Thread: Hunting with Hawks

Hi guys,
Being the son of a French falconer, I can tell you that owning those birds is not easy everyday.Specially for falcons.
They are really high maintenance birds, that you need to take care off everyday. They are prone to catch diseases, can suffer from stress and are easily shot down by bored shotgun hunters or getting electrocuted on high power lines.
They need to get trained almost everyday if you want to hunt with them and get good at it. Which mean access to a lot of acres of Great Plains or moors depending if you train them for crows, partridges or grouse. Crows might be the cheapest preys as you fly on site of the prey.
Partridges requires very good trained pointing dogs so that falconer, dogs and bird work in harmony.
While the falcon is climbing high the dogs are working the field till they find partridges and point. You want your falcon as high as possible, as the higher is the falcon the more area he controls. Then you flush the partridges and that is where the falcon does his spectacular dive between 300 and 500 km/h if every thing goes well and where he will knock out the partridge with the heels of his feet( after slowing down though!).
He then dives back on the partridge and finishes it on the ground before starting his meal.( you always fly an hungry bird,that is his motivation to catch). If you arrive too late to retrieve him on his feeding spot he will just fly away and won't bother getting back to you. That is the wild part of the bird that never quit them. It is then very hard to get them back in that case.

The grouse flying is similar but at the expense of having access to a Scottish moor just for yourself and your bird(s) which is not always welcome by every owner of such land.

The successful flight described above when the falcon disappearing in the clouds before diving is not that common and only a handful of european falconers manage to get such flights from time to time after considerable hours of training.

This one is for Rushy:


Friwi