2021 starting small

Sunrise in the Desert

Steen's

 New years day happened to be a normal day to fly Hope, and what could be a better way to start the new year than to go Hawking.

Hope is getting used to her new digs, and has learned that if she doesn't come to me, I don't come back until the next day. That is good, but it also comes with a down side. That is if she is even the slightest bit hungry, she will now come to me. Yes that is a good thing, but as I mentioned earlier there is a certain point that centrifugal force overcomes her ability to make the turns inside of the Jacks. The extra freight can sometimes make sharp corners impossible. In any case she came to me at 1064 grams. This is not to say that she slacked off, she flew her heart out, but was only able to pull hair a couple of times.

Personally I don't mind, heavens knows that I need the exercise, however Tami's sister, Tara and her husband George came down and I invited them to go hawking. Both are falconers, but due to very young children are not able to practice. 

Not having any idea what Hope would weigh, I invited them to go Hawking and they rearranged their schedules to go. Since time was a factor we went just on the other side of the Ranch. There are Jacks in there, just not that many. So here we go, 5 adults and three kids, one in a back pack. We put in about 3.5 miles, with Hope pulling hair twice, perhaps three times, but no pot of Rabbit at the end of the rainbow.

I eventually felt sorry for the girls and we let them go back home to start their dinner chores while George, Connie and I stayed to continue hunting. We jumped a Jack that snookered Hope and ran across the road into a really small patch of Sage. It was the perfect set up. If, that is, he had flushed the way that he should have, but of course he didn't. I walked right by him with Hope on the Tee perch, he waited till we were about 20 yards away and cut back the way he had came. Hope had him in the butt, but he scraped her off in a Greasewood tunnel.  January Jacks have been pared down to the strongest and best, they don't give up easily.

We started back to the car thinking that we would load up and go over the hill to a different patch of Sage and continue our hunt.

With three young kids that were really curious about Hope, I confess that I had called her several more times than I would ever do by myself, so she had had a few tidbits here and there. It did not  affect her desire, but with some hawks it would have, it merely added to her difficulty in turning. As we were walking back to the car, Brick was pointing a pretty big mess of Sage. I told him to "get it" and he began rooting around in the bush, but couldn't get any thing to come out. Hope was watching from the perch on my shoulder, and when I kicked the bush, she slammed into the ground on Bricks side and came up with a mouse, which she promptly swallowed. Brick was still at it, and pretty soon a hawk's foot snaked out and came up with another mouse.

These are cell phone photo's so they are not all that detailed, but if you look close you can see a mouse tail sticking out of her beak.

We had hunted pretty hard, with heavy odds against us, eight people in the field, one kicking my heels, the other asking nonstop questions and one whining that she wanted to play in the dirt. Not to mention an obese Hawk. So two timber Tigers (Mice) in one hawking trip is not to be scoffed at. 

I am hoping for bigger and better things to come this year, for all of us. Especially for fun times like these.

One last time, with gusto!

Well here we are on the next to last day of the year. It has been interesting to say the least. However since  I live "just East of Hell" as one prospective lady friend told me, ( Hey Carole) the impact on me has been a lot less traumatic than it has the rest of the "civilized" world. Social distancing is just another "shitty day in Paradise", for the residents of my corner of Oregon. Still even at my age, with my days numbering less and less, it is good to see it gone. Hopefully the impact on all of you has been bearable, and that it will get better- soon!

Hope is getting used to her new living quarters and is slowly becoming more willing to come to me to go hawking. I had to get her down to 1020 grams before she came to me with the intention to stay on the fist. Today I have to do a bit of mucking out of the house, as Connie is coming to spend a bit of time with me, so I wanted to get our hunting out of the way.  It is also my intention to go to my neighbor's house to get a live trap so that I can possibly catch the Bobcat that has been killing Jack Rabbits in the yard at night. Its a 50 mile round trip. Of course I could have avoided the last minute clean up if I had been keeping up with things but I, as with most men, find logic to be optional. 

This is the longest that I have hawked since coming here. While most all of you have been told how terrible "climate change" is to the world, I have reveled in the fact that this is the warmest December that I can remember in this country. There is nothing to stop the wind with the exception of the poor souls that have to go outside for a living here, and it can get downright nasty with out any problem. Now its not really what I would call climate change, I still have to wear some of the advanced type of "long johns" that have come on the market, but at least I can avoid frost bite and still go hawking with a tropical type of raptor. If any of you have any say in what is going on, I could really use a couple more degrees in the mornings.

It was quite balmy this morning at 22 degrees, so I went out to see if Hope wanted to play one last time this year. She came to me with only one attempt to fake me out, but I pretended indifference, so she decided that she better take me up on my offer to take her hunting,  while I was still willing to let her. I know that sounded pretty glib, but you have to remember these creatures read body language like nothing else in the world. They are better than my dear ole Mother could ever be about reading weakness and guilt.

I put her on the scales and she was up to 1054 grams. That is the highest she has ever willingly came to me since I moved her. 

When I got up this morning at just before daybreak I saw a Jack and a Bunny in the front yard. After the Bobcat comes through and sends terror through the entire rabbit population there is not sign that Rabbits even live in this part of the country. It takes them about a week to forget what happened the last time they ate off my lawn. So I knew that I needed to get that live trap, because the night stalker will be back soon.

I decided to hunt here rather than taking the time and gas to go somewhere else. We walked about a mile before we started the first Jack. He was far enough away that I had a hard time in keeping Hope in sight. Thankfully Josie runs with her, so if the dumb assed Coyote who  thinks this is his territory tried something, she would at least distract him from his quest. She of course missed the Jack, for which I was thankful, so I didn't have to run my guts out to get there to protect her. We got a closer shot at a Jack, but she telegraphed her move and he avoided the strike. I walked on up to the top of the little hump, intending to stay at the edge of the heavier cover around the sides. 

A Jack stayed too long in his "form", ( a dug out area under the Sage) and she burned him down in a burst of hair flying in the air like a halo around them. I have seen clumps of fur pulled out of their butts when they pull away from her, but the light was just right I guess, and it looked like an explosion.

Its been funny to watch Hope on her kills. Jessie, My best falcon ever, would almost attack me if she thought that I might want her Duck, but Hope, as soon as I break the Jack's neck and it quits struggling, immediately starts looking to me for her cup of tidbits. If I am a bit slow she starts dragging the Jack off to a bush knowing that will cause me to produce her cup of pleasure. She will let go of the rabbit to get it and then today, step up on the fist for the front leg that I had intended her to eat somewhere else so that I could gut the Jack. This one only took 1.3 miles to complete our year.

One can only hope that this year is better, but being who I am, I will bet otherwise. I do wish all of you that wades through this blog, all of the happiness that you each deserve. 

Happy New year!

Dec 28, 2020

Apparently I fed Hope entirely too much Jack the last time, and it took me a few extra days for her to lose enough weight that she wanted to come to me. That's OK, its a bit tough to find as many Rabbits as I would like, and since I am doing this for her, who am I to complain when she doesn't want to thrash around in the Brush chasing uncooperative Jack Rabbits. She weighed 1034 grams yesterday, and she reluctantly came to me after a bit of coaxing. She has found that she gets one chance to stay on the fist, or its another day without fun or food, so she decided to stay.

I had decided to see what was happening with the Jacks that lived at Arock. I hadn't hunted there for quite a while, and it seemed to me that the later the winter, they would begin to sift into that area, so it was time to check.

There seemed to be a good population there, but they were all flushing a long ways out. We put in 3.5 miles chasing quite a few Jacks and getting made fools of by the local Bunnie population which seemed to be doing well. The little varmints are quick and very tricky and seemed to be able to pull a rock crevice out of nothing, just as Hope closed. I decided that she could be suffering from an an enlarged waist line, so we went home with no dinner, for her at least.

Today however was another day and she weighed in at 1020. Bruce came over from Boise, so we went over to the ranch to see if we could do a bit better at a lighter weight. In all honesty the Sage at Arock is quite tall and very thick. I am amazed that she catches any thing there at all.

The area that I hunted today was small greasewood with scattered Sage. We made a rather large circle without seeing any thing at all. As we approached the road through a rather small and sparse cover, a Jack jumped about 15 yards in front of us and she burned him down with no problem.

   As you can see the scant cover did not do the Jack any favors. One flight, one kill!

I wish all of you a Happy New Year, and hope that you are well.