Lagomorph hunting with Farrah

Off to a late start but I took Farrah out again this morning. It's possible we've been out 12 mornings in a row. This morning was mostly dull, especially the first hour. We kicked up one rabbit. I guess a good size cottontail. And that was the only chase we had in an hour. So it was a bit boring. It reminded me of a few of the things about falconry that bore me. Three come prominently to mind. The first is walking through the woods with a usually new apprentice with a fresh passage Red-tail who has no idea that the woods are full of squirrels. The second is having a bird who won't follow in the open field in which you have limited game. That results in no game caught and ruining a good hike. You can't really leave the bird up in the tree, you have to hang around and beat the bush in an area that isn't very productive. I got a lot of that from Farrah this morning. I have to reteach her and she needs to teach herself how to hunt rabbits again. One thing I noticed with her, which I attribute to her being a Harris's Hawk is flying right into a bush low to the ground and flushing the rabbit out the other side. Based on poor science, I think it's because Harris's Hawks have a have an instinct that makes them think they are always hunting with a pack or at least another bird. Years ago early on trying to hunt rabbits she did that a lot. She'd frequently fly to the base of a bush and run in and then look at me when she came out the other side. Meanwhile, the swamp rabbit is 50 or 60 yards away, perfectly safe. It took her a while to get over that and since she has not hunted rabbits in years she's having to relearn it all over again. It's a little bit analogous to Cisco having to relearn how to ride the  t-pole. He is now hunted almost exclusively in the woods. So much so, that he went from being the best t-pole bird that I've had, to drifting off quickly. In the old rabbit days Cisco had infinite patience and when a big wind gust would come or in a strong steady breeze, instead of flying off, he would just hunker down on the pole. One time in Fort Worth, I warned Lynne Holder not to fly her Red-tail Artemis because I figured he'd get blown to Mexico. I had my Harris's Hawk Dart with me and I didn't fly Dart. Especially at that point in his career which is probably early in 2009, Dart was awful in the high winds. These days he's good in the winds except now he likes to soar in any breeze! That caused me an enormous amount of stress a couple of times this last season. On that particular morning in Fort Worth, Cisco practically had his belly on the t-perch in the screaming wind. We kicked up a cottontail, believe it or not, and Cisco flattened it.  

The third thing I thought of this morning was how much I don't like driving for hours to try to find trappable passage Red-tails. Our late friend Rob Evans never used to do that. He would pick a month that he was going to get a Red-tail, and during that month he would keep an eye out fairly close to his house for a passager. He was pretty much instantly ready when he spotted one. He'd grab his BC and a gerbil and he'd come home with a Red-tail. Whether he was a really better trapper than everybody else, he appeared to be because he never wasted any time trapping. I warn my apprentices that I'm not really that jazzed about trapping. It's rough on my ADD. I'm guessing that about half of my apprentices have had their birds trapped with help from some of my friends. We trapped Rick Moreland's first Red-tail extremely late in the trapping season. In fact, it was close to the point where I would have recommended to wait until the next season. We used Rob Evans 's technique. On a tip from Mike Weigel we went out to a spot west of town and returned home with a Red-tail inside about an hour and a half.

But I digress. This morning after about an hour, I decided to head back, with Farrah's still not following. Suddenly we kicked up a black-tailed jackrabbit and we had some chases and they were serious chases. Farrah still has a lot to learn. But she's getting better. When her feathers grow out and her weight comes down a little bit, she'll relearn it. She was probably the best of my three rabbit Hawks. So all in all it was a good morning. Because of our jackrabbit hunt at the end, the hunt lasted about two hours. The second half was much better than the first and we are actually hunting rabbits, or I should say lagomorphs. Jackrabbits are hares after all.

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