in better shape naw tha in another time in the past twenty-five years, largely because of falconers’ efforts.

Although falconers have been active in American conservation and hunting circles for years – pioneer wildlife biologists Frank and John Craighead were falconers, and Aldo Leopold wrote enthusiastically of the sport – most hunters know little about it. An unnatural alliance of anti-falconry protectionists and linger anti-hawk sentiments in some quarters of the hunting community have often forced falconers to keep a low profile. Recently this has been changing in falconers’ efforts to conserve the bird have gotten more press, and as more sportsmen understand the role of predators as agents of balance than destroyers of game.

Modern American falconers use bid from three families or raptors or birds of prey: falcons, accipiters and buteos. All are considered “hawks” – falcons are simply hawks of the falcon family. They are long winged and brown eyes, open-country flyers that kill birds on the wing. I once wrote an article for the falconers magazine making tongue-in-cheek comparisons between various guns and their corresponding birds. In this article the peregrine falcon, the preferred bird of Europe’s gentry since the Middle Ages, became a fine English double – a Purdey or Holland & Holland. (What realm this places the gyrfalcon in, I can’t even guess!) All true falcons become fine doubles, beautiful and select, fo ruse on upland game birds and waterfowl. They tiny merlin or pigeon hawk, weighing in the neighborhood of eight ounces, is simply a twenty-eight gauge, and the common kestrel, even smaller and sued mainly by beginners, a .410.

The accipiter group contains the goshawks, the Cooper’s hawk and the sharp-shin. Although hunters once considered them “bad” hawks because of their predation on game, modern biologists believe that in most cases they have little effect on healthy populations. Only when habitat is disturbed or in the case of the goshawk, when the collapse of northern snowshoe hare sends and “eruption” starving first-year birds south, do they occasionally do some damage. These hawks are short-winged, able to fly under a canopy of trees, capable of turning on a dime. While the sharpshin is almost too small to be useful, the Cooper’s hawk is a deadly quail hawk, and the goshawk sort of a feathered Drilling, able to take almost anything from woodcock to hares.

The final large group contains the buteos or soaring hawks like the common red-tailed hawk, plus the eagles and the unique Harris’ hawk of the southwestern deserts. The red-tail is the twelve-gauge pump gun of falconry, common, hardy and plentiful. I’ve probably taken more head of game with a red-tail than any other species. Although it a little slow for pheasants, it is a world-class performer for rabbits and hares. Eagles are rarely used anymore, although the Germans still prefer them for hunting their enormous hares. In the hands of real masters they can take coyotes. If they any analogous gun, it must be the double rifle – heavy, hard kicking, rare and indispensable for a few pursuits.

The Harris, an odd bird in looks and habits, resembles buteos but has some of the speed of the accipiters. It can also be flown in groups, a unique characteristic that make more resemble a hound than any gun!

Modern falconry, especially American falconry, differs from the lad four thousand years of practice in that it has welcomed innovation. Although a German falconer bred the first hawks in captivity, a pair of peregrines, it was Americans who proved that this was not a fluke and have the breeding of birds of prey into a science. Now breeders can supply many of their own birds for sport, plus donate peregrines to the recovery program. What is more, some breeders are experimenting with hybrids falcons “breeds,” so it could even be said that falcons are becoming domesticated like man’s other hunting companion, the dog. American falconers have also invented sophisticated electronic tracking devices, no longer than cigarette filters, which their birds can wear on their legs and tails. These make the recovery of lost birds something better than chancy for the first time in history.

Although these innovations might point to a golden age of falconry, not everything is rosy. Like all field sports, falconry is often under attack from ill-informed or sentimental anti-hunters. I also suffers from an “image problem” with other hunters, who condemn predators because of long-held prejudices or who fear falconers will take “all the game”. The first prejudice can be changed by education. For those that hold the second, consider a few realities.

First, falconers are the most regulated hunters in the country. A prospective falconer first must find a sponsor from within the ranks of licensed falconers. Then he has to go through a two year apprentice stage, pass a rigorous written, and trap and train one of the common birds of prey. After this period, the falconer must undergo another test to graduate to a “general” license, at which point he is allowed to take young birds and fly any un-endangered species. Finally, after five years of general experience, he may elect to take still another test and to on to the “master” status, with its privilege of flying rarer species under certain conditions. In addition to these stringent rules, the falconer’s hawk house or “mews” must conform to exact Federal specifications and is open to on-the-spot inspection at any time. All this may seem fair, but is Federal law and is supported by falconers.

Second, falconry is the hardest way of taking any game. The daily hours devoted to bird care and inevitable difficulties of using a “weapon” with of mind of it’s own result in falconer taking much smaller bags than shooters do, even though some states allow them longer seasons. I have taken many ruffed grouse with a shotgun, but, although wild goshawks are certainly capable of catching them. I have never caught one with a hawk. A hawk hunting all day might finally surprise a grouse, but one disadvantaged by having to ride a man’s hand rarely has a chance. The sport of falconry resides in the challenge of overcoming its inherent difficulties.

In these days of threats to hunting, falconers and gun hunters must make common cause. Falconers often fear that uninformed shooters may kill a bird that has cost them a lot of effort and at least a year’s training time. Shooters unfamiliar with the sport may resent falconers’ imagined air of arrogance --- often the fear mentioned above – or blame them for taking too much game. Education can, and must, end these fears. In England fields-sports groups have decided that an attack on even the smallest segment of the sporting community is an attack on all, so that any attack on falconry or coursing or fox hunting will bring a response from more than just the tiny minorities that follow these endangered sports.

These days the sportsman can be encouraged by the emergence of those who hunt with falcon and with gun. Many members of the North American Falconers’ Association (NAFA), including myself and the president of the organization, have been NRA members for years. The editor of the NAFA Journal hunts elk and mule deer with a .338 and a .270, and birds with a Winchester Model 12. Prominent falconer Frank Bond managed the campaign for New Mexico’s pro-gun, pro-hunting Senator Pete Domenici. This kind of mutual interest and knowledge can only be good for both shooters and falconers.

If you don’t know a falconer, try to seek one out. Watching him work with his birds may give you a new insight on how things work “out there,” one that and only help your hunting. It will certainly thrill you. And remember, speak up the next time anybody knocks any kind of honest hunting, whether or not you practice it. As Benjamin Franklin sad at the down for the American Revolution, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall hand separately.”

Look at the random slaughter that occurred at Hawk Mountain.

Malta is a major migratory point for birds between Africa and Europe. This is Europe's Hawk Mountain (www.hawkmountain.org) prior to protections for birds and raptors.

This slaughter is not hunting, it is a foolish and cruel shooting of birds with no purpose. It gives us hunters a really bad image worldwide. I know of a couple of raptor centers which are trying to educate and stop this unethical practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0SgNMBvVoQ&feature=player_embedded#

View the video and sign the petition.

www.birdlifemalta.org

See these sites for the news.

www.grousepartners.org

www.audubon.org

www.abcbirds.org

http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/birds/sagegrouse/

Looks like ESA listing will be occurring within the next year.

My friend showed us a product called "Orange 88" It is an orange oil and works well, smells nice too.

We will be back from the Louisiana Renaissance Festival after December 15th. I am scheduling winter falconry classes and workshops in beautiful North Florida. www.birdsofprey.net. PDF brochure and registration forms are on the website.

This is the BEST TIME of the year to see falconry in action. Cool pleasant weather makes daily outings very memorable.

She may be interested in bowhunting or even a crossbow rather than a rifle. If you get her a .22 to start plinking with, she will have a good intro, without dealing with the noise and kick of a high powered rifle. When you get her a firearm, be careful of shoulder fit. We women (and I thought I would NEVER have this problem, due to my fitness) get shoulder issues. I don't understand why, I have to make sure I exercise my shoulders with light weights and constantly move them around to stop the stiffness. Bows are probably not in my hunting anymore (too painful) and a crossbow will be my choice in the future.

Also, for COOL clothes for outdoors women: Look at this site: www.vintagers.org. Edwardian clothes that look good and fit well are available through their links page. Also, www.cattlekate.com and www.womenofthewildwest.com Great, historic attire for women that looks good too. Not modern, but really, really neat.

Here is something I got from another forum:

Gotta love Ted Nugent. He is full of classy comebacks. Read on...

Ted Nugent, rock star and avid bow hunter from Michigan , was being interviewed by a French journalist, an animal rights activist.

The discussion came around to deer hunting.

The journalist asked, 'What do you think is the last thought in the head of a deer before you shoot him? Is it, 'Are you my friend?' or is it 'Are you the one who killed my brother?'

Nugent replied, 'Deer aren't capable of that kind of thinking. All they care about is, what am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away. They are very much like the French.'

The interview ended.

Go Ted!!!

Rabbits if they are there are almost exclusively nocturnal. The feral cats/dogs and coyotes also take an excessive toll too.

I was just in a field last yesterday, good pasture, mixed hardwoods in Alachula County, no rabbit sign at all.

I would like to talk to others about managing for bobwhite quail on smaller tracts. We have 12 acres and would like to encourage quail and cottontails on our property. North Florida region.

Looking to find bunny spots for my falconry. I live in North Florida. Where I-10 and I-75 meet. Let me know.

I hope you have a good mechanic. Could be several things. My cousin has a great website: www.motorwatch.com. Very informative.

Good luck and hope it's not too expensive.

Take care of your vehicle, so it can take care of you.

Other than dressing right for the weather, make sure that she is very comfortable with her firearm. That she can handle it without looking down at the firearm and aim at her target and concentrate on the shot. She should make handling her firearm second nature. And of course practice her marksmanship.

Cats are non-native predators on this continent. To see the research showing the destruction they are causing our small game and songbirds. Check out the 'Cats Indoors' grass-roots program by the American Bird Conservancy. www.abcbirds.org

Florida FWC, National Wildlife Federation, Audubon, among many other respected conservation organizations support the Cats Indoors program.

Have your thoughts and responses already in mind. Sort of keep a mental outline. Then you can have an intelligent debate with them, without it becoming a shouting match or public scene. They may act like fools, but your calm responses will help. I assume that they can be escorted to the door by security if they become disruptive.

FAKE!!! Good photoshop work though.

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I like to talk to other hunters, especially small game hunters. I am a lifelong falconers, since 1974. I do bird of prey and falconry educational programs, workshops, instruction and am a Florida Hunter Safety Instructor.

I also handle pest bird issues, with any species of bird.