Time to go Hawking

I decided last year that I would begin Hawking this year in Sept whether Hope had completed her molt or not. I know that she still has feathers coming down, but what the hell, I need to get more time to hunt. Harris's seem to not like the weather around Christmas so I will tack an extra month on the first part of it and curl up by the fire when it gets nasty outside.

I had moved Jessie out of the weathering area to her own Mews since I didn't plan on hunting her any more. That left the weathering area as a large flight pen for Hope. It took a week or a bit more to get Hope down to the point that she remembered where the source of food actually is. She came to me last week, and I brought her in the house for a refresher course in human relations.

She did quite well, hardly ever bating and only crapping on the rug one time. I decided to put her on the creance to call her for a couple of days, and had no problem other than the fact that she thinks it is a rubber chicken apparently.

I eventually got her to fly to me with the line in her feet, then traded her for it with a Rabbit leg. I was only using the creance to keep her from catching one of the real Chickens.

I have been putting off taking her into the field as I didn't have a telemetry transmitter on her yet. Tami has been so busy with things on the ranch that I have not been able to catch her long enough to cast Hope so that I can secure a transmitter to her tail feathers. Today I gave up and just mugged her with a towel and stuck one on. Missing my helper for sure.

Glenn and his Son-in-law had seen a bunch of Jacks crossing the road down by the airport in the evenings, so I went down there. Perhaps I should have waited until the evening as I only saw two Jacks in about an hour of walking.

She was getting quite desperate.  I think it was the hole that attracted her. Here she is with a dried up Coyote turd that used to be a Rabbit. She soon decided that it wasn't what she was looking for.

Hope automatically dropped back into hunting mode and behaved as though it was only last week that we were hunting every day. She is weak of course from sitting all year and the two rabbits that we saw were quite safe, but Lizards are another story. She caught at least one of the two that we flushed. I would like to say that it was a thrilling chase, but the crash into a Sage bush made up for all the twists and turns that usually accompany a Jack kill.