Number 18 with a price

Hope tried to talk me into taking her hunting yesterday, but I was pretty sure that she was too heavy. When I picked her up this morning she still weighed 940. I decided to try the last field that we had hunted, but staying away from the spot with all the Bunnies. Like all Harris Hawks, I am sure that Hope is very susceptible to being spoiled. Bunnies are just too tempting, and too a point too easy. In all actuality, I didn't want her catching another Bunny. I am more interested in her learning how to catch Jacks regularly.

This is private land, and it the Cows had been left on it for a long time.  There was almost a layer of rabbit pellets on the ground.

I started at the opposite end from the last time, in an effort to stay away from the Bunnies, and eventually jumped a Jack. It gave her the slip, as well as the next 5 Jacks. I had pretty well covered the field, and she had missed every Jack as well as the four or so Bunnies that we jumped. The holes and rocks are perfect for Bunnies.  One Jack that we jumped at the edge of an Alfalfa field,  tried running down the ditch at the edge. She made a shot at him that he was only able to evade by jumping straight up in the air. She went under him. They have so many tricks and evasions.

It was beginning to sprinkle a bit, and I really wasn't satisfied with her performance, but decided to go through one last bit of cover. She flashed off the fist and around a bunch of low rocks. Bunny distress sounds soon followed.

This is the crack that the Bunny tried to get down, but she was too close. She had grabbed him in the butt first and by the time I got there she had one foot in his head on the other side of the small rock in the middle of the crack. She was holding him off the ground one in the back and the other in the front with her wings on either side of the crack. I reached in and pulled them both out and finished him off.

After I got home and took her out of her box, I found that somewhere in the melee she had lost a talon on the far left ponce.