It's been a bit stormy lately and that makes for some Sun Rise and Sets that are worth seeing.
I think that I have found Hopes current bottom line as far as weight is concerned. It only took seven days. :-/ Of course there were one or two malfunctions on my part.
What was happening is that she would come to the fist for a tidbit, but if I made any move to pick up her jesses so that we could go out of the doors on the mews, she would fly back off the fist. This behavior has been occurring since I put her in the enclosed mews. Rather than walk away, as I should have, I was worried about how cold it was and wanted to keep her weight up so that she could fight the cold. I managed to catch her jesses at least twice. Once I got her out of the mews she hunted just as she always had. Our last trip out she was tipping the scales at 1072 grams. She flew as hard as she always had.
After killing the Coyote on the 15th, I skinned and fleshed the hide as usual. For whatever reason I threw the chunks of fat that I cleaned off the hide on the ground outside the garage door. Connie and I were going to go hunting with Hope, so I picked up all the pieces that I could find prior to going out to get her. After some games on her part I managed to grab her jesses. When I weighed her she was tipping the scales at 1070. We had crossed over the fence and immediately jumped a Jack within the first 30 yards. He made a break right across the open field going to the hangar. Hope was doing her best , but he outdistanced her, and they disappeared by the fuel tank. Hope was convinced that he was hiding there and was not interested in coming back to me, so we walked over there but could not find the Jack. Hope was on the roof of the Hangar watching intently. She flew down to the ground and found a 18 inch long string of fat that I had missed. Of course the hunt was over for that day. That was the "malfunction".
After that she began to get cagy about me trying to catch her jesses. Of course that made me a little cranky, and I began to get more than a bit tired of the insurrection. I decided that I was done playing games, and if she could catch enough mice to feed herself, I would wait until she ran out of them. Of course it helped that we were having an unusual warm spell, and she didn't need to have as much food to keep as warm as usual.
I would go out each day and offer her a tidbit, and she would grab it and fly back to her outside perch. I would give her three chances and then leave her to think about it. She was still flighty yesterday, and I walked away. Today she seemed to have a change of mind and was calling to me when I walked out. She weighed 1004 grams, she did not try to fly off.
The wind has been howling all day and up to 30 MPH at times. I thought that it might slack off by about 4, so I waited and got lucky. It dropped to about 5 MPH so off we went. The last two times I have hunted here, the rabbits have been a bit scarce. Today was no exception, and we walked about a mile before one jumped, fortunately right in front of us. He tried to cut across from right to left, and Hope had him before he had covered 15 yards.
He was a big one and those are generally last years rabbits. I gave her a front leg from a previous kill and walked back towards the house. When she finished the leg, she flew back to the perch and we hunted on our way back home. We only saw one other Jack on the trip back and he managed to escape.
I needed some packages of meat for future flights so I cleaned this one rather than freezing it whole. As I skinned him I began seeing tape worm clusters. I was amazed that he was carrying so many but was still in good shape with quite a lot of fat. I have never seen so many on one rabbit before.
I have never seen them on the organs before. I can't imagine how that felt. we may well have done him a favor.
Hopefully The weather will remain warm and I can bring Hope back to her normal space in the weathering pen.
No comments:
Post a Comment