Nov 7th

 Winter still hasn't fully closed its fist on us yet, but you can see it coming. Yesterday afternoon it was a bit breezy ( wind in mid 20's ) but still not too cold. There was a small sprinkling of rain last night, and as the day progresses its getting darker and darker. I just got the last of my winter wood, and I have made a small start on splitting it. I hope to get a bunch more done today.

It doesn't look as daunting with two and half rows split.

I went out to get Hope this morning to go hunting before the work started. She was very anxious and hanging on the door urging me to get a move on. I was therefore surprised to find that she weighed in at 1024 grams. I weighed her twice, and decided that she must be converting some of that fat to muscle, or she has been having visitors (mice) in her pen. I thought about it and since the only other thing that I had to do was split wood, I decided to go hunting. 

Since I am hunting here I have transferred every thing to my quad, to minimize the damage to the runway. She is in a box after all and other than a bit of noise, every thing is the same. Josie hopped up onto my lap and we trundled off to the end of the runway to start. Saves me about a mile and third walk, so its worth doing. and that way I don't burn all of my hunting area by hunting the same 3/4 of a mile every time. The key is to switch it up and not hunt the same patch time after time.

I wasn't really sure what she was going to hunt like, but I needn't have worried, she was even hotter than the last time we went out. She put up the same rabbit five different times, covering three hundred yards, and he still got away. After walking over the hill and down the other side, chasing three different Jacks in the process, we finally got a close slip of about 40 yards. She burned it down in no time. 

Well fun's over, time to go to work.

Nov 5th- still fat- still hunting!

 After my last hunt with Hope, at a weight that I considered pretty heavy, I was hoping that she would lose a bit more weight for today's hunt. Its not that she didn't do well, she did, she just shouldn't have. There should be a point somewhere that she is just too portly to make it around the necessary corners so that she can catch Jacks. Jacks are not easy for any Hawk. They are smart and damn fast. I guess we still haven't found it. She again tipped the scales at 990 grams this morning. I'm not complaining, the fact that she wants to hunt so much is a real plus for me.

I had a little company this morning, one of them was the gal that found Jessie after she died, and has become my fishing buddy. She had a friend with her that had never seen a Hawk hunt before. 

I wasn't sure that Hope was going to come to me, willingly, as I suspected that she might be a bit chunky. No worries, as soon as she saw me in my hunting uniform, she was plastered to the chain link of her weathering area. Still 990 grams. I thought that she was so heavy that it wasn't worth the effort to go anyplace other than around the house, as I thought that she wasn't going to do all that much and I didn't want to waste every ones time. We had other things to do, so rather than put in four or five miles trying to find a Jack that was stupid enough that a fat Hawk could catch it, so my old grass fed ( lawn mowers) Jacks, could at least show them how she would normally hunt without expending most of the day getting back to the house. I have at least four Jacks that call the Sage around my house, their home, and they have eluded Hope at least four or five times so far.

As we walked to the fence to go into the Sage, Josie busted a Jack just outside the fence. Hope put in two shots at him that were oh so close, but not close enough. We walked on across the Sage and a Bunny busted out on full afterburner for the edge of the "cliff" that edges the creek, and  she lost him in the rocks. She was right on him, but couldn't get a clear shot through the Sage. I think she also had a shot at a Jack down by the creek before I got there. 

We turned back towards the House and a Jack broke cover, pretty close to us, and she burned him down.

She never fails to amaze me. She is still only using one foot to hold these guy's, but we haven't lost one this year at all- so far.

I added some photo's that were not available to me until yesterday. They were taken on the third of Nov.

Nov 3rd

The last time I hunted Hope, I decided that she needed some fur to clean out her crop. ( Raptors hold food in their crop, thus it can get a bit slimey and nasty if not regularly cleaned ) The castings are what accomplishes that. However this time I chose to give her a Rabbit head to do that. Rabbit heads contain a lot more food that one would think, and she generally gains weight when she eats one, as she eats every thing but the teeth.

So it wasn't much of a surprise when I picked her up yesterday, that she was a bit chunky. 990 grams, a full ounce more than her last flight. She still seemed ready to hunt, so off we went. The Jacks were not letting us within 100 yards so we has some pretty long flights, which of course are mostly going to be failures. 

Brick, who is quite happy to include every thing in his hunting routine, started rooting in a smaller Sage, scaring out a really small (perhaps a Shrew) critter, which Hope beat him to. That went down the hatch. It was really small so it didn't amount to much more than an appetizer. Then not too further along, Brick somehow managed to root out a Kangaroo Rat. Of course Hope caught it. That one took a bit more time and had a lot more mass to it. She was really liking this hunt. All those little sweet little morsels, just running around that didn't even kick her or drag her through tall bushes. The 70 degree weather was conspiring against me. Not only was I sweating, it was warm enough for the smaller critters to be out and busy as well.

The terrain turned into a lot larger and thicker Greasewood and Rye Grass. Hope slammed into an exceptionally dense mess down by the creek and didn't come back up. I went to look and had a hard time finding her. Eventually, I found her under a dense mess of limbs with a Bunny in her feet. She had it by the head, so it wasn't making any noise at all. I killed it and gave her a front leg to eat.

This area was once the site of one of the early ranches, or homesteads that were scattered through the area. Its appears to be a pretty "hardscrabble" type of an outfit.

From there we took the straightest line to the house. The hunt covered 4.94 miles. One bunny and two "Timber Tigers", or "incidentals" which ever you prefer. If I count each and every kill, we are racking up a score this year. :-/  

November 1st

 After a leisurely breakfast of Sunday Sour Dough Pancakes, the temps came up enough to venture out in search of breakfast for Hope. Connie is with me this weekend so I have some welcome company to share the day and to take a few pictures for you.

In order to get to the area here that seems to have the most Jacks, one has to do quite a bit of walking well before you find much in the way of flights. Yes there are at least three Jacks living within my fences of the runway, but I don't want to hassle them each time I go out to hunt, so the only choice is to get past that point before I take Hope out of the Hood box. The car tears up the soil a lot more than I am happy with, so here comes plan B.

The box sits at a bit of an angle, but not so much that it would be a problem. Hope weighed 967 grams today and was very interested in going hunting.

With Hope in the box, Connie on behind me, Josie in my lap, we trundled out to the end of the runway. Josie is getting up there, so she has learned that a ride is not a sign of weakness, merely an indication of intelligence. Brick is stronger, younger and much too big to find a spot for him to ride.

What I am holding in my hand is cuttings from a "Rabbit Brush" They cut the outer ends of the branch off and I am told the rest of it contains moisture. There is a lot of little bushes like this out here.

This is what it looks like when they "dine or drink" from the Rabbit Brush.

We got a couple of slips going over the hill, but they managed to out maneuver her. Then one took off down on the flat she gave chase and missed her shot at it. Josie of course went to help her, and we walked that direction as well. There had been an attempt long ago to form a small dam to catch some of the rain water draining off the hillside. I walked around the "dam" to get to her thinking that it might have taken cover close by. We did jump one on the other side of the dam where she couldn't see it. I thought that might have been the one she chased. She flew to the perch as I got near, and I circled the other direction. We hadn't gone far when a young of the year busted right at our feet. I actually got to see her catch this one.

I pulled them out of the brush, and put them down on the bare ground

I killed it, and she was waiting for me to give her something. I gave her her cup of food and then a front leg from an earlier kill. She has learned that I will give her something to eat, rather than feeding her off the body. So she waits for me to kill the rabbit, give her the cup of tidbits, then a leg or some other chunk of rabbit to eat. When she gets her food, she lets go of the Jack. She had done so when I gave her the cup. I was a bit tardy in getting her other piece, so she reached out and grabbed it by the head again looking at me like" what are you trying to pull"? When I presented the leg, she again let go of it. We both laughed, she wasn't about to let me have it without payment to her.

Instead of feeding her the rest of her meal, I calculated that we had about a mile and half to walk to the quad, so rather than give her the rest and have the hassle of trying to walk with her trying to eat, I would not feed her till I got to the quad. So she went back on the perch as we walked to the quad.

We did get a few more chances at Jacks, in fact she tore a ball of fur off a Jack before we got close to the quad, and then a "Timber Tiger" ( name given to those miscellaneous lizards,voles, and other undesirable, to the falconer, items that present themselves. By Toby Bradshaw)  broke from cover. It was a race between Brick and Hope as to who would make the kill of such a fine specimen. Hope was a blur, Brick, not so much.

 The day was lovely, and warm with brilliant sunshine. Hope got way too much to eat, and we were blessed to be able to walk 2.75 miles to get it all done.