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.