I have to say "Its been interesting" this year. I think I have questioned myself more this year than I ever have. I have been practicing falconry for 56 years,so one would think that I might have an inkling about how things should work. Training a new Hybrid (1/2 Peregrine/half Gryfalcon ) should be a piece of cake. New tools such as a Drone that takes away all the problems of having your falcon learning to drift and wander all over the country. With a drone the reward are always there, it is in action before the falcon even gets it hood taken off. The bird builds strength so much quicker, because you can plug the drone into your computer and set "fences" that tells the drone to go to the altitude that you want, ( You start at 20 feet, and as the bird gets more strength, you keep setting the altitude higher until you have reached your goal) Right now Bud is going 600 feet to get the lure. When the battery gets low, the drone automatically comes back and lands in the spot that it took off from without any help from the operator.
Before your only choice was to turn the bird loose and try to teach him by rewards (pigeons) to stay near you and preferably over head. Most of them would wander off, fly high in thermals and when they got tired they would start a dive from 1/4 mile off and end up over your head at 15 feet. There are lots of variations, none of them what you wanted.
Once you reach the height that you wanted, you introduce game for them to chase and hopefully catch. That has been the problem for me. Falcons love Pigeons! They will chase them every time they get a chance. So the first thing you need in your arsenal is not just Pigeons, but GOOD Pigeons. Ideally you want the Falcon to chase them, but not learn that he can catch them if he chases them long enough.
My last falcon, Jessie, would catch every Pigeon that I threw for her. She would chase them until they tried to take cover and then kill them when they did. Thanks to a friend I was given some good Homer stock. A pigeon that you take out of the barn or from under a bridge, just can't cut it. So that problem was taken care of.
Bud thankfully will take a couple of shots at the ones that I throw for him and then break off- so far! My problem comes in by not being able to set him up with flights on game that I want him to be able to catch. His main quarry will be Ducks. Most falcons if introduced to Upland game such as Pheasants, Grouse, Huns and the like will ignore Ducks. Upland game flies in such a manner that excites a falcon so much that they cannot resist. Ducks however just are not as exciting. So when you enter a falcon you want to be able to hunt both. You start them on Ducks first. If a Pheasant does get up when you are in the field, you can be assured that your falcon will give chase. Not so if they have only had upland game to start on.
So to teach him that he needs to fly high enough to command the pond or area, I needed to toss a flighted Duck under him just before he closes with the lure at 500 feet. Simple right? Apparently not! Things have been going well, so far. I am getting what is called, Flighted Mallards from a game farm in Idaho. $14 bucks a Duck. Well worth the money! Earlier Harry had bought a bunch of Chukars from them to use on his falcon. When he went home he left them here for me to use.
In all the eons since critters have existed, they have learned that a sickle shape in the sky is bad juju, and you should not fly when those demons are visible. Run don't fly! A "barn" pigeon will if necessary and nothing else is available, fly right back under your feet to escape. So do Chukars!
To avoid problems and because I had no other option, I decided that if I could keep a Chukar inside my vest so that he couldn't see the falcon, and picked a time when Bud was a bit behind me that I had a good chance of him flying long enough for Bud to get down from the sky to get a shot at the Chukar. My vest has a 'game compartment' in the back, with a zipper. I thought if I put the Chukar there, I could unzip it and let the Chukar escape at an opportune moment and if committed he would keep flying long enough that Bud could have a shot at him, since he would be going at least twice as fast as the Chukar. Hell, it could have worked. I know that the last one sure put a lot of territory between us when he slipped out of a closed and snapped pocket of my bag before I had released Bud. One of the factors that have just about convinced me that I am going senile, is that I thought it would actually work.
What actually happened- I turned Bud loose and cranked the drone up to its set height of 600 feet. Bud needed and wanted to find a thermal that would help him climb to the needed altitude. That happened to be down the ridge line about 600 yards. I have slight cataract clouding in my eyes and recently a chunk of crap cut loose in my 'good eye' that makes it tough to see as clearly as I need to. Bud shortly began coming back towards the drone, so I unzipped my bag when he was about a 100 yards out, nothing happened I reached into my bag, behind my back trying to get the Chukar out, he kept digging on the zipped side and before I could turn him around, Bud pulled the lure out of the drone and the game was over.
The next time I took one of the Ducks out of the big Chicken pen, 20X15. I basically go through the same setup. I toss the Duck, he flutters to the ground, Bud mugged him on the ground. So basically the lesson from Bud's perspective was just hang around close to the idiot with the duck and save all that energy.
You see one of the dangers of a drone is that the falcon can learn to ignore game under them because they know the reward is hanging from the drone. So I am getting worried that I am getting close to the point that Bud would not go up to altitude without the drone there to draw him up.
I had gone over to the ranch, where Ducks are filling the ditches around the barns and houses, thinking (again) that he needed to learn that there are other things to chase than drones. I neglected to mention that the field in question was covered in surface water just a bit lower than the grass that covered it, and he was a bit heavier than normal. Long story short, he flew and flew and apparently he was unable to distinguish the meat on the lure from the mud that was in the field. He didn't leave the area, but he would not come to the lure for quite a long time.
Connie came down for a visit last Wed. Having one more Duck, I decided to go to another field that was dry and had a ditch that had held Ducks last year. I had cut a bit of weight off Bud, so I felt that he would pay a little more attention to the job at hand. I turned him loose and he began picking up some altitude and hanging around as well. I started towards the ditch which unfortunately did not hold any Ducks. No problem I will just toss out the Duck that I paid $14.00 for and things will work out fine. The Duck hit the ground faster than a cripple without crutches. The dogs and I immediately rush the Duck which in retrospect, was an unfortunate decision. With two dogs and me in the way, Bud declined to join the fray. That lead to a long soar in a thermal about a 1/4 mile away. I apparently lost my mind and could only think of regaining the Duck. I tried to get the dogs to grab the Duck, they apparently thought it was a trap so that I could beat them for touching it, and would only bump it with their noses. ( Josie and I had a talk about her tendency to try to kill the rabbits that Hope was fighting with) The Duck tried to hide in a ditch and I caught him. Bud finally came back towards us and for some reason I threw the damn thing again with the same result of course. I tossed the lure and Bud landed on it. While we started chasing the duck again. Connie is collapsed on the ground between the numerous cow pies, laughing herself sick. The Duck meantime goes from running to chasing the dogs as well as Bud when we ran her close enough to him.
Today my friend Bruce came down and brought two more Ducks with him, that he had at his house. We went to the ridge up from the house, turned Bud loose without the drone, but ready. He started circling us just as he should, got up to a pretty good altitude. I had Bruce toss the duck. I was afraid to touch it for fear of screwing things up again. This time the Duck took off like it should have. Bud turned over and came slashing down, tried to grab the Duck in the air, the Duck shook loose and proceeded to flee the country. Bud recovered and disappeared down the ridge line after it. We waited to see if he would reappear, and when he didn't went after him. We finally found him with the Duck.
One of the things that I wanted to do different with Bud was to trade him off of game with the lure, and then to the fist for Quail. I feared that with him not eating any of the Duck that he would not be as anxious to catch Ducks if he didn't want to eat them. He does like brains, so I killed the Duck by cutting open his brain cavity, and he was eating that and likes it. I opened the skin on the breast and fed him a bit of that. He wasn't sure that he liked it, but he did eat a few bites. I then gave him the liver which he spit out. It reminded me of the time I sampled a piece of warm Moose liver, so I could sympathize. He did eat the heart, but then he wanted his lure, and after that the fist with the rest of his Quail. Snob!
I am beginning to think that I might be able to come out of this with a falcon that will hunt. I am going to try to do a lot less thinking and more doing. Who know, it might work.
Wow!
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