Well, another bummer type of year. Rabbits are still down! Bird flu is still around. My last dog- Brick has died of old age. Weather is great however!
Once again, the Rabbits are scarce enough to be on the endangered list. About the best I can do in a 4-mile hunt with a hungry hawk on a 7-foot perch is 2-3 Jacks sighted, mostly at 2-300 yards, running at full speed. Last year I quit in the middle of November. I didn't want to do that again. So, I began to consider the problem.
I reasoned that the drone should supply a way to exercise her and keep her mind normal. I decided to put a quail leg on the normal Drone lure. My thoughts were that she would work her way up to the lure parked at 100 feet. Reality showed me that she had no idea how to fly, beyond a kamikaze dive into Sage Brush. After some head scratching, I realized that had been all the flight opportunities that had been presented to her over her lifetime.
I took her out of the weathering area, weighed her, then turned her loose to take a perch on top of the hanger. I fired up the drone and started climbing as I got it in the air. When the lure cleared the ground, she started after it. On reflex, I pulled it out of her range. ( Nobody's perfect!) She wasn't even able to fly up 10 feet to grab it. She sat on the ground to try to figure out what happened and what it meant. I brought it back around and made sure that she could get it.
two days later I set the drone up outside, ready to fly, and decided that I would walk the triangle of Sage outside my fence with her on the T Perch. Then if we didn't catch anything, we would go back to the drone. I managed to walk about three hundred yards out in the field, when she left the perch and flew back to where the drone sat. She walked around it, looked it over for a lure and then just sat there waiting for me to come back and feed her. A bit of a quick study, that girl! She learned that as quickly as a bad habit. I did call her back and finished my walk. We did jump one long range Jack, that she couldn't find when she finally got to the last spot that we saw him.
This time I was more aware of her lack of flight and kept it low enough, flying the lure in a large circle about 50 feet above the ground and made sure she caught it. This was the time that I discovered that an entire quail was more food than she needed. The third day after this flight I set up the drone, but not take it off the ground. I had the lure covered so that she could not see it.
One of the ways that I measure her intentions about hunting, is that I leave her loose in the Weathering area. If she isn't waiting by the door, she is not coming to me, and I can go on with my other stuff. Her problem with knowing that there is a lure somewhere, meant that she didn't need to come to me, she already had that worked out. So, I didn't feed her at all.
I didn't make that mistake again, and the next flight was better. I had practiced flying in a large circle with the lure about 75 feet off the ground. I had started putting her in her Giant hood after weighing her. I put the drone up and parked far enough away that she would not grab it before I could regain the controls. This time it all worked like I had intended.
I have never had to use a lure in her training. I introduced her to it during her initial training and she has never forgotten. In fact, it holds such allure for her that once captured, she does not let go. I am hoping that she learns that it is merely a one- time thing and no more meat will appear. So, when she came to me, she would drag the lure along with her. Today she left the lure and came to the fist. Much better!
I am not sure where I am going with this exercise, but she at least has an interruption to her daily routine. I will try to find a way to run the drone and film it. Perhaps when she has learned to fly I can capture some of it.
I have decided that I am not going to kill any of the resident Jacks here. They are down to bare minimum here, and I don't have the luxury of paying the gas prices to go to where there might be some. The home range of Jack Rabbits is somewhere around two acres. Some of the 100- or 200-acres plots may only have one or two Jacks in them. The more I kill, if I could, would possibly slow the repopulation down even further. I am getting old enough that I can see the end for me, and it isn't that far in the future.
Some of you may remember Yogi. I got her in 2011 from a rehabber in St. George Utah. She was quite a bird, and was such a smart, thinking, hunting hawk. I flew her for several years in several different cast situations and she always impressed me. I gave her to Sarah Morrison for several years. She sent her back to me when she moved to Montana. I gave her to Tammi Stoddart next door. She started out for her first flight for her this year. She flew to a Sage and came back to the perch. On landing she was unsteady and seemed to have trouble standing up. Tami took her back home and called me. Everything was normal, mutes looked good. After three days of observation, no symptoms other than an inability to stand up. I believe that she had a stroke. She is improving and beginning to regain her ability to stand.
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