As is often the case, you live or die by the choices that you make. Often it is the omissions that set into action a course of events that jerks you up short. Aided perhaps by a bit of cockiness that allows you to gloss over the seriousness of possibilities that tend to occur given a small amount of inattention to basic principals that every thing is ruled by.
The area that I hunt is really plush this year. In a good year all this dry grass that you can see in this picture would have Rabbit trails cut into them. It also causes a problem if I take my "fuel efficient car" with a catalytic heater possibly catching the grass on fire, so I am restricted in where I can drive or park.
A friend joked to me about how "tough" it was this year concerning game for Hope. Since I had caught 3 Jacks in four trips, his thought was, that it couldn't be all that bad. Actually my head count really wasn't all that bad, but that head count was due to a couple of factors.
One is that Hope is an exceptionally well trained Harris. Not bragging, but she is the result of a years long exceptional breeding program, of obviously exceptional parents to produce the raw basic material suited for hunting with a falconer. There obviously were no "slackers" in Hopes ancestry. I firmly believe in - "Garbage in- Garbage out".
The second set of circumstances was an over abundance of game in her first year and last but not least a falconer who had screwed up enough birds that he was careful enough to do things right the first time, nature and the "Gods" smiled on me during her training. Every thing worked much better than would normally happen.
Hope has always preferred sitting the perch waiting for an opportunity to unleash all her energy on any Rabbit that jumps. She is almost always right where she needs to be, and has learned that a rabbit grabbed by the head cannot pull you through a Sage bush. She doesn't need a lot of whistling, yelling or other things to keep her where the action is, and where I am. Her manners are scary good.
There were so many things that aligned perfectly in the training of this bird that it is almost impossible to reproduce. She, given a front leg of a Jack after a kill, will pick up the uneaten portion and follow me through the Sage back to the car. I know it sounds a bit braggadocios on my part, but what the hell, even a blind Hog finds an acorn every once and a while.
That is the back ground of Hope. Now the consequences of a low rabbit year with lots of walking involved in finding something for her to chase. Often results on those fine features that you took so long to cultivate are modified to fit the conditions on the ground. The "Pedometer" app on my phone says that I walked 140 miles in the month of Sept.
What she is doing here is grabbing a Sage Root in the hopes that it might be edible. She samples every thing that might or looks as though it could be edible. This occurred after a walk of about 1/2 mile without jumping anything at all.
This was another "prospecting" side trip that she took, hoping to find something in there to kill. The reason for these is an indication of the impatience that she is experiencing while waiting for me to produce something to chase. Thus the scarcity of game is directly changing the behavior that I value so much- that of staying with me. She has begun to change her hunting style in an attempt to have more chances of having something to chase. She is beginning "self Hunting". Heretofore she had always followed me, now I was having to follow her.
In an attempt to counter act some of that tendency I decided yesterday to leave the dogs at home. The dogs hate it, and I don't feel real happy about it either. They need to be out and sharing these trips, but Josie tends to get out too far, so the flushes that we do get are somewhat lessened by the fact that they are far enough in front of us to give the Jack a chance to plan. I prefer to slip through the brush as quietly as I can. Noise and yelling and whistling frankly pisses me off.
So to counteract the scarcity of game, she has begun to "self Hunt", flying out in front of me in her impatience to find something to chase. Not much can be done about that on my part. We had put in about 2 hours of walking yesterday with nothing to show for it, and she was going further and oftener, out in front trying to find something.
We had jumped a Jack quite far in front of us and she had missed him. She was sitting on a bush on the peak of a small hill that restricted my view to about 30 yards. When I got there she was gone. No idea of which direction or how far. I listened and thought I heard a short very faint sound of a Jack screaming, but when I really stopped so that I could hear, the only thing I heard was a Meadow lark's one note song. I dismissed the thought that it might be a rabbit, and I really could not get a direction on where I thought it came from. I mentioned before that it is hard to scream with a hawk holding your mouth shut, so the one thing that could direct me to where she was did not exist.
I looked for four hours waiting for her to finish eating and perhaps jump up on something so that I could see her, but nothing! I went all four directions many times during that period and could find nothing. I felt that she would at least come back to the spot that she had last seen me, but at Six in the evening I realized that the dogs had been locked in the house since 9 AM. I had driven all over swinging a lure from all the high places around with no success. I really had no option but to go home, and hope that she would show up at a later date.
Earlier I was talking about choices and omissions. There was one factor that I should have found a solution to, and did not. That is a transmitter, of which I have several. I do not like to put them on a hawks leg. I want her footing ability to be totally unhindered. Its a bit like tying a swinging weight on a boxers right hand and expecting him to fight. I had used a tail mount for a transmitter in the years past, and she has pulled them off each time. I had one Prairie Falcon that would pull the feathers out of her own butt to get rid of the bothersome thing. I also had a fear of crushing the tail feather so I thought that I could get away without a transmitter. The last time I put one on She pulled it loose while she was sitting in the mews, and since it was turned off, it took me quite a long time to find it. So I thought that I could get away with out using one. That was a major problem waiting to bite me in the butt. Just a matter of time. The other of course was leaving the dogs at home. Josie will run with her when she chases just in case a situation develops where she can bite the Jack when it has stretched her out in a Sage Bush in its efforts to get away. If I had the dogs with me the chances of finding her would have been tripled, but I did not, so last night I suffered the sleep deprivation reserved for those who have shot themselves in the butt through hubris.
When I got home, I let the dogs out, and Brick barked and ran for the Grape in the garden. I saw a Raccoon duck under the wall that separates the garden. Now I knew what happened to every plum on my abundantly fruited tree as well as the disappearance of my surviving Chicken from last years Raccoon raid. I ran for the Shotgun, and he ran for the fence out. When I got back Brick had him "treed" on the rock jack of the garden fence. I shot him and looked for the other one, as I had seen two of them. I let Josie in the garden and she went right for the overhanging Grapes, and began making runs at the remaining Coon. I got her back and he too went to the great Grape vine in the sky. I saw two more later that evening, but couldn't get a shot at them. Raccoons have been the bane of my existence here. I cannot recount all the Chickens that I have lost to their depredations. One of the byproducts of the Creek that flows by.
I never really got to sleep last night, just dosed at best. The weight of losing your hunting Hawk due to stupidity is a heavy burden to bear.
I got up before dawn and took the dogs and the truck this morning so that I could travel without fear of setting the place on fire. I stopped in front of the giant trees that mark the homestead and swung my lure thinking that she might have taken shelter in the trees for the night, but nothing came. I drove by the perimeter of the field hoping that she would be sitting on a fence post, nothing. I then drove into the field and close to the spot that last saw her. I let the dogs out and began to walk to where I last saw her, and there she was sitting on a Sage root about 30 yards from where I parked. She had apparently spent the night in the Sage after coming back looking for me. Having been trained in a spot with no trees or telephone poles she does not know about them. I swung the lure and she came right away. I offered her a Jack Rabbit leg and she was in my possession again. I cannot describe the feeling of relief that I had.
When I picked her up the day before she weighed 950 grams. I weighed her when we got home and she weighed 1134. I perhaps gave her about 15 grams of food on the lure. She was a bit bedraggled but other wise OK. I don't know how long it took her to kill the Jack that she caught. Both feet are generally in the rabbits face and head. Both are a long way from the heart, so that in its self would not be fatal. Jacks are very strong and do not give up, so as to how long it could take is anybody's guess. I had thought when I picked her up that the Jack had gotten away, but that obviously did not happen. She is a remarkable Hawk.
These are the solution at least temporarily, to my problem. The little gadget that is on the transmitter now was too big. I hope that I have the proper size on the feather behind it. I am also going to again take the dogs with me in the future.
