Things are looking up!

 Yesterday would have been my normal day to hunt, but it appeared that as usual I was a little too liberal with her last meal and she tipped the scales at 970 grams. About 2 ounces over the last time she flew.  Too early in the year for that to be a viable hunting weight. I decided to just stroll around the Sage here at the house for a bit, because I was sure that while she tried to convince me that she was starving, investing in a lot of fuel to go somewhere else would be a waste of time, and fuel. Sure enough she had three good chances to catch one of my local Jacks, but she just wasn't putting her heart into bringing one to the bag. So she got to spend the rest of the day thinking about what could have been.

I am not sure if I have adequately explained the effect of weight on desire to hunt, so here goes again. In a nutshell the effect of weight- too much or too little, causes the same result. Too much and they don't need to hunt, However a good Hawk will try when it is too heavy (  "Fat" ) Just not all that hard. Easy "gimme" type, sure. However they will not really put forth all that much effort.    Not enough weight, (low) - the Hawk is too weak to expend the effort required to catch and hold quarry. With some Raptors the "weight range" can be as much as 2 ounces, or as little as 1/4 ounce. The goal is to have the Hawk in peak physical condition. The term is "Sharp Set", where-in the Raptor is all muscle, and ravenous to eat something. The real key of course is to have a Hawk that wants to hunt.

This morning she weighed in at 940 grams, and was quite anxious to get to me. I had an area that I wanted to check for viable populations of Jacks. I am having problems finding a good area this year. There are a few in most places, just not in any numbers, and all the areas that I checked this morning not even that. It is funny to me that the Fish and Wildlife call this area the "Sage Brush Sea", to all appearances it is all the same, yet Jacks congregate in some areas, and cannot be found in, to the eye, the same type of place. At least I am not smart enough to see areas the same way as the Jack Rabbit do.

We walked three areas this morning without seeing even one Jack, I looked at three others without her and could find nothing. I decided to come back to the house and go over to the ranch next door to hunt a area of Grease wood by the creek that does hold 4 or 5 Jacks.

Where yesterday she was pretty casual, today she was champing at the bit, flying ahead of me to try to find something to chase. Finally we jumped a Jack right in front of us and she was slamming and banging into the ground about 4 times before he gave her the slip. She was pressing him so hard that he tried to hide, but I saw where he stopped. I called her to me and we got him up again, and she again made about 4 shots at him, slamming into the ground and back up in the air to do the same again. We jumped him four times and she made at least 10 shots at him. The only thing that saved his butt was that we bumped a new one, and began the whole thing over again allowing him to slip off to the side.

In the meantime the new victim was one that we had run before and I knew the tactic that he had used in the past to make his escape. He hung around the creek and in the past when she had made her first shot at him, he would sneak back out to the point where the creek curved back on to itself, hiding in the large Greasewood bushes there. I called her back to me and began advancing on the point where I last saw him. He tried to break by on the left side, but she cut him off, keeping her altitude of about 10 feet over the brush. She crashed into the ground and grabbed him in the butt in one of the biggest and thickest Greasewood bushes in the area. I went to the noise and could see his head in the bush. I grabbed it, but there was no way to get Hope out of there, so I broke his neck, and began trying to find a way to get them out of the bush. There was no way to get her out as she was lying on her back with her wings all over the place, so I gave her a chunk of meat to eat, and when she stood up to do so I pulled the Jack on through, bagged him and went back on the other side to wait for her to come out on her own. Which she did after she finished her chunk of meat. I gave her the rest of her meal as we made our way to the car. I wasn't able to get any pictures, too thick, too busy.

I was surprised at her hunting today. She was thinking instead of reacting. Just what I have been hoping that she would do. It made all the difference in the world in how she flew and how successful we were. 3.3 miles today.