First time in snow

For whatever reason, mostly laziness, I have never hunted a Harris in snow. They don't have any real waterproofing on their feathers and look like an ugly chicken ready for plucking when they get wet. I won't go into the wimpiness of the unmentioned falconer regarding this earlier failing. I remember that I bought a 12 volt hair dryer to dry the first two Harris that I had. It actually saw more service in clearing the fog off my airplane windscreen than in drying soggy Harris Hawks. I think I just decided that it was more trouble than it was worth, and quit when it snowed. I did take Hope out in the snow her first year, and she would chase, but not close with the Jacks. It was cold, windy and just plain miserable and I just quit for the year. Then there is the mud afterwards.  :-/

Well things are a bit different this year. I don't have that much to do and I tend to vegetate now that I am by myself. So I decided that I would give it a try this year. We don't get all that much snow anyway, and it doesn't last very long, and I am bored!

This is the first year that I seem to have more moulting food for Hope than I actually need. I have been giving the Jacks that she has been catching to Tami. She hasn't had all that much time to hunt on her own, so the food isn't going to waste.

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering that I might be taking too many Jacks from the Sage around the house, as it was getting harder to find any thing to kill with Hope. My last trip was 7.2 miles. Today I tried a new area and only traveled 1.9 miles, and that includes whatever walking I did around the house and the place here before I went hunting. In any case today was a stroll comparatively. I am rejuvenated.

As I have mentioned before Jacks are a strange lot in the way that they think, or perhaps, I just don't have enough imagination to understand Jacks. Either way there are miles and miles of what appears to be the same thing- Sage brush flats, for hours in any direction you choose. Some, I think, a lot of it, has not much of anything in it. You can stop about anywhere in this country and take off walking and not see a Jack Rabbit at all. Then there are little pockets of rabbit populations here and there, with no obvious (to me) reason, that they should be there at all.

Three or four years ago, a good friend was out here hunting Antelope, and he told me that he had been seeing a lot of Jacks crossing the road just South of us. I went there later and looked, and I saw a few Jacks, but not too many. Since I had a spot in Arock that seemed to have four times the population, I didn't bother with the spot that my friend told me about. Well now the Arock spot is not producing as it used to, and I have been hunting the one or two spots at the ranch that have a fair population as well as here at the house. All of the spots that I have hunted are getting harder and harder to produce a Jack or two for the freezer. Seven miles is just too damn far to walk for one Jack Rabbit.

It snowed yesterday, about three inches. I had brought Hope back to her weathering area, so she could see the snow, and hopefully realize that it was normal for it to be on the ground. She had been offering to go hunting all day yesterday, so I knew that she would be at a good weight. She was 1030 grams when I picked her up today.

I decided to go down to the airport where my friend had seen the Jacks. The snow was about half as much as it was at the house, so that was good for her to start in.

Hwy 95 is a mile or so towards the Steen's from where I am standing, and this area seemed to have the most Jack rabbit tracks on the road. Jacks seem to have a compulsion to track up an area, apparently to confuse any Coyotes that might be in the area. Perhaps it is an attempt to intimidate the Coyote into thinking that the Jacks might gang up on him, or perhaps the Sage that they eat this time of the year acts as an amphetamine and they can't sit still. In any case there are always more tracks than rabbits.

One thing is for sure, they are more visible running on a white surface. Hope had a couple of long range chases, but had missed all of them so far, for which I was pleased. I didn't want her to catch anything that I couldn't get to her to protect her from any possible Coyotes in the area. I decided that there were more Jacks closer to the road, and sure enough she took off after one, way the hell and gone. This time I could hear the Jack screaming faintly. I gave it my best shot and eventually arrived sweaty and pooped, to where she was.

Since my photographer didn't come today, I killed the Jack and then took my pictures. I gave her a front leg after she ate all the tidbits in the cup, and waited for her to finish the front leg so that we could walk to the car which was quite a ways off.

 I like to arrive at the car while she is still eating, to keep her occupied while I am carrying her on the fist. She had a cup (large handful) of meat, and a front leg off a Jack, but I knew that she would still be expecting the rest of her meal, so she would stay with me.  I would give her the rest of her meal at the car when I put her in her box.

She had no sooner dropped the last chunk of bone when another Jack jumped within 15 feet of us, and she caught him in nothing flat. To say that I was amazed was an understatement.

Well now, I have already fed her my tidbits, I am out of small chunks of meat for her, so I kill the Jack, (Which she had caught with her bad foot) and take out the first rabbit, thinking that I will pull its leg off for her. Then I reconsider and reach into my vest for the baggie with a ribcage in it. She lets go of the second rabbit and grabs me by the left hand, sinking a talon in the web of my hand. I eventually shook her off my hand, ( she realized that it was me rather than a tasty Jack) I then gave her the rib cage to eat. I then twisted off the first Jack's head to feed her with, and we went to the car. 

I put her in the car, with her head, and gave the dogs some water, then made them pose for me.

I have an idea for a new call made just for raptors. It's the sound of fumble fingers trying to open a plastic ziplock bag. If I can find a way to amplify it loud enough, every trained raptor in the area will be right there for you.
  

Jan 7

 The timing has been just right. The weather is nice every other day, and I am hitting all of them with Hope's hunting. I am considering stopping my hunting for the year. I am a bit worried that I might be harvesting too many. I should write that again, because I think it might be the first time that I have ever uttered that sentence and been serious. I am talking just about this particular area, here around the house. I have really enjoyed being able to hawk here without driving 50 miles to get to a spot that we could hunt. The main reason that I have not hunted it in past years was because it doesn't hold all that many Jack Rabbits. Now, This year there are not all that many Jacks anywhere, so I might as well save my money and stay at home.

 Bruce came over from Idaho to hunt with us. Today, we walked 7.2 miles to get slips on 6 rabbits. She killed the 6th one. She pulled hair on 3 of them. Most if not all were long range stuff, that we would never have known that were there without her giving chase to Jacks that were jumping 100 yards away. In other words we never saw them, until she gave chase.

 This was a big Jack, and she somehow held him with one foot while plastered to the bush in front of her. With her having full use of only one foot, this is the tricky part. There was no way that she was going to come through the same hole that the Jack did. Either I could manage to catch him before he broke loose or she would lose him totally.

Having been through this scenario with several raptors in the past, I have come to the conclusion that haste makes waste, so I slowed my approach and came in from the front, hoping that he might try to turn away from me and thus get in range of her other foot. That wasn't happening, but I was able to grab him and put him out of his pain quickly. Once he was dead and kicking, Hope stood up and pulled him to a more comfortable place for her. All the other Hawks that I have hunted, held on for dear life as long as the prey was still moving, and were difficult to transfer over to food. Not Hope, The Jacks reflexes were still firing in his hind legs, and she relaxed and stood up, looking over her shoulder at me.

Cell phone photos courtesy of Bruce Haak

After she finished the tidbits, I gave her a hind leg with just the calf muscles on it and picked up the Jack and my Tee perch and headed back to the house. We were still 3/4 of a mile from the house and I didn't have all that much more to give her and still be able to hunt on Saturday, so I intended to either have her follow or ride the perch til I could get close enough to home that the ration that I had left for her, would last until I got there. She choose to carry the foot in her beak and follow us about 35 yards back. Its quite amusing to see her flying up to land close to us with a bone in her beak. Then doing it again and again. Finally I relented and gave her the rest of her meal, having just enough so that her last bite was at the door of the weathering area.

First Jack of the year

 It has been stormy for the last couple of days. I fed Hope on the fist Sunday as it was forecast to be nasty for the next few days. Today however dawned clear and pretty warm, at least for January.

 Hope this time was down to a manageable weight. 1024 seems to be heavy enough that she can withstand the cold, but still be maneuverable enough to make the twist and turns necessary to catch a Jack.

I wanted to try the field next to the house, as it used to hold a fair number of Jacks. However since the Bobcat has been raiding the place, there were no Jacks in the part closest to the creek and the rim rock that borders it. I am not surprised. You can chase them over and over in the same spot with a hawk, but when a Bobcat comes calling more than once, its a bit like the ground has been sterilized, and it is no longer fit to hold a Jack Rabbit. They just leave and do not come back for a long time. We did jump a Bunny that beat Hope to the rimrock, but no Jacks were to be found until we started up the hill far away from the bottom part.

After we crossed the drive way up the hill, a Jack took off and appeared to not know that there was a Hawk bearing down on him. That is until the last second when he jumped to the side and clear.  I decided to walk down to the wind sock and cross the runway into the field below the runway. As we neared the wind sock, a Jack jumped and started off on a leisurely fashion down to the runway. He apparently had his head up his butt and Hope hit him hard enough that he went cartwheeling completely head over heels and she apparently lost him somewhere in the middle of that. He shook himself off and made his way to somewhere else, in a hurry. 

We started East from the runway, and another Jack jumped further out. She crashed into the Sage and we heard a short squeal of surprise, but she lost that one as well. In the last two hunts she has made contact with 6 Jacks that she lost. While she still has a good record of catches it is obvious that I would have spent a lot less time hawking if she actually had the use of two feet rather than just the one. That's alright, she is still the best Harris that I have ever seen if you measure her speed, willingness to hunt at any weight, field manners and any other thing that is measurable in hunting hawks. 

After we left the runway I traveled a bit different path than usual and it paid off with a Jack jumping nice and close. She smacked him and when I arrived she had both feet on his head.

It's pretty hard to see, but all that is showing is one unlucky rabbit foot.

It was pretty hard to kill him, because she had his head pretty well covered up. Its really amusing to me that as soon as I broke his neck, she stood up, ready for her cup of goodies. I used to be able to give her a chunk of food and she would walk off to eat it. Now she crawls up on the fist waiting to grab what ever I have in my hand. I think I liked the part where she walked off with the food better. I can just see the bandaids that are likely to be necessary with the other scenario.