Oct 13th - Hope

Tuesday would have been the day that I would have hunted again after her last success. However we had an appointment in town for a recall for the Subaru, so that day was shot. Wed I picked her up to go hunting and was surprised to find that in spite of not eating for two days she was still at 945 grams. I didn't think I had fed her that much, but apparently I didn't think at all. Oh well it's all good, and she has come through at that weight time and time again.

I went back to the field that I have been hunting in most of the time. It was a most interesting day! Hope performed at her usual level of competence minus the fact that she could not catch anything. She got so frustrated that she actually began hunting on foot after  missing rabbit after rabbit. In total she had 20 slips at Jacks with two of them being Bunnies. The level of pursuit at the Bunnies was really amazing, yet she came up with empty talons again and again. We had slips in heavy cover, and after I exhausted that area I went up the hill in the open and she had slips there that were nail biters, and oh so close, but failure after failure to get a talon on any of them. She had slips that she got up from a miss to strike again, miss and try again. She took slips that were in the two hundred yard range. She tried every thing she had learned and still wasn't able to make it happen.  After covering the field twice, an area of over a mile, I called it quits. She had gotten perhaps three tidbits the whole hunt.

This morning I went out to put Jessie on her day perch, and for the first time Hope was on the ground looking around the partition at me wondering when we were going hunting. A good sign. She rarely ever makes any sign that she wants any thing. She doesn't call, She doesn't bate. Its almost eerie that she doesn't act like any other Harris that I have had. Yet I have only to offer my fist and she is there.

This morning she weighed 925 grams. If you remember that is the weight that I consider to be her optimum flying weight. My only problem is that it is drizzling rain. The weather radar shows rain all the way to the coast, so I know that it is the best that is going to be right then. Hope, as with all Harris Hawks, is about as water proof as a pre-soaked drowned Rat, so I needed to choose well. The weather is also predicted to become much worse over the next 4 days, so its now or never.

I decided to hit the same field as yesterday as it was currently not raining here. 15 miles away it was raining, so I hoped that we could get it done before the rain came our way. Yeah, I know, but after all this is desert not the Willamette Valley. This is a big thing for us.

As always I try to keep the Rabbits off their game by attacking from different directions, so this morning I started in an area that I have never hit first. Karen dropped me off and drove to a vantage point that she would probably be able to see most of our efforts.

We had not walked more than 30 yards, when we jumped a Jack that ran down the hill into an area of very dense Grease Wood. She flashed up and over a big bush and slammed down behind it. The sounds of a Jack in distress followed. I hustled as fast as I could down there and around the big bushes into a little drainage that the Jack had obviously used many times before. The sounds were coming from inside a very large Grease Wood Bush. I carefully peered over the bush and could see a Jack straining for all he was worth trying to pull Hope off his hind leg. She wasn't about to give up, so I jammed my hand into the bush and grabbed the rabbit by the head, and killed him.

She had him by one hind leg and foot only. I was surprised that she had not lost him. I would say that normally she should have lost him, as she had quite a few times before. The Jack could not go further as she had a rear talon around a limb lying on the ground, that had stopped his escape. I think normally what scrapes them off is being pulled through a bush. I am often quite amazed that she doesn't hurt herself . These bushes are lethal, according to my bloody arms.  I broke enough limbs off that I could pull them on through and into the open.

Apparently she had either hit him as he entered the bush, or she had seen where he went in, and dove in after him, surprising him long enough to grab him by the butt. Half of his tail was missing, but when I saw her she had him by the back foot.

I pulled a front leg off after much effort, ( he was an old Rabbit and tough ) and gave it to her. She stepped off to eat it. I cleaned the Jack and pulled off a hind leg for later. Karen was still looking for me, and since I was down over a bit of a hill she could not see me at all. I eventually walked back up the hill to meet her. She was a bit disappointed at how fast it had all gone down, but I was all smiles.

I have attempted to explain the difference between flying weight and response weight. This was the perfect example of the two. Hope being an excellent representative of her species, demonstrates it perfectly. To all outward appearances  she was hunting hard yesterday and could catch nothing. She did hunt hard, and tried every thing that she could think of yesterday, yet in three hours of hard hunting, could not get her talons in any of the many rabbits that she chased. She has not yet learned how to fake it. As I have attempted to convey before, the effort that it takes for a Raptor to actually kill something requires a single minded willingness to go as fast and as hard as it possibly can. They may try and if the prey is not willing to make the same single minded effort to escape, occasionally catch prey when they are heavy. The main prey base for all raptors ( mostly) relies on the fact that some may not be in their top form. This of course is the "survival of the fittest" in its true form. To sum it up in its simplest form, a fat hawk is an exercise in futility. At 945 Grams, she would have broke off the chase when it ran under the bush. At 925 she went in after him. That is the difference.

Today would have been the perfect time to double her on Jacks. She killed on the first chase, 50 yards into the field. If it had been a Bunny I might have been tempted. You see lots of people with Harris Hawks that do that, some to extreme numbers of prey. They for the most part live in areas that do not have Jacks available to them right next door, or have large numbers of breeding hawks to feed. I have a freezer that is already full of Jacks for the winter, and I have rabbits in my yard, so I can concentrate on developing the best game hawk that I can. There will come a time in her life that hunting will be her primary drive. Right now it is eating, I can wait.

The winds by this evening are supposed to be in the 35 MPH range. Hope will be just fine until it clears up.

Number Six

It would appear that I have a "Made Hawk" on my hands. It also appears that she is one of the exceptional Harris Hawks as well. While the training that she has received plays a big part of my satisfaction with her, the raw material is there in abundance as well. Many of the things that contribute to her ease of handling can be contributed to me, but the desire to hunt and the gentle demeanor are the result of intelligent breeding. Its difficult to give up a good Harris to a breeding project. Much easier to part with one who is a pain in the butt to handle. Not all behavior is learned, some is inherited. Sure there are exception, but then again how often does an exception occur. Not often enough to make it worth the effort.

Hope this morning weighed 943 grams. Thirty three ounces to those who do not do grams. That's big. I know for sure that her keel bone is an "inny". She should not be catching Jack Rabbits at that weight. Perhaps an older bird that has been intermewed would, but not with the enthusiasm that she shows. I should have to walk to where she lands after a miss to pick her up. I don't. She does not require a tidbit to return to the perch. I don't have to call her. She gives it her best shot each and every time.

I got up this morning when there was just enough light to be able to see a bit. There were six Jacks feeding on the lawn right in front of Hope. Its been 48 hours since she has been fed. You have to know that her thoughts were of the tortured variety. Yet she stood there on her perch, totally quiet, waiting.

I gave Karen the option of going along this morning and she jumped on it with eagerness. Unfortunately Karen isn't able to walk well enough to participate in the hunts, but some of them can be arranged to where she can follow along in the car or truck. Its long distance hawking, but it is still Hawking.

I have been hunting this field for at least a month, and in spite of more than a hundred Jacks being shot out of it, it still has enough Jacks there to warrant a hunt. The upper edge is bare ground that one can drive along a two track parallel to the area that I hunt.

Jacks are smart! They see patterns just as well as we do. The last three hunts I have been successful by hunting the top half that has a lot thinner cover. However on the last hunt, I had to go down in the bottom to get her one to catch. The bottom part by the creek is bigger. Grease Wood bushes in a very soft fluffy Alkali dust. There are paths and tunnels where the Rabbits run and take cover. The way that it usually goes is the Jacks are hiding in "Forms," ( Little depressions dug under some of the Sage and Grease Wood. )  and if their cover is good enough they will wait until you are by, and then possibly slip out behind you.

For the first 10 or 20 times that I hunted over there, beginning with the time that I was wounding Jacks for her, I hunted down through the bottom. Yes, each time I still had slips, they were just further and further away, and of course fewer. I would see the Jacks in the lighter cover, and then when I would turn to go where they were, they could run up the bare hills to hide up there. That way most of the available Jacks were taking them selves out of the danger zone before I got any where close.

So I switched to the middle part, and was quite successful all three times that I hunted it. I was seeing lots of Jacks, and Hope was getting a chance at them. Today it was obvious that the Jacks had adjusted their game plan. I was seeing nothing in the middle area. There were Jacks still busting out of cover and running up the hill far in front of me. Hope made a couple of attempts, but flying up hill for a couple of hundred yards doesn't leave all that much in the tank for a serious chase.

After a bit we came to a little drainage that had some cover in it. I had seen several Jacks running up it from a distance, so I began climbing to get above it. One busted out about 75 yards away, and Hope gave chase. It was basically level, so she still had enough steam left to give him a run for his life. She was lined up when he made a sudden stop and turn that threw up a cloud of dust about knee high. She was making a grab for him at the same time, and just barely missed. She went to the ground, but came back up trying to close, but by this time he had way too much of a head start.

I kept climbing, and she came back to the Tee perch. When I got to the point that it petered out, I turned down hill. I could see all of the cover and didn't think we had any thing left in it. I was wrong however and one busted about 15 yards ahead of us. She burned him down in another 15 yards and rolled him in a cloud of dust. When I got there she had him with both feet to the head.

I dispatched him, and when he quit quivering I laid a front leg in between her feet. I then offered her the cup full of tidbits, and she ate all of the tidbits in the cup. She picked up her leg and, stepped off the Jack, and I retired to clean it. Once it was cleaned and bagged, I ripped off a rear leg for her when she finished what she had. Once she had most of the leg put away, we began our short walk to the truck where she finished her leg and was put up for the return home.

There are several points in a hawks training that are of importance. One of the most critical is the point where they are picked up off of game that they rightfully earned. There are more ways to do it badly than right. If you do it wrong badly enough it can result in the bird either carrying it off or at least dragging it away with her back to you and wings covering it.

A hawk when it has caught game, has put forth the ultimate effort to do so, and its natural instinct tells it that every other living thing wants it and will take it away if they get the chance. Now the falconer has just witnessed the very thing that he strives for, and he naturally wants to see it again and soon. He knows that if the bird eats too much it will not hunt again until the Hawk lose's that weight. How he takes it off game will determine how the bird reacts. Most Harris's will continue to do their best regardless of how clumsy he is. That doesn't mean that it is justified, at least not to me.

That is the main reason that I hunt every other day. It releases me from having to restrict the Hawks intake. As a side effect I don't burn out my hunting grounds, and I am old enough that the rest is welcome. Here in SE Oregon, the nearest fuel is about 50 miles away. My alternate hunting area is a 40 mile round trip.

Today was the easiest that I have gotten Hope off a Rabbit. There was a point that I needed her to have free access to a complete Jack so that she could realize where the food comes from. It doesn't take all that much of that, to get a Hawk to the point that she expects to have all of it and begins to drag it off to eat it.

A Hawk catching something as large as a Jack is really excited. Most will understand that if you help it goes much easier for them. Hope will concentrate on keeping her hold on a Jack's head. I grab the rear legs and stretch the Jack to break its neck if I can do so without endangering the Hawk. Once the Jack quits moving and the Hawk realizes its dead, they will recover, stand up and start looking for a place to eat in peace. I prevented that thought from forming by giving her a front leg from an earlier Jack. While she was thinking about that,  I stuck the cup with tidbits in front of her. She knows that it contains food, and she automatically began picking pieces of food out of it. It holds about an ounce of tidbits, so she transitions from escaping to eating without the nasty parts occurring to her. Since the rabbits head that she was standing on was a bit unsteady she moved off to the area in front of the rabbits nose to eat her front leg. I slid a Walmart bag over the Jacks head, and moved off to gut the rabbit. I pulled off a rear leg, put the rest in my bag. I then went to where she was eating and when she looked up, there was this great bloody gob of meat in my fist, and every one is happy.

Number Five

Hope this morning weighed 944 Grams. After the last trip that she caught a Jack at that weight, I no longer doubt her. However the hunts are likely to last longer since that much needed desperation is missing. You just try harder when you are really hungry. No one to blame other than me, so better get on with it.

The weather is improving for one last fling before fall really sets in. It was still 46 degrees when I got in the truck, so I wore a vest. When I arrived at the field, I wisely decided to leave it in the truck.

I had no more than taken Hope out of the truck when several Jacks started running up the bare hillside about 200 yards away. Hope takes off after them and actually turned one of them back, but of course she was winded from having to fly uphill for all that distance before she could even try to make all the twists and turns needed to put one in the bag. He ran down into the Sage again. More of them began deserting the cover for the open and again and again she tried to catch them, only tiring herself out in the process.

We have had a female Prairie Falcon here at the House and at the Ranch that has been making her self into a pain in the butt. She is working herself up to being a Chicken Hawk. It doesn't help that my Old English Game Chickens are no bigger than a Hungarian Partridge. I had to scare her off yesterday to get her to leave them alone. Well she was hunting the field that we were in today. She was also strafing the Jack Rabbits when they got into the open.

One of the Jacks began running along the top of the cover, and Hope gave chase. It was another of those ridiculously long flights that she should have ignored. The Prairie started a power dive that I was afraid was going to actually hit her. She did not however, but Hope got the message, and was watching her. The Prairie showed no signs of quitting this little game, so I zipped her with a 22 bullet and she left. I found out later from Karen that she had gone over to the house to harass the Chickens.

Hope made a long flight after a Jack and had missed. She was sitting on a bush about a hundred yards away. I decided that I was still too hot, so I propped my Tee Perch in a bush and started taking my sweater off. Hope decided that she needed to come back and here I am with my sweat shirt half over my head. I ignored her and she detoured around and landed on the perch in the bush.

I lost count of the number of slips that she took, but we hunted hard for about 2 hours, making try after try. We had run all the Jacks out of the light cover that I felt that she had her best chance to succeed in, so I turned around and taking another line, went back through the cover again almost back to the truck. She had one chase that was below the level of the Sage, that she missed the Jacks butt by less than inches. Lots of them were oh so close. She never quit trying and trying hard. I circled back down towards the heavier cover and the Creek, with her missing two or three more. Some of these flights, she was getting back into the air again to make another shot. So she wasn't just going through the motions trying to find a cripple.

I combed through the heavy cover down at the creek and finally she started after one that jumped about 30 yards away. The Grease Wood was about three feet or more high and really thick. She made a feint at the Jack, then flew over and back into the large Grease Wood bush. Apparently the Jack was coming through a tunnel in the brush and she met him head on. They were buried in the Bush and I had to do some damage to my bare arm to get them out of the stickers.

I killed the Jack, and tried to get some pictures, but the little camera does not have a view finder, so I took lots of shots hoping to get one or two that I could use. I did, just barely.

This was all taking place in Alkali powder and I really didn't want her food covered in that stuff, so when the Jack stopped quivering, I offered her my tin cup of tidbits. I am pleased to see that she has no problem eating out of it. It also keeps me from having rotting meat in my cup when I go the next time.

This was the first tidbit that she had gotten in the whole two and more hours that we had been in the field. You see she doesn't require tidbits. She is concentrating on hunting. Good Girl! She promptly comes back to the Tee perch without me having to call her.

I fed her all my tidbits, and then gave her a front leg from an earlier victim as we walked back to the truck. When we arrived I set her on a wire spool with some food while I gutted the rabbit. I then gave her another front leg off the recent victim.

There is no doubt that she would find a way to kill sooner if I sharpened her weight up a bit more. About an ounce to be exact. However even though I have to work a bit harder for the same result, there is no shortage of rabbits to chase, and a lot of failure with her still getting a reward at the end of it has to be teaching her something. Make no mistake there is a lot to learn concerning Jack Rabbits. They are plenty smart. As long as she still chases hard, and tries hard I really can't complain about her weight. The abundance of prey this year is a real blessing. The odds are such, that sooner or later one will screw up. If I sense that she is stringing me along, be assured she will suffer hunger pangs for it. So as long as the aspirins hold out, i'm game.

That's what I'm talking about!

I was a bit disappointed this morning when I picked Hope up and weighed her. She tipped the scales at 945 grams. I tried every way that I could to get the scales to be more reasonable, but the weight stayed the same. Oh well, I need the exercise any way, perhaps, I reasoned, she will get lucky and find a young dumb one. I really didn't expect her to catch anything.

A friend from the Rail Road had come down to help me get a generator set up for emergencies, so we hopped in the truck and drove over to the ranch. After I got the truck stopped, I looked over and there was a young dumb one just 15 yards away, watching us to see what was going on. I eased out, ignoring the Jack and hoping that he would continue to sit there. I got Hope released from her leash, and picked her out of her box. I looked up, and found that it had moved. Not all that far, so I tossed Hope in his direction. The Jack ran, and Hope totally surprised, followed and took a shot at him, but he ducked and stalled her out. I remember thinking CRAP! this was all I needed, an overweight Hawk that is going to waste the trend that we had begun with the last hunt by giving her free rein with a whole Jack to eat.

You see, just like every thing else, success breeds success. Falconry is built on positive reinforcement. Success gives confidence, and success only comes with a Hawk that knows that she can catch anything and will not take no for an answer. That frame of mind comes from the falconer making sure that the Hawk has all the odds stacked against the prey.  A fat Hawk normally will not put forth the effort needed to catch a Jack. With almost any other hawk I would have bagged the trip, but Hope isn't acting like any other Hawk that I have handled, so I decided to give it a try. What the hell, I needed the exercise any way.

After she missed the Jack I turned and started across the field. She soon landed on the Tee perch, and we continued up the little rise in the ground. She peeled off back the way that we had come and made a fairly long flight after a Jack that had slipped out behind us. When she returned, she flew right in front of Dick, much to his amazement, and landed on the Tee perch. We walked a few yards more when she again took off in pursuit. I was surprised to see how far the slip actually was. She flew about 150 yards before she slammed into the brush, and a faint scream wafted back to my amazed ears.

I ran as fast as my old butt would take me, flushing another Jack as I ran. Dick thought that was the one that she had chased, but I knew better.

I was pleased to see that she still had the Jack, and then could see that she had a foot in his neck as well. He wasn't going any where. I killed him as soon as I could get my dropped jaw closed, and drug him into the open.

I pulled a front leg off and gave it to her as a distraction.  After I gutted it, I again gave the Jack back to her. Hell if she is going to hunt that hard weighing 945, I darn sure am not going to get stingy on her. This calls for a celebration.

She began eating on the neck, where I had pulled a bit of skin off when I killed it. Fine with me. I let her eat until she had severed the muscle surrounding the neck, then slipped a Walmart plastic bag over the rest of the Jack, and put it in my vest. I let her eat most of the head, and then began giving her the tidbits that I had prepared since they wouldn't last for another two days. Its nice that she will eat from the fingers without risking said fingers. She also eats nicely from my little cup.

I am having a bit of trouble with my back, so I soon got tired of standing around waiting for her to finally finish the head. I picked her and her head up and made my way back to the truck.

Since this is the dump, there are some benefits to hunting there besides lots of rabbits. Ahh, life is good!

Progress

The next day after the Bunny, I picked her up and she had gained insignificant weight from it. The wind has been howling and unfit to try to fly an inexperienced Hawk, so I decided that waiting until almost dark and trying to ambush one of the Jacks that trek through here in front of the house every evening was a much better idea.

The first evening she again was convinced that we were going to revisit flying to the fist training. She would fly to the hot tub, or the top of the house so that I could call her. It finally occurred to me that with the Tee perch she might get her thoughts realigned to hunting. It worked pretty well. She settled down and began watching. We had three or four flights but none of them matched the excitement of the Bunny flush. She also mirrored that lack with empty feet and finally an empty crop.

Last night she was 895 grams and was quite hungry. I brought her out on the Tee perch, but she again began thinking up ways to get me to feed her. She made a flight across the creek after something, I assume a Jack. She turned and flew back to me, and I gave her a tidbit. That turned out to be a bit of a mistake as she flew to the ground searching for any possible tidbits that might have fallen. She searched under the rose bush. Picked up a chicken turd and tested it for food value, gagging and finally giving up on it.

I, in desperation thinking that the wind might have died a bit, started out into the Sage behind the house to see if there was any thing there we could chase. She did chase another Bunny, but was unsuccessful with that one. It quickly got too dark for her to hunt so she went to roost with no food again. I was positive that I now knew that her real flying weight was around 900 grams and that tomorrow would be the day that she killed again.

We still had wind this morning, but it was at least manageable. At 10 AM I loaded her in the truck and we went over to the field that had been so good to us these last two months. Her weight was 902 grams.

I took her out of the truck and right away saw a couple of Jacks in some sparse Sage. I walked that way and they began hopping off. I threw her and she just landed on a pile of lumber. She came back to the Tee perch, another hopped out and as it topped over a small hill she went after it. She followed for quite a ways and then crashed into a Grease Wood bush. I didn't hear any screaming, so I continued on my way. Another Jack jumped pretty close to us and she took off after him, another jumped under her, and she broke off and flew after him. He gave her the slip, and although she got up into the air again, she wasn't able to catch him. The gang at the ranch rode into the bottom part of the field to gather the Cows in this lot, so I was glad that I had chosen to stay high in the field on a different tack that I normally ran. We walked on a bit further and again two Jacks flushed pretty close, and she flew one down in a matter of yards. Not enough cover for it to scrape her off. When I got there she had again grabbed it by the butt, but within two bounces had its head in the other foot.

I killed it, and put one jess in the swivel and tied it to my bag. She was still pretty stoked, so I gave her a couple of tidbits to rearrange her mind, then pulled off a front leg and gave it to her. She let go of the rabbit, and I retired to clean it. When I got back I again gave her the Jack. She wasted no time in reclaiming it and began eating the liver and other goodies left in the carcass. I left her to decide what she wanted to eat, and satisfied myself with taking pictures.

I had come to the conclusion that I had made a basic mistake that would have shortened the last period of her training. I should have on the first and possibly more "bagged Rabbits', have let her feed on the bodies until she was stuffed. This was a clear case of my favorite saying- "The hurrieder you go, the behinder you get".  I have long ago lost the urge to out do every one in the world that has a hawk. I would rather catch half of the game that every one else catches if most of my hunts are successful. I rarely ever try to take doubles unless I am flying two hawks in a cast. My reasons are that there will be more rabbits left in the field, and my hawk puts more effort in catching the first one because she knows that she will be able to eat all she wants when she does catch it. I want my hawk to know that she does not have to hide what she catches from me and that she can trust me.

By taking her off the Rabbits that she "thought" she had caught, and giving her a full meal off a previous rabbit, she came to think that the food only came from the fist. The Rabbits that I wanted her to catch were not as important as the fist was. Yes, she wanted to catch them, but not as badly as she would have if she had been allowed to get her fill of warm fresh bloody meat. Really, at my age, do I really want to go out and pound the hills to dust every day? Bad knee and all? Not likely, I will take quality over quantity at this stage of my life, thank you. If it takes her an extra day to get her weight back down, that means that I can do some of the things around the house that need doing before the winter arrives.

You will please notice in the pictures as she begins to eat, that she pays me no mind at all. She does not mantle and try to protect her food from me, she eats with her wings closed and tucked tight.

I mentioned that the Cows were being gathered to move to another pasture. They were going to go quite a bit away from where we were at, but as they got closer, she became aware of them and crouched down on top of her Rabbit. She didn't mantle, she just laid down on it.

This was a new one for me. She couldn't see them from her position, but she could hear them. After they had gone, I reached down and gave her a tidbit, and she stood up and began eating again.

As I have said before, she is going to be a good one. It was really nice to be able to see the flight and see that long leg reach out and snatch that Jack back to her. This is the beginning to a beautiful friendship.

Sept 29 - Its not over till the fat bunny sings!

I decided earlier that I would take her out this evening and see if watching the Jacks make their trek to the water in the last fading light would give her a kick to catch something to eat. Since Deer season is Saturday and some of the areas that I hunt are also hunted for Deer too. It would be nice to not have to hunt during all that.

After finishing the blog and dinner this evening and the shadows grew longer, I went out to get her. She weighed 920 grams. I walked out to the hot tub where the chairs are, and she thought that we were going to fly to the fist again.

I finally tossed my glove on the Hot tub so that she wouldn't fly to me any more, and she began to foot and toss the glove all over the tub.

Eventually I got her to sit on the fist and was watching the first Jack start down to the water. It was getting darker all the time, and he managed to make the trip to the water without interference from her. I got up and walked around the corner of the Rose bush at the front of the house. There were three Rabbits, two Jacks and a Bunny. As they broke and ran, she of course went for the Bunny. When she turns on, she gives the appearance that she might be crossed with a Gos. She has acceleration like I cannot recall with the other Harris's that I have seen fly. She had to fly out of the gate and turn to the left. She did so with enthusiasm, a loud bang followed. When I arrived she came out of the wood shed holding the Bunny. I killed it, and with much excitement on her part we retired to the hot tub to eat her fill.

Of course Karen bemoaned the demise of the Bunny. I informed her that was why we had protected him for so long.

Sept 29, 2016

Yesterday Hope didn't do enough to get fed. Grabbing a Coyote by the butt just doesn't count, and I would prefer she refrain from that in the future. It is pretty normal for a Harris hunting in her first phase to not realize fully the total effort it takes to catch Jack Rabbits.

The first phase of course is to establish that Jack Rabbits are to be the preferred prey. That is done of course by feeding them off of Jacks. Then it is necessary to show them that they can catch Jacks. That can be done by using a "Make Hawk", or if one is not available, a bagged Rabbit. That of course is hard to arrange. You can use a tame rabbit that is sort of the same color, but that still doesn't teach them that you really need to burn hard to catch the real ones. I prefer to wound them with a 22, if I don't have a "Make Hawk".

My first experience with Harris's was Babe and Fritz, offspring of the first breeding pair of Harris Hawks in Oregon. Babe was an over achiever of the species. Fritz wasn't all that bad either, and as a pair they were a unstoppable. When we started them we flushed Jacks and they chased what appeared to be hard, but they weren't catching them, so after a week of trying they quit. So did I, only it was their food that stopped. We would take them out, jump three Jacks, and if they didn't try, we took them home until the next day. After four or five days Fritz was too weak to fly, so I turned loose a bagged Pigeon for him so that he could regain some strength. We took Babe out hunting however as she still appeared to be strong enough to fly. She caught the first Jack that jumped. After that there was no question of not trying, and they went on to become a legend in my own mind, and I am sure anyone else who ever saw her fly.

So this is normal, and expected. I had hoped that we were past that phase when she caught her first one, since the effort required by her to do that, is what I am searching for. Now as I mentioned she has performed better than expected at a higher weight than expected. While I am willing to keep her as heavy as she can perform, its not mandatory. I am perfectly willing to "starve her till her eyes bug out" if necessary. Hopefully it will not come to that.

I talked Karen into coming with me today. All this has been killing her. She wants to go hawking so bad, but just does not have the stamina to do so. The area that I hunted today has a road right up the middle of it and most of the flights would be visible from the car. She was also able to get a bit of video of her flying. Since she was going to be in the car following, we could bring the dogs as well, and I could analyze the plus and minus of attempting to hunt with the Brits. They of course voted in favor of the idea, but I wasn't all that sure.

It seemed quite hot although it was only in the 70's, but uphill carrying way too much stuff had me sweating like a pig. Her first flight for a Jack was the best, but he ducked out the other side of a Sage as she crashed into the front of it.

I walked about a mile ( seemed like it anyway) up the slope with Jacks going left right and in front. She would chase, but most of the time looping around to me after deciding that she couldn't catch them.  She was hot, and it was apparent that a catch was unlikely, so I stopped at a lava lump to let her sit and let the dogs run. I had forgotten my squirt bottle, so I put some water in my hand with a tidbit, so that she would get a little bit of water at least. The dogs had a grand time running all over, and she paid them no mind at all.

I decided that it just wasn't happening and she needed to lose a bit of weight. I decided to walk back to where we started allowing the dogs free rein to see if they could be a positive in the hunt. It was a bit odd in that the rabbits seemed to prefer the North side of the road. There was little evidence that they had been eating any of the grasses and Sage on the South side of the road, while the North was chewed all up. I crossed over after a bit and started getting into Jacks again. One hid from the dogs and she got a chance at him, but she was at a disadvantage and couldn't make up the distance in the turn. Most of them were flushing a lot further out with the dogs than without. I had paused on a lava ridge watching the dogs working the area in front of me, when Brick went on point. I was pretty sure that Bunnies were in the areas near these rocks, and sure enough this one lost his nerve, and busted. Hope tried to take him from the side, but he tried harder than her and she missed.

This phase as I said is perfectly normal and will soon pass. Hope still has traits that please me to no end. I still hold fast to the belief that she will be well worth watching soon.

https://vimeo.com/184925621   (password)   owyheeflyer