October 15, 2018

 The Steen's with a bit of snow.

Some Antelope between the road and the ranch.

I attempted to hunt Hope yesterday. When I weighed her she tipped the scales at 1,035 grams. That surprised me so much that I checked the scales to see if they were reading zero with nothing on them. They were, and her weight didn't change when I set her on them again. The last time she got anything to eat from me was on the 12th, and she should have been under 950 grams. I can only surmise that something made the mistake of getting inside the weathering area with her. She still came to me, and in fact had been calling, indicating that she wanted to go hunting. Normally she doesn't make a sound unless she thinks that I am going to pick her up. Well I didn't need exercise that badly, so I put her back in the pen and did other things.

I went out this morning to check her weight and found that she weighed in at 987 grams. Just to be clear last year she did not kill at any weight above 930 grams. Not that she didn't try, she was just too heavy to make the turns necessary to make a kill, and she actually didn't try as hard either. I have actually seen raptors that would not hunt if they were more than 15 grams over their "hunting weight". Apparently she has not heard this, and so doesn't know that she isn't supposed to hunt when she is overweight.

I decided to go in spite of the fact that she was chubby, reasoning that I really didn't have anything better to do, and the exercise might just help my chubby condition.

Just for grins I hooked up my airplane camera to a contraption that holds the camera on my chest in the hopes that I could get some shots that would be worth showing to you. You really do not understand just how much your eyes and brain compensate for your ungainly body movements, until you strap a camera on your chest. You don't walk, you waddle!

I was quite surprised with the vigor that she exhibited in chasing the Jacks that we jumped for her. For all intents and purposes she was lean and mean, doing her best to catch these elusive critters. The only time that her excess weight was noticeable was when she flew after one that took to the open, running up the 20 degree bare hillside. She tried, but it was just too much climb to keep up with him.

One of the shots that I did capture was of a Jack that was hiding inside a scrawny little bush in the open. The dogs missed him, but Hope saw him sitting still, and took off after him before he realized that he was made. She would have caught him too, but he ran through another scrawny little bush and she was too close to dodge, so crashed into it.

https://vimeo.com/295275937     password  owyheeflyer

The way that I hunt Hope is to gorge her when she kills. I then wait until she comes back down to weight before I take her hunting again. This works quite well as far as the bird is concerned, since I don't have to worry about regulating the amount of food that I give her, I just wait until she gets at a weight that I like, then we go again. It also has the advantage of saving me time and gas money           ( which is a problem since there is no close reasonable supply of fuel ) It also enables me to keep the hunting pressure at a minimum on a dwindling prey base. It also makes for a serious hunting raptor that knows if she doesn't kill, she doesn't eat. I can count on one hand the number of times that I fed her on food other than that she herself had killed in the three years I have had her. If she doesn't kill, I just go hawking again the next day, and with her being on the heavy side I could go for three or four days without feeding her if I had to. It gives you a hunting hawk that doesn't screw around.