Day four since last kill.

I can list on one hand the number of times that I have fed Hope when she failed to kill. That is in the three years that I have had her. The times when I did she was low enough in weight as to not be able to catch a Jack. My memory is the shortest part of me by just a little, but it seems to me to have occurred no more than twice, and they were when I was starting her.

Raptors make a living by being able to correctly discern weakness in prey and there is plenty of evidence that weakness in handlers is also easily discernible. To be able to take that hard line with a Raptor you must be able to produce enough situations that the raptor could have caught prey if it had tried hard enough. I can do that. I have the luxury to be retired, and still be vigorous enough to walk how ever long it takes to be able to do that. If I see that the hawk isn't trying its best. I can sit down long enough that the hawk gets impatient with me doing nothing. If it doesn't pick up its game, I will take it home to try again tomorrow.

I rarely call my hawks, and I rarely "tidbit" them. If they don't want to come back to me. I sit down. If they continue to ignore me, I will call them back and take them home. If you apply your intellect to see what your hawk is thinking and doing you can produce a raptor that is a superior, more efficient hunter. You can bet that same Raptor isn't going to be screwing around if it was on its own. There is no reason for it to do so when it hunts with you.

When I brought Hope home yesterday, I had to almost scrape her off my fist and onto her perch. She wanted fed. I left her in the shop last night as the temps in the morning had been 7 degrees. That's a bit too cold for her light clothing. She was raring to go this morning and weighing in at 934. This is still 50 grams more than what I consider to be her "flying weight". The definition of that term is: Maximum muscle, least amount of fat, and maximum hunger.

I drove to Jordan Valley to get some fuel and came back to a field that I sometimes hunt on Danner Rd. As I got her on my perch, I told her to not screw around as the wind was coming up.

We walked about 15 steps before a Jack busted in front of us about 20 yards. Hope slammed into the Sage, missed, got back up again and nailed him within 10 feet. The Jack was doing his best to pull out of Hopes grip, and the bush was so big that I eventually had to break my way through it to get to him. Hope had a limb in between her legs that they had broken off of the bush. I sometimes wonder how the hell she manages to do the stuff she does where she does it and still comes out with nothing broken.

Josie was trying really hard to get in on all this action, but I was afraid that Hope would let him go if she got too close. I managed to eventually catch him and break his neck. I was then able to lift both of them out of the bush and over to bare ground. This time I held the cup for her to eat out of, then give her a leg to finish on her own while I cleaned the Jack.

You can see the limb that I had to break to get them out.

I put the cup by the Jack, but she was still centered on him.

I guess I can hand feed her every once and a while.

After I cleaned the Jack, she came to me packing the remainder of the previous leg. I gave her a new one to work on and put her back into the box to do so in peace. So for her troubles she got two hind legs of Jack rabbit.

This one had the tape worm packet attached to the inside of its abdominal cavity just above the kidneys. As I have said before, all the Jacks from last year are either carrying Bot Flies or tape worms.

This flight took almost 10 minutes from the catch to back in the car.

There are circumstances sometimes beyond our control, no matter how hard one tries, sometimes the odds are against you. That is what occurred to Hope these last few days. She always tries her best and flies as hard and as far as she can see, to try to catch Jacks. She did in fact have her feet on 5 or more Jacks, but for one reason or another wasn't able to bring them to bag. Josie was one of those problems.

 Life for a Raptor is one of hard lessons. You don't kill, you don't eat. In the wild it is the beginning of the end of lots of their lives. If they miss often enough they get too weak to catch food, and depending on the species can die within a week. I can prevent it from going too far with Hope, but the lesson needs to be reinforced, lest she get lazy. She wasn't lazy this last week, she just hit a streak of smart Jacks, and bad luck. In the wild if she had not been able to change her grip from the butt to the head, she would have lost all of the rabbits that she caught. They out weigh her by more than three times. So I can change the odds of her success with my intervention, but she has to get her talons into their hide for me to help.