Time to stop!

In reality, the year 2019 is over. Christmas is just around the corner. Hibernation is pretty high on my list of things to do. The year has been pretty good overall. It has probably been the least active year of my life. I didn't go fishing even one time, and my flying has taken a back seat to every thing I have done. The only thing that remained the same was my Hawking, yet even that suffered from loss of my normal joy of life. Yet I have persisted.

I went hawking again yesterday, and drove to the only other spot that used to have enough Jacks to make the 100 mile round trip worth while. The area is high Sage, with lots of thick Sage as well as Lava outcrops, and it is rare indeed to get a clear shot at a Jack. This is the spot that Hope injured her foot at the end of last years hunt. Normally it also holds an abundance of Bunnies that break up the hunt, by supplying a shot of excitement to the normal long slips on Jacks. However I have seen none of these little dynamo's in the last two times I have hunted there. We put in three miles of exercise yesterday in an attempt to bring a Jack home for the freezer. Hope could not close the deal however, and we came home empty handed.

After a long night of considering the risks and rewards of continuing pursuit of the dwindling numbers of Jack Rabbits, I decided this morning that it was time to give it up for the year and hope that this next one will have a few more Jacks in it. Other areas do have more Jacks, but I seem to be down to one tract of Sage within 50 miles, that holds enough Jacks to make it worthwhile to drive there. So this morning when I picked up Hope from her perch in the Shop, I gave her the first food this season that she didn't catch.

Dec 8th

Well the snow has all melted, but I seem to have gone into hibernation mode. Truth is I am more than a bit spoiled. Hope's aversion to cold and wet snow, and my unwillingness to show her what happens to Hawks that don't hunt, seems to have given me the excuse that I need to sit in front of the TV and wait for spring. However the TV and politicians in general piss me off enough that there is no comfort in that exercise either.

Then there are a couple of friends that keep sending me pictures of their hawks with dead Rabbits that also contribute to my general feeling of worthlessness. I took Hope out here at the house, the day before yesterday and while we did jump four Jacks over 3.5 miles of slogging, nothing came of it.

The clouds are heavy with moisture and lowering over the desert, so If I am going to hunt at all, I needed to get my butt out there.

I am down to one field that I can hunt, and I hesitate to hit it too hard. There just isn't that many places close enough to drive to, that hold Rabbits. The one here at the Ranch is too muddy to get to, so that leaves Arock, and it is a 50 mile round trip.

The snow has laid down most of the weeds that covered the fields there, and that to me was an improvement. I had hoped to find a Jack in some of the open stuff with the thought that we could get it over pretty quickly with the right slip. Eventually she took off after a Jack that was at the limit of my ability to see her, and of course missed. She came up on a Sage bush, acting as though he might still be there. I began walking towards her. She took off again, and made a shot in the Sage, but again came back up on a Sage. I walked to her and she took her place on the Tee. I looked around to see where the jack might have taken refuge, and decided to go to a clump of rocks that would give us a vantage point. He held his nerve until we had passed the bush he was hiding in and then made his break behind us, up the hill. It didn't matter,  he was too close and she burned him down within 30 yards.

She had caught him by the front shoulder, and he was stretched out with his legs between hers and pushing for all he was worth.  She was lying on her back and had torn most of his shoulder skin off. I grabbed his head and tried to take a picture, but I was too close and the damn camera would not snap. I considered taking the time to crush the camera with a rock, as it is always a pain in the butt every time I try to use it. I Killed the Jack for her and gave her the cup of tidbits, then a chunk of Coyote to hold her till I could get some meat off the Rabbit.

I was ready with the Jacks head when she finished her appetizer, and we walked back to the car. I have an app on my phone that measures the distance and the time to walk it. The time showed 18 minutes total walking time. Did that shame me some over my laziness- yes, but I will get over it.

Dec 2nd, 2019

As I am sure you are aware, November closed out with some genuine winter. Our morning temps had been in the mid 20's. I woke up Friday the 29th with the nagging feeling that I had misjudged something important. I went to the dining room to check the outside temps and the thermometer read 3.8 degrees below zero. Holy crap! I hurried out to see how Hope was doing, and even though it was dark, she was talking to me. I picked her up and took her inside the shop. She was shaking from the cold, but alright. I turned on the heat to the shop and got her some hot meat that I had soaked in hot water, to warm her from the inside as well.

I always watch the Boise weather before I go to bed and they had said nothing about a cold snap. I counted myself lucky that she wasn't hypothermic. Harris hawks are not suited to Northern climes. They do not have any down to keep them warm.

So it snowed a bit over Friday and Saturday, and put down another couple of inches this morning. I was pretty sure that Hope wan't going to hunt in the snow, but I decided to give it another try, to see if she would.

She sure wanted to be fed, so I weighed her and she was within the weight that she had been hunting, so I cut some meat and went to get her. I started out to the gate to see if we could find some of the Jacks that live here. She started towards the gate, then changed her mind and circled back to the  tee perch.   Then flew to the gate post. I opened the gate and tossed some tidbits down into the snow. She flew down but seemed confused as to where the tidbits could have gone. She eventually found it after several more were tossed down. It was covered with snow, and she flicked it off like she didn't know what it was. I began walking up the road, she flew back to the Motor home. I called her, flicked some more tidbits, got her on the tee and she promptly went back to the Motor Home. I called it a day.

This afternoon my neighbor, down on the Whitehorse road called and asked me if I wanted any Jack Rabbits, as they were ganging up on his feed yard. I had hunted his property at least twice this year and walked my butt off trying to find enough Jacks to hunt. He had been telling me that there were some Jacks there, but we had a hard time finding any when the weather was good. I had told him then that Jacks would travel great distances for food, but their home territory was only about 2 acres. Snow changes the population density around hay stacks by a staggering amount.

I have nowhere near enough Rabbits to feed two Hawks till next Sept, so I grabbed my 22 and drove down there. There is about 4 inches of snow on the ground and the tracks were unbelievable. I parked in his stack yard and waited for them to come to dinner.

I brought home 23 Jacks. That is food enough for 11 weeks, so if the snow holds, I will try to make another trip or two. In case you are wondering they are all "headshot", and I used a solid bullet.
So the heads get tossed and there is no lead in any of the rest of the body.

Not all days are successful :-/

It is a given, if you have an easy day- the next one is going to kick your butt. It serves to keep us humble.

We are due a "reported" serious storm here in the West. Most likely it is over hyped, but the first one of the year is always the worst. Because we as a species tend to get cocky, the hwy's are littered with "angels in the snow" every time we get that first couple of inches of snow on the roads.

I wanted to go Hawking today, while we still could, before the storm caught up to us. Even if it doesn't snow the winds are supposed to be pretty serious. The falling barometric pressure really is felt by the animal kingdom and all the critters are trying to stock up so that they can weather the storm.

 Hope was feeling it pretty strongly, and it showed in her restlessness. It didn't however help any with her ability to duck and dodge with the Jacks. She caught the forth one that we jumped, but he managed to twist out of her grip, never to be seen again.

We really didn't see all that many Jacks and our slips at them were all pretty far away. The wind began to come up, as we spent more and more time in the field. Hope kept pushing ahead, which is rare for her, but nothing we did got us any closer to killing a Jack. To me, another indication of a falling barometer.  She normally rides the perch until something jumps.

I have always wondered about a Hawks memory, and today I found out just how good it is. I have been hunting this huge pasture for several years and I see spots where I remember hawks of the past killed a Jack, and I have always wondered if the Hawks remembered as well. Now I can tell you that they do.

There is a four foot wall of Lava along the road going in, that a Badger dug our for what ever reason.  when Hope was in her first year she caught a Jack that went down that hole. She went in after him and caught him inside the hole. I was able to reach in at a different spot and grab one of his legs, and thus pull them out. I have seen her on more than one occasion land on the rocks and check it out, but today she flew to it as we were walking by. The vegetation is high enough that I could not see the hole, but she flew to it and went down the hole to see if there was anything in it, proving to me that she did remember.

https://vimeo.com/375770901

We gave it our best shot walking 9255 steps or 4.25 miles in over an hour and 50 minutes. I think even Hope was tired since she flew to the car when it finally came into view and thus relieved me of the chore of carrying her the last 1/4 mile.

Our time to hunt is limited and of course depends on the weather. So far she has shown no desire to catch anything with snow on the ground. I have to admit that I am not all that wild about hunting when it is that cold and snowy. There just isn't that many Rabbits around and I would just as soon throw another log on the fire and nap till the weather gets better. As they say, "with age, comes wisdom", or is it laziness, I can't seem to remember.

Nov 23rd

My cousin, Lowell Davis and his lady, Nancy, were on their way back home after a few weeks in Death Valley. They stopped here for the evening. Due to the approaching storms and colder weather he wanted to winterize his travel trailer before he got into the snow zone at McCall.  It didn't take long before the chore was finished.  Since it was Hope's day to go hunting,  he and Nancy wanted to go Hawking again with Hope. So all four of us, (Connie was here as well) loaded up for the trip to Arock.

I went this time to the same field that she killed the last Jack in the first 5 minutes of the hunt. My theory being that we really didn't stir the field up all that much, so it followed that I could hunt it again.

The Sage is quite a bit higher than I like and we only managed 4 slips at Jacks, all of which managed to out maneuver her. After walking for quite a while, I decided to change fields.  We crossed the fence and walked about 100 yards when a Jack jumped about 20 yards away. She missed him on the first strike, but got back in the air and nailed him about 10 yards from the first attempt. She had him by the right front shoulder and he was taking her for a ride around the Sage with him trying to find something to scrape her off, but I got there first and grabbed him as he tried to get by me.

I was a bit close to the action, so Connie took a picture of me trying to take a picture.

As you can see he suffered some damage in the fight.

Nancy took a few pictures with her phone, and gave a bit more perspective.

This Hawk continues to amaze and please me every time I take her out. She is all business.

How tough can it get?

I've been busy with appointments and commitments and had to pass up one or two days before I could get the time to go Hawking. I still have a lot to do, but I decided that I could take a short break to take Hope out to try to contribute to her winter food supply, via her prowess as a huntress.

Things are changing a bit due to the approaching winter. The rabbits change their habits as well, and the last time Connie and I went to Arock it appeared that the Jack's were a bit more plentiful. I can't say for sure, but we found four down in what I would call the grassy part of the area that I like to hunt. To find four of them close to the beginning of the field was a bonus for us and it didn't take all that long for Hope to pick one of them off to add to our bag. I was gratified that we didn't have to spend all day trying to catch one. I decided to go back to Arock as I had not been there for at least a week.

I am leaving the dogs at home now. Josie on her last trip out, came up with a sore shoulder and was limping quite a bit. I ordered her some glucosamine and she is now doing better, but their foray's in to the wilds are over. She is getting up there in age, and I am on a bit more limited time. I really think that the only ones who benefit from going with me is them. The Jacks jump further out when they are there. That of course adds to Hope's challenges and difficulties. It was fun to see them work together, but she is more efficient without them. I actually prefer the more "stealthy" approach.

Upon arriving at Arock, I decided to try a field that I haven't hunted for several weeks. I parked and let her out of the box, and she flew to a Sage Bush at the base of a Lava mound just inside the fence. I walked over, climbed the fence and took two steps towards her when she jumped into the air and crashed into the grass about 10 feet from her. Immediately a Jack began screaming, and my hunt was over. She had apparent'y landed just a few feet from the Jack, who had squatted when I drove up. He never realized that her species is one of the few that can see prey that is sitting still.

At the beginning of August I added an app that is supposed to measure how much I walk. I actually wanted to check the distances of the Hikes that Connie and I were taking at Glacier Park. I decided to leave it on my phone when I began hunting Hope after I returned home. Some, perhaps too many were in the 4 mile range on some of those hunts. So I was actually putting in a lot more walking than I had originally thought. For instance since Aug 1st I have walked 211 miles taking 84 hours to do it. Today's hunt was 40 steps- round trip.

Nov 17

This afternoon I weighed Hope, wondering just how much she had gained with all the Jack she had had to eat 2 days ago, and found, to my pleasure, that she had only gained an ounce or so. She was even calling to me in the dark when I had gone outside last night, so I was pretty sure that she wanted a repeat of her last meal. A greedy Hawk is God's gift to the falconry inclined. Anyway she only weighed 988 this time, and seemed to be convinced she was going to starve to death. So the hunt was on! Connie decided to go Hawking with me on my friend Richard's property. We left around 2 pm.  As a side note, Richard lives 23 miles from me and he is my second closest neighbor.  The other being 3 miles from me.

After a cup of coffee with Richard and the latest information on where the Jack's might be, we drove up the back road to an area that I had not hunted before. Since Rabbits are so scarce ( to me) I am always on the lookout for another spot that would support a Rabbit population. The first spot didn't pan out, so I drove back towards the ranch to a spot where I knew, some Jack's, called home.

I got out and asked Connie to drive the car along side as I went out in the Sage up against the hill. At our prior spot Hope had shown her eager and restless behavior at the first spot,by flying in a circle out and back to the perch. She rode with me for a while, but again flew to a Sage just in front of us, then busted off turning a complete circle and took off after a Jack that had been just behind the bush, she had sat on. He really had little choice in his direction of escape. Connie and I had restricted his movements to less than 90 degrees. He was a young one, and his next mistake was fated to be his last. He ran towards the hill just in front of him. When he got there the cover was really scarce. He chose to hide in the last Sage on the side of the hill. Hope flared straight up for about 15 feet, did a quick wing over and crashed through the thin Sage to land on his head.  

I have been hoping that She would perfect this technique for a long time. My first Harris rarely made one of these maneuvers without a rabbit in her feet. Hope's performance at this 

maneuver, so far, has been dismal. Not today!

Notice that the foot in the face is the bum one. Perhaps she will regain her full mobility.

Today was a pretty light day, primarily because Hope caught the first Jack that jumped. What ever, I'll take it. Only one mile and 6 10 ths, of walking.  Sounds good to me.

I fed her another head, and she chowed down pretty well. It may take her two days to return to normal this time.