Jan 7

 The timing has been just right. The weather is nice every other day, and I am hitting all of them with Hope's hunting. I am considering stopping my hunting for the year. I am a bit worried that I might be harvesting too many. I should write that again, because I think it might be the first time that I have ever uttered that sentence and been serious. I am talking just about this particular area, here around the house. I have really enjoyed being able to hawk here without driving 50 miles to get to a spot that we could hunt. The main reason that I have not hunted it in past years was because it doesn't hold all that many Jack Rabbits. Now, This year there are not all that many Jacks anywhere, so I might as well save my money and stay at home.

 Bruce came over from Idaho to hunt with us. Today, we walked 7.2 miles to get slips on 6 rabbits. She killed the 6th one. She pulled hair on 3 of them. Most if not all were long range stuff, that we would never have known that were there without her giving chase to Jacks that were jumping 100 yards away. In other words we never saw them, until she gave chase.

 This was a big Jack, and she somehow held him with one foot while plastered to the bush in front of her. With her having full use of only one foot, this is the tricky part. There was no way that she was going to come through the same hole that the Jack did. Either I could manage to catch him before he broke loose or she would lose him totally.

Having been through this scenario with several raptors in the past, I have come to the conclusion that haste makes waste, so I slowed my approach and came in from the front, hoping that he might try to turn away from me and thus get in range of her other foot. That wasn't happening, but I was able to grab him and put him out of his pain quickly. Once he was dead and kicking, Hope stood up and pulled him to a more comfortable place for her. All the other Hawks that I have hunted, held on for dear life as long as the prey was still moving, and were difficult to transfer over to food. Not Hope, The Jacks reflexes were still firing in his hind legs, and she relaxed and stood up, looking over her shoulder at me.

Cell phone photos courtesy of Bruce Haak

After she finished the tidbits, I gave her a hind leg with just the calf muscles on it and picked up the Jack and my Tee perch and headed back to the house. We were still 3/4 of a mile from the house and I didn't have all that much more to give her and still be able to hunt on Saturday, so I intended to either have her follow or ride the perch til I could get close enough to home that the ration that I had left for her, would last until I got there. She choose to carry the foot in her beak and follow us about 35 yards back. Its quite amusing to see her flying up to land close to us with a bone in her beak. Then doing it again and again. Finally I relented and gave her the rest of her meal, having just enough so that her last bite was at the door of the weathering area.