Hope's foot

Its been six days and her foot is still swollen. She does not like to stand on it. I have examined it twice, Initially with Connie, then again with Tami, and I can see no obvious injury other than a scrape on the inside of the ankle. I am at a bit of a loss as to what to do other than to wait it out.

Since publishing this, I have had many suggestions as to what I could do. I appreciate all of them, however there is not a lot I can do in this case.

There is no open wound. I have examined it, I asked Tami to come over and we scrubbed the foot with my toothbrush (personal one) and soap. She could find nothing, and even squeezed, rubbed the abrasion and nothing shows up, either by visual of tactile examination.

On the first day, I applied an antibiotic salve and drove it in with DMSO. She still smells like garlic. We did that twice. Since then I have been using Prep H in the hope that it would reduce the swelling.

I could take her to the Vet. Last trip with Jessie cost $120.00 for medication for frounce. (The vet, a good one with Raptors, insisted that she had Aspergillosis. I insisted that she had an internal version of Frounce, so yes, I did know more about raptor problems than he did. Still a good vet!)  However there is nothing to treat other than the swelling. No open wounds, no obvious broken bones. A two hour drive with her swaying back and forth in a box, most likely needing to use that foot to steady herself, is not something that I really want to do, not to mention the cost. I suspect that it is a stone bruise, in which case only time will help. Her swelling is not so bad that it is hazardous to the foot tissue and does not seem to be an issue. My biggest handicap in treating her is that I have no one to hold her while I work on the foot. My biggest worry is for the healthy foot that she is having to stand on all the time. I have since brought her in the house where I have a perch that is better for her other foot.

It would appear that our season has ended a bit early. I don't see much chance of hunting her again before it gets too cold to do so. Perhaps I can get some hunting in Feb or March.

Sometime one should just keep his mouth shut!

"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."

This is a copy and paste of what I wrote two days ago. Today I took Hope out again and half way through the hunt I noticed that she had a swollen right foot. She had been trying to catch one of the Jacks that we had already jumped with no success. Still slamming into the brush and the ground equally. I'm not sure if she did it the other day or if it happened today. In any case I quit hunting and began the mile long walk back to the car. She still tried for three of the Jacks that happened to cross our path. I will stop hunting until she gets the swelling down and the foot is normal.
T

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.

Recap of the last four days.

Tuesday I made a trip to Burns to help my friend Pat put a roof on the mews that we got from Sandy and Scott. We had finished one side of the mews but had to stop since we ran out of panels to do the other side. Of course in putting it back together it would not necessarily look at all like the original, as Pat's needs would be different. She had done the extra work and now needed to put a roof on what she had done.

I brought Hope with me since she now had a place to stay, and intended to meet Connie at the last place we had hunted on my earlier trip. I was anxious to hunt somewhere else, and give my spots some rest. Hope caught a Jack that made the mistake of trying to run in the open.

I returned home Wed. afternoon feeling pretty good. I had helped Pat, did some "honey Do's" for Connie, caught a Jack. Pretty hard to top.

Thursday I went to Arock to hunt. Here are some pictures of the area that I hunt.

We hunted for about 3.5 hours there. She caught three Jacks, and lost two of them on her own, and the last was assisted by my over eager Britt- Josie.  Her weight was 994 grams.

After resting for a bit, I went back to trying to figure out what was wrong with my hot tub. I finally found that the intake at the filter was totally blocked with calcium. Once I poked it out with an ice pick, the hot tub began working. The best news ever, I really need that tub in the cold weather. Especially after hunting for three hours in the lava rocks.

Today her weight was 943. It was 7 degrees this morning, and she spent the night outside in her weathering area. The hot tub was at 103 degrees. Yippee!

I waited until time to get the mail and took her,  without the dogs, (Josie was a bit gimpy today) along with me since I intended to hunt at the ranch today.

She grabbed a Jack on her first flight, but when I got there the Jack had made its escape. This field is all Grease Wood and really nasty. I have no idea how she keeps from being injured in this crap, just happy that it is so. We had several slips on Jacks, but it just never worked out all that well. I saw her make a "dive" from about 20 feet into the top of one, and bounced off. They are that tight.

Crooked Creek runs through this field. and of course lives up to its name, switching back on itself over and over again. This time of the year there are bunches of Ducks that rest on it throughout its length. Hope has never really had a chance to catch any feathered quarry, and I was interested in seeing what she would think of flushing Ducks. I actually got within "Harris Hawk range" of a mixed bunch of Ducks. They flushed, hope took off, did a wing over from about 15 feet and SPLASHED into the water with abandon. I ran over picturing her with a Mallard busily dragging her to a watery grave.  Instead I found a confused hawk standing in about 6 inches of water in the middle of the creek. I would like to believe otherwise, but I am sure that she saw her reflection in the water and thought it was a duck.

She soon dried and we went back to the pursuit of the willy Jackrabbit. She pulled hair on at least two other Jacks, and got so desperate that she began poking into dark places and trash that had round objects that might be Rabbits.

Again she went home hungry. That is one of the good things about her hunting with extra weight. I do not feed her if she doesn't kill. When she kills again, I will be able to feed her all she can stuff down her crop. Since she was so heavy I can do this without having to worry about her getting too low in condition. The leaner she is the faster she becomes.  Tonight I put her in the shop. She should be a bit more comfortable.

Back to "normal"

I finally caught one of the Chicken killers last night. Of course it was the half grown Raccoon rather than the adult, but she will come back sooner or later. Its a matter of time.

Winds were predicted  yesterday due to a low front moving through the area, so Connie and I got out a lot earlier than normal hoping to catch a Jack before it had a chance to develop its full force. Harris Hawks have a low wing loading and as such do not do well in wind. Hope had actually lost an ounce of weight all the way down to 974 grams.

It was already pretty windy here at the house and beginning to sprinkle a bit, so we headed out to Arock. Its a bit lower and protected by the surrounding hills, so I felt that we would have a chance to hunt in semi calm conditions for a while.

Hope was really hungry and was very impatient, flying forward to be closer to the dogs. She was also taking flights so far off, that I had difficulty seeing what she was doing and at the same time hoping that she wouldn't catch anything that far away, knowing that I would need resuscitation when I got to her, if I actually did get there.

No worries on that score, as I have said Jacks can make and carry out a good escape plan if they have even half a chance. We had covered about a mile or a bit more with close calls, and the wind was beginning to pick up to the point that I had to turn her into the wind with the perch so that she could at least stay on the perch. The Jacks were sticking pretty tight for the dogs, but would flush when we paused, thinking that they had been seen. Most of the time they were still able to evade Hope. Lucky for us this one did not.

This Jack had about a 50 yard head start on her. She made a shot at him, but he turned and she hit the ground. She got up again and gave chase, climbing to see him, then doing a wing over into the ground and the Jack. I heard a muffled grunt, but nothing else. I noticed that Josie had run to the spot that she disappeared, and then came back out. When I got about half way there, Josie joined me, to my surprise. I have been a bit worried about Josie's desire to grab the Jack. She is a Rat killer of commendable skills and accomplishment. I have been worried that she might just mistake Hope's toes for the Jack, but I am beginning to believe that I worried for nothing. I noticed when Hope was eating her tidbits, Josie walked a bit close to her, and Hope flapped her wing at Josie, who turned away at that signal. Apparently they have reached some sort of an understanding.

You can see that Hope has it by the face, and it is stretched out, pushing with its hind legs trying to get away. My first urge is to grab it, and get the legs off of Hope. I had to force myself to stop long enough to take a fuzzy picture.

Trying to break its neck. Thankfully Hope seems to know what I am doing and doesn't object or grab me while this is going on.

She has her cup of tidbits, and is waiting for her leg of reward.

We were a long way from the car and the wind was beginning to whip. I decided to see if I could get her to follow on her own, since the wind makes it tough to carry an eating hawk on the fist. I picked up all my stuff and walked off leaving her eating on a front leg.

We had walked about 50 yards, when she began following along.

I have to commend her, its tough to fly with a rabbits foot blocking your vision.

At this point I decided to carry her, so gave her another front leg.

Since I am building a stock pile for the off season, I began preparing the Jack for the freezer, when I notice a bump on the side of the Jacks leg.

This is the final stage of the Dog Tape Worm of which Jacks are an unwilling carrier. They eat the tape worm after it has been passed from the Coyote, it bores out of the stomach and forms a pocket in the muscle. It is harmless to a Raptor, but I cut and clean all the eggs out.

I am quite sure that it affected his ability to evade Hope, but that's OK, and I am sure part of the plan. I can't imagine having that kind of growth on your leg, and in your joints.

Chubby strikes again!

Connie came down yesterday to spend a few days, and go to town with me. Of course we didn't get back until very late.

Today is Hope's normal flying day. I tried to feed her a bit less on her last "instant" kill in the hope that she would lose some of that weight. In the 54 years that I have been handling raptors, I have never had one that didn't seem to care how much she weighed. Mostly what you notice is that their maneuverability and stamina is affected. Its a bit like a fat boy trying to run, they just can't seem to get all the parts going in the same direction. I have always said that its attitude rather than desperation that counts the most. Hope still continues to amaze me. At 1000 grams she was hanging on the wire and calling for me this morning.

I refused to go hunting on Tuesday when she weighed that much. Today Connie was with me, and we both like walking and hunting with her, so I decided that even if she couldn't catch anything the exercise would do all of us some good.

I drove out to the spot where she last killed, since I hadn't given this area any pressure for at least two weeks, and I was sure that there was still a bunch of Rabbits hiding there thinking that they were out of my normal hunting path. ( Jacks especially will alter their habits to avoid being chased by the Hawk, once they see a pattern in your hunting.) You have to alter your routes or soon you will see nothing, where there was once lots of Rabbits. The normal routine is that at first they will flush 100 yards ahead of you. Then after being chased by the Hawk every time they move, they will begin to change their resting places, the next is to start hiding. That is when they are the most vulnerable, as they don't have time to make a plan, that is if you can find them. If you give them time to think, they will beat you most of the time.

There is a storm coming in today with winds predicted in the high 30's beginning at 12 PM, so we got every thing done and in the field by 11:30. We walked over a little rise just about 30 yards from the site of her last kill. There was a little "swale" in the landscape, and I told Connie that there had to be a Rabbit in there. We kept standing there watching and finally a Jack lost his nerve and made a break for it. Hope overtook him in about 80 yards and he decided to take cover in a Sage Bush. She pulled up in a vertical climb of about 20 feet looking over her shoulder all the time. She twisted into a dive and slammed into the Jack. I did my best stumbling, bumbling, dash to help. When I arrived I could see Josie with her head in the bush, chomping on a Jack's butt.

This is also a new development that has been evolving for the last week or so. She has begun to watch Hope, and run to where she puts in, trying to find the Jack. So slowly, Josie has been watching and trying to help. I have been a bit hesitant about her help as I am afraid that she might jerk or try to shake the rabbit, when poor Hope is wrapped around a Sage bush.

One of the ways that Jacks can escape when caught by a hawk is to pull them through the Sage bushes and scrape them off. That is the main reason that Hope either makes the initial grab of their heads or changes her grip as soon as she is able. She used to lose about half of the Jacks that she caught through that same technique by the Jacks.

Notice that she has the left leg on the Jack's neck and the right one on the Jacks leg.

I have already removed two or three limbs in her face and neck, then gave her the cup.

She is lying on her side eating tidbits. I think she is beginning to understand this game.?

Not too sure who did all that, but this is a BIG Jack.

Well so much for the overweight hawk not being able to maneuver. I guess I will quit worrying about her weight for a bit, and just go hunting. The only bad part is I'm going to have to go  back to taking walks since I can't seem to get much exercise hunting. We should all be so lucky!  By 12:00 PM we were about halfway back home.

Its been a busy few days!

It has been a busy week, and I have gotten so far behind that I may have a bit of trouble sorting it all out. The sunsets have been few and far between, but when they do pop, its pretty spectacular. The following pictures were the progression and deepening of one of those nights.

The last of course is the Moon rise.

I drove up to Connie's house in Burns, Friday afternoon, so that I could help Pat Brewster put her new Hawk house together on Saturday morning. I arrived as Pat got off work and we all loaded up to go Hawking. This is the first time that I have taken Hope with me, since she would actually have a place to stay after we got the hawk mews up.

We tried a spot that had some Rabbits, but the Sage was a lot taller than she was used to and she didn't connect. There were not as many rabbits as I would have liked, and we soon had covered the field pretty good. We went to a new spot where one of Pats friends lived, to give it a try. We covered the Sage portion of the field, with a few chases, but no luck. We soon ran into a field that was nothing but "Rabbit brush" (actual name) It was pretty open, so I didn't think that we would find anything in it. The dogs were running all over the place and actually jumped a couple of Jacks that were pretty far out. Its been my experience that if a Jack has the chance to assess the situation, it will most likely outsmart Hope. Two of them did just that. The third was a bit too close when it flushed and was not so lucky.

If you look close you can see where she first struck him along the side. She sliced the skin open there and then changed to the head. Game over! 

The next morning Pat and I began work on the Mews and thanks to Sandy and Scott Morrison it went together easily, with us finishing around 2 PM. Hope got to spend her first night in it.

Sunday rolled around and I invited Suzanne ( a falconer living in Burns) to go hunting with us. We tried another area, but it unfortunately was pretty steep in places, and a Harris doesn't do all that well with steep climbs, which will always happen if once again the Jack has a chance to think. It was pretty windy which also stacked the odds against her. We got a few slips, but connected with nothing. It began to rain, so we went in search of flat spots that were not wet. (Harris Hawks have no waterproofing to their feathers.) 

We found a spot that looked good, and it happened to belong to Pats Boss, So we went to ask permission which was given. 

The wind was still blowing pretty good, and Hope was trying different things to compensate for it. We traveled one field that was a bit open, with her getting a couple of good slips, then started on the way back. We eventually jumped one pretty close and Hope slammed into the ground. I always listen for the scream to decide whether or not she was successful. It had run right in front of Connie and she yelled that hope had caught it. It didn't have much chance to scream, as it is hard to scream with your jaws clamped shut by two Hawk feet. Humming doesn't carry all that far.

When I gutted the Jack it was obvious that it had some sort of urinary problem, but appeared OK otherwise. No pictures, too busy again.

The dogs really like Connie, and Brick sees her as a dream come true. Josie horned in on the petting this time however.

I came home on Monday to find that I was now the owner of only one Chicken. The rest were scattered around in parts, here and there. I set up trail cams, and discovered the culprits was a Mother and half grown baby Raccoon. Just lovely! I set traps last night, but they went somewhere else to dine.

I checked Hope yesterday, (her normal day to hunt) and found that she weighed 1000 grams. I declined the exercise for one more day.

Today was pretty windy as well, but she weighed 974, worth the effort and fuel. I waited until the mail came so that I could make one trip. The wind had calmed a bit when I got to my field. I decided to hunt a different part of the property that I had not hunted for some time. I let the dogs out, and climbed the fence. I then walked to a small lava "lump", just because they are different enough from the rest of the terrain that Jacks seem to like them. The dogs were on the other end, not far away. As I got about halfway across it, a Jack jumped out of his form running straight for the barb wire fence. The dogs had cut off any other line of retreat. Jacks and all other game are well aware that the fences can either slow or injure the predator, so they use them when they can. Hope however has been around fences before and she is smart enough to not fall for that ruse. She was closing on the Jack, but flared up over the fence. The Jack decided to run back under the fence again, but she went up, over and back around to slam into him right at the edge of the fence. I was only a few feet away, and reached through the fence to grab his rear legs. She had him by the head, so I grabbed a leg to sort them out a bit. I was carrying two cameras, but the situation did not allow time to use either of them. Both the dogs and I were a bit disappointed that it was over so quickly. I even considered trying for two Jacks, but common sense soon prevailed and we went home like sensible people should. I don't have the prey populations to be making doubles.

On the way home I found a steel wheel barrow that had blown out of someones truck, lying along the hwy.  It was a little cramped, but it fit in the car. You would think that the driver should have noticed. Oh well!

I just got an email from a friend whose Falcon and dog injured themselves chasing Grouse. The falcon apparently will not fly again. With falcons, fences and Eagles are a real problem. Some falconers avoid using areas with fences for fear of the falcon hitting it. I have always done just the opposite in the hopes that once the raptor knows what fences look like they can avoid them. Perhaps I have only been lucky so far, but its a butt puckering time when the chase goes near one.