First time in snow

For whatever reason, mostly laziness, I have never hunted a Harris in snow. They don't have any real waterproofing on their feathers and look like an ugly chicken ready for plucking when they get wet. I won't go into the wimpiness of the unmentioned falconer regarding this earlier failing. I remember that I bought a 12 volt hair dryer to dry the first two Harris that I had. It actually saw more service in clearing the fog off my airplane windscreen than in drying soggy Harris Hawks. I think I just decided that it was more trouble than it was worth, and quit when it snowed. I did take Hope out in the snow her first year, and she would chase, but not close with the Jacks. It was cold, windy and just plain miserable and I just quit for the year. Then there is the mud afterwards.  :-/

Well things are a bit different this year. I don't have that much to do and I tend to vegetate now that I am by myself. So I decided that I would give it a try this year. We don't get all that much snow anyway, and it doesn't last very long, and I am bored!

This is the first year that I seem to have more moulting food for Hope than I actually need. I have been giving the Jacks that she has been catching to Tami. She hasn't had all that much time to hunt on her own, so the food isn't going to waste.

I mentioned in my last post that I was considering that I might be taking too many Jacks from the Sage around the house, as it was getting harder to find any thing to kill with Hope. My last trip was 7.2 miles. Today I tried a new area and only traveled 1.9 miles, and that includes whatever walking I did around the house and the place here before I went hunting. In any case today was a stroll comparatively. I am rejuvenated.

As I have mentioned before Jacks are a strange lot in the way that they think, or perhaps, I just don't have enough imagination to understand Jacks. Either way there are miles and miles of what appears to be the same thing- Sage brush flats, for hours in any direction you choose. Some, I think, a lot of it, has not much of anything in it. You can stop about anywhere in this country and take off walking and not see a Jack Rabbit at all. Then there are little pockets of rabbit populations here and there, with no obvious (to me) reason, that they should be there at all.

Three or four years ago, a good friend was out here hunting Antelope, and he told me that he had been seeing a lot of Jacks crossing the road just South of us. I went there later and looked, and I saw a few Jacks, but not too many. Since I had a spot in Arock that seemed to have four times the population, I didn't bother with the spot that my friend told me about. Well now the Arock spot is not producing as it used to, and I have been hunting the one or two spots at the ranch that have a fair population as well as here at the house. All of the spots that I have hunted are getting harder and harder to produce a Jack or two for the freezer. Seven miles is just too damn far to walk for one Jack Rabbit.

It snowed yesterday, about three inches. I had brought Hope back to her weathering area, so she could see the snow, and hopefully realize that it was normal for it to be on the ground. She had been offering to go hunting all day yesterday, so I knew that she would be at a good weight. She was 1030 grams when I picked her up today.

I decided to go down to the airport where my friend had seen the Jacks. The snow was about half as much as it was at the house, so that was good for her to start in.

Hwy 95 is a mile or so towards the Steen's from where I am standing, and this area seemed to have the most Jack rabbit tracks on the road. Jacks seem to have a compulsion to track up an area, apparently to confuse any Coyotes that might be in the area. Perhaps it is an attempt to intimidate the Coyote into thinking that the Jacks might gang up on him, or perhaps the Sage that they eat this time of the year acts as an amphetamine and they can't sit still. In any case there are always more tracks than rabbits.

One thing is for sure, they are more visible running on a white surface. Hope had a couple of long range chases, but had missed all of them so far, for which I was pleased. I didn't want her to catch anything that I couldn't get to her to protect her from any possible Coyotes in the area. I decided that there were more Jacks closer to the road, and sure enough she took off after one, way the hell and gone. This time I could hear the Jack screaming faintly. I gave it my best shot and eventually arrived sweaty and pooped, to where she was.

Since my photographer didn't come today, I killed the Jack and then took my pictures. I gave her a front leg after she ate all the tidbits in the cup, and waited for her to finish the front leg so that we could walk to the car which was quite a ways off.

 I like to arrive at the car while she is still eating, to keep her occupied while I am carrying her on the fist. She had a cup (large handful) of meat, and a front leg off a Jack, but I knew that she would still be expecting the rest of her meal, so she would stay with me.  I would give her the rest of her meal at the car when I put her in her box.

She had no sooner dropped the last chunk of bone when another Jack jumped within 15 feet of us, and she caught him in nothing flat. To say that I was amazed was an understatement.

Well now, I have already fed her my tidbits, I am out of small chunks of meat for her, so I kill the Jack, (Which she had caught with her bad foot) and take out the first rabbit, thinking that I will pull its leg off for her. Then I reconsider and reach into my vest for the baggie with a ribcage in it. She lets go of the second rabbit and grabs me by the left hand, sinking a talon in the web of my hand. I eventually shook her off my hand, ( she realized that it was me rather than a tasty Jack) I then gave her the rib cage to eat. I then twisted off the first Jack's head to feed her with, and we went to the car. 

I put her in the car, with her head, and gave the dogs some water, then made them pose for me.

I have an idea for a new call made just for raptors. It's the sound of fumble fingers trying to open a plastic ziplock bag. If I can find a way to amplify it loud enough, every trained raptor in the area will be right there for you.