Last day of Hope's Forth season

 In a lot of ways I am sad to be quitting for the season. This year has been one of the most enjoyable and satisfying of all the years that I have hunted Jack Rabbits. Of course I miss my old hunting partner, Karen, but it has still been an outstanding season.

For one thing, I was running out of string. The string on the left was last years catch, the one on the right is compressed quite a lot, and there is a Quail head hidden in there somewhere. I did the math today and found that there was a possibility of 140 days to hunt this year. I only fly every other day, and I wasn't always able to do that. I only doubled one time, but I can't remember not catching anything at all, other than today. We put in 5 miles today, saw 4 rabbits, and she pulled hair on one of those.

Of course I did hunt a bit longer than normal this year, most likely due to not having any below zero weather for one of the few years since I came here. Normally December is a real bitch for cold weather.

Here is a view from all sides

There are a couple reasons for stopping. One of them is that I walked 5 miles and saw four Rabbits, the other is that breeding season is on the way very soon.

swollen reproductive tract of female Jack Rabbit.

My friend Pat, in Burns has also stopped, due to the swelling of the rabbits reproductive system, as well as the annual gathering of the Eagles in Burns. While I don't have Eagles to contend with, I do have what I consider a shortage of Rabbits. Hopefully the ones left will be fruitful and multiply this year.

One of the main reasons that I didn't want to stop is that there is no way in hell that I am going to take a 5 mile hike every other day without a hawk on the fist as an incentive. I guess I will just have to find a way to quit eating and go to an every other day regime such as what I used on Hope.

So until the weather clears and warms enough to fly and fish, I will most likely be a little quieter than you might be used to. Thanks to each of you for reading my wanderings.

Jan. 14th

 I am going to have to quit feeding Hope the Liver and Heart. She gains too much weight. I picked her up today and found that she weighed 1050 grams. She hunts at that weight, just has to do it longer. At least that is how it appears to me.

I got her and the dogs in the car, but couldn't find my tee perch. Sigh! After a bit of thinking, ( apparently not my "long suit".) I remembered that I had leaned it against the bumper when I put her in the car after we hunted the last time. Not knowing how much traffic is on that road, and whether someone might have picked it up or driven over it, I made a new one that would work in a pinch. I was quite pleased to see it laying at the edge of the road, unharmed, when I got to where I had left it. I saw four rigs on that road while I was there, but apparently no one needed a tee perch.

I picked it up and went a bit further down the road. Its more than a mile across the flat before the ground starts to rise and there are grassy open spots with no Sage, along the road, and I was curious to see what they would be like. We had just started into the Sage when a Jack broke from cover. Hope took two shots at him, before he left her sitting on the ground. We had three more chances, most long range, before we seemed to run out of Jacks. I had walked a huge circle with nothing to show for it. I zigged, I zagged, I went into cover, then to the edge of cover, finding nothing. I eventually got so far from the car that I feared that she might catch something, and I would have to carry her back on the fist. So I got on the other side of the road and walked back towards the car,. We didn't see a thing. I crossed the road into some bigger Sage and just started walking away from the road. After about 1/4 of a mile We hit a long distance Jack and she gave chase, missed! There was a little rise in the ground, not much more than five feet or so, but it seemed enough different that some Jacks were using it. I think for a vantage point. ( then again, I could be imagining it. ) We jumped another and she rolled him, but ended up with nothing but hair.

I had just about decided that we were going home empty handed, when she took off after another long range Jack. This time she didn't come up on a Sage as she usually does after a miss. I marked the spot and took off, still doubting that she might have gotten him, as I didn't hear any screams. Joe had as usual ran to where she had gone to ground, but came back in my direction, so I slowed my pace. Finally I heard a muffled hum in the Sage in front of me, and there she was, right in the middle with a waded up Jack Rabbit. He was tied in a knot and couldn't scream. I killed him and gave her the little cup of joy that she likes so much.

 

We put in 9467 steps or 4.29 miles to catch this Jack. When I got home, I weighed Hope to see how much food I had given her and found that She enjoyed 200 grams, or 7 ozs of Jack Rabbit. We will see how much of that goes away when I pick her up again. It was quite warm,  52 degrees, so I don't think she will lose that much weight. Our really cold weather is in December and we skated right on through that. 

I had noticed that there didn't seem to be much "cutting" of any of the Sage, and paid special attention to that this time. I could see where the Jacks had fed on some of the Sage, just not that much, so I decided that the population using this area is not all that big, but they are there, just not in the numbers that I would prefer. I also examined the stomach contents of the Jack that she killed and all of it was green, and quite moist, so I decided that they were mainly feeding on the Sage. All the grass is dried and a tan color, and doubtful of having much nutrition in it at all.

Jan 12th 2021

 I normally would have hunted yesterday, but I had an appointment to get my Covid shot at the V.A. Clinic in Boise Idaho, Monday at 0745. ( The toughest part of that was a 4 am departure.) So when Hope killed her two Jacks on Sat. I gave her one of the heads to eat along with all the other chunks of Jack that she had with her normal meal. One needs to clean the raptor's system occasionally with either fur or feathers, and this was a good opportunity to do so.  I knew that she always gains weight when she has a head to eat, so I figured that I would be able to skip an extra day before I needed to fly her again. 

When I picked her up this morning she weighed 1041 grams. About 20 grams more than what she is the "hottest" at, but she was anxious. The storm that is forecast for this area was not due to arrive until the early afternoon, so we loaded up and headed out about 10 AM. I stopped closer to the Hwy in an area that I had seen quite a lot of tracks the other day with the fresh snow. There was not much indication that anything lived there, now,but I kept walking.

In the Sage flats here the Jacks have "cut" lots of branches off the Sage to eat. That seems to supply most of the food that they are eating at this time of the year. However I was not seeing any indication that they were eating it at the new spot. There is not much vegetation other than the Sage in this area, so I am a bit puzzled as to what their food supply really is there.

I was getting further and further from the car and had only had two long range flights, so I decided to cross the road and head back to the car, which was dwindling in the distance, with the intention of moving further up the road. Almost as soon as we started on the other side, she took off after one, much too far away to have much of a chance to catch it. I kept moving back towards the car, and she soon joined me. Within a couple of minutes one jumped close to us and she burned him down. The Sage was pretty dense, but small, and he was dragging her through bush after bush. The Sage wasn't all that big, so he couldn't scrape her off before I caught him by the head. 

  Since she was already heavy, and I gave her the liver to eat along with a hind leg of her previous catch. I am pretty sure that she is in no danger of starving to death anytime soon. The weather is supposed to be a bit crappy for the next little bit any way.

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.
  

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.

First Jack of the year

 It has been stormy for the last couple of days. I fed Hope on the fist Sunday as it was forecast to be nasty for the next few days. Today however dawned clear and pretty warm, at least for January.

 Hope this time was down to a manageable weight. 1024 seems to be heavy enough that she can withstand the cold, but still be maneuverable enough to make the twist and turns necessary to catch a Jack.

I wanted to try the field next to the house, as it used to hold a fair number of Jacks. However since the Bobcat has been raiding the place, there were no Jacks in the part closest to the creek and the rim rock that borders it. I am not surprised. You can chase them over and over in the same spot with a hawk, but when a Bobcat comes calling more than once, its a bit like the ground has been sterilized, and it is no longer fit to hold a Jack Rabbit. They just leave and do not come back for a long time. We did jump a Bunny that beat Hope to the rimrock, but no Jacks were to be found until we started up the hill far away from the bottom part.

After we crossed the drive way up the hill, a Jack took off and appeared to not know that there was a Hawk bearing down on him. That is until the last second when he jumped to the side and clear.  I decided to walk down to the wind sock and cross the runway into the field below the runway. As we neared the wind sock, a Jack jumped and started off on a leisurely fashion down to the runway. He apparently had his head up his butt and Hope hit him hard enough that he went cartwheeling completely head over heels and she apparently lost him somewhere in the middle of that. He shook himself off and made his way to somewhere else, in a hurry. 

We started East from the runway, and another Jack jumped further out. She crashed into the Sage and we heard a short squeal of surprise, but she lost that one as well. In the last two hunts she has made contact with 6 Jacks that she lost. While she still has a good record of catches it is obvious that I would have spent a lot less time hawking if she actually had the use of two feet rather than just the one. That's alright, she is still the best Harris that I have ever seen if you measure her speed, willingness to hunt at any weight, field manners and any other thing that is measurable in hunting hawks. 

After we left the runway I traveled a bit different path than usual and it paid off with a Jack jumping nice and close. She smacked him and when I arrived she had both feet on his head.

It's pretty hard to see, but all that is showing is one unlucky rabbit foot.

It was pretty hard to kill him, because she had his head pretty well covered up. Its really amusing to me that as soon as I broke his neck, she stood up, ready for her cup of goodies. I used to be able to give her a chunk of food and she would walk off to eat it. Now she crawls up on the fist waiting to grab what ever I have in my hand. I think I liked the part where she walked off with the food better. I can just see the bandaids that are likely to be necessary with the other scenario.

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.