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.