Hunting Bunnies

Hunting rabbits is hard!  Here in the South, where there are rabbits, there are briars.  I've become accustomed to squirrel hunting in clean, open woods with only the occasional tangle of briars to either go around or navigate through momentarily (well, aside from that one time when a friend and I got enmeshed in a veritable field of briars trying to get out of the woods, but that's another story) where I can run quickly through the forest like Katniss Everdeen without the bow and arrow and horde of murderous fellow citizens when I need to get to her. I'm not used to having to fight for every inch of progress when my bird is on the ground and vulnerable. However, that's exactly what I did this weekend.

That fuzzy blur to the right of the guys?  Yeah, that's me.

I think I like it, actually.  I'm not sure yet since she didn't actually catch a bunny but it was fun and opened my eyes to a whole new type of hunting. Isa didn't seem sure of it at first, but she caught on quickly and I got to experience what it was like not having my bird within fifty feet of me at all times.  It was unnerving at first and there was a lot of "Where is she? Do you see her?" but she soon showed me that she was watching and I was able to focus more on getting a lock on her location in order to know which way to try to drive game and less on worrying about her getting lost. We did manage to flush a bunny and she chased it hard, but she's still not really sure about crashing brush, so it got away. She tried hard, though!

I love everything about this picture.

We spent quite a while in the briar patch trying to convince something to move. We walked all through the fields and ended up with thorns in places we couldn't imagine they'd have been able to get.  When she made the slip on the rabbit I took off running for her (which was more like run three steps, get tangled, mutter, work loose, go three more steps, get tangled again) and I wasn't careful enough about getting my bare hands loose, so I got a row of thorns down the knuckle of my thumb.  That actually hurts more than her talons, surprisingly enough! I did keep going, though. It amazes me how much pain I can ignore when I'm focused on her.  She missed, but when she hopped back up onto my glove to get a better launch point for her to find another perch she was ready to go again!

Don't judge my clothing choices.  Bunnies don't care how I look in the field.

The best part of the whole day, though, was seeing just how determined she is.  We flew for over two hours and she chased a bunny and four or five squirrels.  We had already flown my fiance's bird for a couple of hours that morning (his first successful free flight! Go Heisenberg!!!) and we were all lagging and sore by the end of it, but she just kept pushing. Finally, she was exhausted and we were exhausted, so we decided to have a rest.  She came down and perched on a limb beside us and we sat for a little bit while we caught our breath and discussed the best way out.

Taking a break.

I wanted to carry her out, but we had to cross a lot of barbed wire fences so she had to fly. We stayed right at our head level and just hopped along from tree to tree and then we came up to one fence that we were trying to find a crossing point on and were walking along the length of it. She hopped to the ground and started running just as fast as her little legs could carry her after me.  It was the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life!  I carried her for a while after that until we found a crossing point and she was able to keep up the rest of the way back.

We got back to our starting point and I let her have a really big meal on the lure as a reward for her hard work.  I was so impressed by her never-say-die attitude and her refusal to quit.  She was tired. She could have posted up in a tree and just refused to move or made me climb over fences with her on my glove (which probably would have ended up with both of us on our faces) but I asked her for just a little more effort and she gave it. We were probably less than a mile from the house, but it was still an effort that she didn't have to give when we were both worn out and I was incredibly proud of her. We'd done some long flights before, but none that long or with that many chases and she handled it like a champ! 

"What A Cool Pet!"

I think that one of my biggest pet peeves with falconry is swiftly becoming that one phrase, especially when talking to people online in threads where I've explained in the main post that Isabeau isn't a pet.  I got a first-hand reminder of that fact for myself a few days ago.

Talons on a red tail are bigger and sharper than (most) dog's or cat's teeth.  The force behind them is stronger than you'd expect as well.  These birds' feet are designed to not only pierce but to compress so they have surprising gripping power for their size. I've only been using my glove for a couple months, but it already has a hole in the seam on one of the fingers and a hole by the wrist where her talons have punched through the leather without her even trying. Part of that is that the glove wasn't made with thick enough leather, but part of it is that she's just that powerful even when she doesn't intend to be.

It used to be white.

Isa lets me do pretty much anything I want without putting up a fuss. She's very tolerant.  I can touch her feet and pick them up with my bare hands without an issue and she's never even tried to foot me. I made a mistake and assumed that "hasn't" meant "wouldn't" and she very quickly corrected me on that! She had her fourth kill on the ground and I reached in to secure her jesses to the leash.  I got overconfident and reached past the shield of my glove. That foot came out like lightning and she sunk those talons into my bare hand and turned into a raging ball of wild fury. When that happens, you can't tense or pull back because it'll just make them fight harder.  You have to relax and just let them have it and they'll generally let go (there are other things you can do if they don't or if it's an emergency situation, but usually if you just relax they'll let go on their own). I had thought that there would be no way that I could actually follow that advice, though, once it happened!  How do you relax when you've got those talons in you?  As long as you stay calm, it's not as hard as you'd think. It is, however, humbling to get dragged along by the hand by a three pound bird! I finally looked at her and said, "Isa, quit being a drama queen and give me my hand back.  I don't want your squirrel," and she cocked her head and gave me her baby bird look, let go, and hopped back to the squirrel.  She had jerked my hand a couple of feet away from it, but because I went with her and didn't try to pull away, I got out of it with only small puncture wounds.  They're deep, but don't look anywhere near as bad as I was expecting and weren't anywhere near as bad as they could be. All things considered, she was fairly gentle about it.

That isn't a freckle on the back of my hand.

It was a stark reminder, though, that no matter how "tame" she may seem, she isn't a pet. She's a wild animal and always will be.  I accept that and that is what allows us to work together.

And all is forgiven.

Killer Instinct

Warning: This post contains pictures of a red tail hawk on a kill.  I'll try not to post anything too graphic, but if in doubt, skip this post.

Isabeau got her first squirrel!!!  *Happy dance!*  Okay, just had to get that out.  Now to tell about it!
In my last post, I reference the dance between the falconer and the hawk in the field.  Sometimes the bird changes steps on you so quickly you have no choice but to follow.  As much as I would like to say that I took the lead for Isabeau's first catch, I'd be lying if I did.  She was placed in the top of a tree at the end of a stand of trees.  The area we were in had an open area on the right and another stand of trees on the left.  I turned left and continued walking toward the next stand of trees.  However, I didn't hear her bells when I expected, so I turned around to see what she was doing.  Rather than watching me, she had flattened herself until she was parallel with the ground and her wings were out.  Before I registered what was going on, she was diving toward the ground away from us! We all took off running and as I came around a bend, we saw her in the grass tumbling around with a ball of gray fur.  She had caught a squirrel!  I think I vaguely remember shouldering my fiance out of the way like some kind of football star about to win the Super Bowl so that I could get to her.  She was stomping and grabbing and looking around rather than at the squirrel.  When she saw me tearing toward her, she lowered her hackles and looked straight at me like she was asking what now!  I saw that it was still alive and that it had its mouth on the back of her leg.  Squirrels can do major damage to a hawk's legs and feet with their teeth, so my first priority was to get it off of her.  Fortunately, it had just grabbed a mouthful of fur.  I quickly dispatched it and as soon as it stopped fighting her, she relaxed, dropped her wings, and began to eat.

A well-manned bird.

 The amazing thing about this is that it's really, really common for them to do what's called mantling over a kill.  When they mantle, they spread their wings out to protect their catch from being taken away.  It's a testament to how well-manned she is and how confident she is that I'm not going to steal her food that she didn't mantle over it.  She didn't try to grab me with her feet to ward me off.  She let me touch it and her and didn't react at all.  My fiance, a falconer friend of ours who had come to watch her fly, and I were all laying on the ground at her level and she didn't react.

Happy hawk, happy falconer.

For the first few kills, most falconers allow the bird to "crop up" which is when they eat until they're full.  Full for a raptor is a little bit different from full with other animals.  Raptors (as well as some other birds) don't have to worry about their stomach getting full because they have an expandable storage sac built in called the crop.  When they eat, the crop fills up and it empties as they digest the food in their stomach to make room.  So I let her eat until she was done (about half of the squirrel!) and then I traded her off of the kill onto my glove with another piece of meat.  She came right to me and even allowed me to pick the remainder of the squirrel up and hold it for a picture without protest. My fiance is a deer hunter and he said that the tradition when you kill your first deer is to paint your face with the blood of the kill.  It's something about respecting the life force of the animal and claiming yourself as a hunter. I would have to get him to clarify sometime when my adrenaline isn't through the roof.  Anyway, he rubbed squirrel blood on my face. 

Partners.

It'll take some time for that to digest and for her weight to normalize again, so she'll get a few days off to just relax.
I'm so proud of her!  She is fierce!

Flight

A lot has happened since my last post.  Isabeau never ceases to amaze me.  This bird is so smart!  I free flew her for the first time and she acted like she'd been trained for her entire life.  The goal when free flying is to have them follow the falconer.  The falconer walks in the direction they want to go and the bird flies from one spot to the other behind you or sometimes leapfrogging with you, but always nearby.  Getting higher up in the tree is a good thing as well because it gives them a better vantage point, but it's something a lot of young birds have to be taught themselves.  Isabeau immediately went as high as she could and she followed me better than my dog does!
I started out by putting her on a tree branch on the creance (a long thin line used in training to allow them to fly longer distances while still being restrained) and having her come to me and then I removed the creance and let her jesses hang free and, with my heart in my throat, launched her off of my glove.  She found a tree and went high into it and I called her back down to me to reinforce that, while she was now unrestrained, the game was still the same.  She came right to me, at which time I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I sent her back to the tree and started walking away.  After a few moments, I heard the jingle of her bells and looked over my shoulder to see her fly into the tree directly behind me.  She was following me!  She willingly chose to stay with me rather than fly away!  We were a team! I continued to call her down to the glove as I walked, increasing the distance each time, until she had followed me for 100 yards without a tidbit.  At that time, I threw the lure out for her and she slammed it.  Our first free flight ended with my bird coming home with me!

Look, Ma!  No leash!

We continued to train with her free flying.  She very quickly learned to follow without me needing to call her down to the glove for tidbits and continued getting higher and higher in the trees as she went. I've learned that if she isn't following closely enough or if I lose sight of her, I can stop and turn around and she'll fly up to the nearest tree.  If she doesn't, then I know that she either sees something that interests her or she thinks she does and I need to go back to her.  Her eyesight is far better than mine, so when we fly, it's a dance.  She trusts and follows me and when she sees something I don't, I trust her and we turn in that direction to check it out.  Now it's time to see how that plays out when we're actually hunting and she's not just waiting for me to throw the lure.

Any day you come home with your bird is a good day.

Lures

Today I started working Isabeau on the lure. I get asked a lot "How do you get them to come back?" Well, the lure is one of our tools for this. With a red tail, pretty much anything will do, including an old shoe. I made mine out of leather with a long cord attached to swing it.

My lure.

The lure is a guaranteed meal and plays to their lazy, opportunistic nature. It is their favorite thing in the entire world. If the bird is in a dangerous situation, the lure is a go-to virtual guarantee of bringing the bird in.
Today, I made our lures and put her entire daily ration of food on it. I kept the introduction simple and  just tossed it on the ground below her perch while blowing hard on the whistle. She had a moment of confusion when she didn't see the glove raised until she noticed the meat. She figured it out quickly after that. The best thing about it was that she didn't mantle--spreading the wings to guard the meal--showing that she's comfortable with me being near her food. I let her take her time eating and reached in with the glove to touch her and touch the lure to show that I wouldn't take it from her, which will be helpful if she's got a squirrel trying to bite her toes off (it can happen!) and I need to help with the dispatch. When she was finished, I let her play with it until she got bored before covering it with my skirt while she got back up on the perch. Tomorrow I'll have her come to it from a greater distance and we'll keep this up until she's willing to stop whatever she's doing to get it.

Venturing Out

Since she had flown across my kitchen to me the day before, yesterday we went outside into the backyard on the creance--a long, slim line that attaches to the jesses on one end and to a weighted point on the other that acts like a long leash does for a dog or a longe line for a horse--for the first time.  We've been doing walks around the neighborhood for the past few days to get her accustomed to being outside in her gear and staying with me, so I was hopeful that the transition would go smoothly. 

Isabeau on the creance.

I started close in like I had done in the house to give her the idea that it was the same thing.  She didn't hesitate, so I doubled the distance and tried again.  She did wonderfully until I got even with the house.  She flew toward me and then at the last moment soared up above my head and landed on the roof!  As much as I didn't want to reward her behavior, I had to get her down, so I called her to the glove with a tidbit and went back to try again.  The second time, she came to me at the same distance without a problem, so I increased the distance again and the same thing happened.  I stayed in one spot until she came straight to me and then would move back again.  The last time, rather than landing on the roof on the first attempt, she flew past me to land on the gate.  Since I was able to reach her, I simply picked her up and carried her back to her perch without giving her the tidbit and made her try again.  It was like the proverbial light clicked on and she came to me.  It was amazing! Watching this wild animal willingly fly toward me and land on my glove with no fear is beyond explanation.  
Today, we went to the ball field near my house to fly.  She went double the length of the creance and didn't skip a beat. It was awesome! We'll do this again to get it set into her head and then we'll start working on the lure, which I'll go into next time. 

Walking back to the perch after a 300' flight.

Small Steps and Giant Leaps

Once Isabeau had overcome her fears and eaten on the glove, the real training began. Now that she had figured out that I wasn't going to eat her, she had another fear to overcome. It's one thing for her to tolerate sitting with me. It's another thing entirely to have her come toward the big scary predator. Thus, I needed to teach her to come to the glove.
I placed her on the bow perch and presented her with a good sized chunk of meat. She stretched and stretched her head out trying to reach it. When that didn't work, she reached out with her foot. Eventually, after bobbing and weaving and making adorable chirping noises, she gathered herself and hopped! I gave her the meat and placed her back on the perch to try again. Unfortunately, the dog chose that moment to walk out of the room and she wouldn't try again. I put the remainder of her food aside to wait for the next day.
The next day, after she cast the pellet of undigested fur and bone they bring up like a cat with a fur ball, I tried again. I misjudged the distance, though, and she grabbed the first piece with her foot. The second time, though, she jumped and it was like a light bulb went on. She got it. Today, I cut her food into smaller pieces and had her fly the length of her leash to me (a few feet). She did it about seven times with little to no hesitation. It was amazing. She had to put forth effort and come toward me in order to get her meal and she did it repeatedly. It was a big milestone for us. 

Flying to the fist.

After that, we took her outside for a walk to let her get used to being out in the open while tethered. She did really well and only bated a handful of times. My fiancé still hadn't gotten his bird, so after we had all cooled down from the walk, we went out trapping. We have driven 1400 miles in six days trying to find one for him and had had no luck. We were on the verge of giving up on our area and waiting for more to migrate in, but wanted to try one more time, so we went out. We saw a red tail high up on a post and couldn't see its tail so decided to try. We threw the trap and after about 30 minutes, it came down. We were really excited until we saw the bright red tail of an adult. We approached to release it and it pulled loose and flew away. We moved on. The light was beginning to fade from the sky when we saw one on a pole. It was clearly a juvenile male, which was what he had been hoping for so we threw the trap. Within minutes, he flew down to it. We started to approach, but he wasn't caught and he flew up to a low power line. We knew we didn't have time to find another, so we decided to wait and see if he'd try again. He did, but again didn't get snagged and flew back to the line. He kept looking at it, so we waited. When he came down again, I was astonished. This time, he did get caught. We rushed over to get him off of the trap.

My fiancé and his bird.

We taped his feet for the ride home and put his gear on, then rushed to get him home. We weighed him and confirmed that he's a male and sprayed him with parakeet spray for parasites and checked him over to ensure that he's healthy. My fiancé is a huge fan of Breaking Bad, so he named him Heisenberg. They're now sitting together with Heisenberg hooded while he waits for him to rouse and show that he's comfortable. In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to acclimate Isabeau to him without undue stress as they will need to be able to be calm around each other so we don't have to keep them constantly hooded. 

I'm Not Going To Eat You

Day One

I brought Isabeau home at 7:30 the evening of September 1. She had removed her hood while in the traveling box, so taking her out without either of us getting injured took some creativity. She had thrown herself to the back of the box where she sat glaring at me with murder in her glowing golden eyes. My fiancé wrapped her up in a towel and we were able to remove her without damaging her wings or feathers and put a better-fitting hood on her head to calm her down.
Hawks are extremely visual creatures. The vast majority of their sensory input comes from the eyes. When you remove that visual stimulus, they calm down and are able to relax their vigilance. We use the hood to do this. Hoods are custom fitted to each bird for maximum comfort. Many birds love their hood and some will even put their head into it themselves when it's presented to them. Isabeau doesn't seek hers out yet, but she doesn't make any attempt to avoid it, either.
When I got her hooded and sitting on the glove, I took some time to absorb the fact that I had a wild red tail hawk sitting on my hand in my living room. A couple of my falconer friends had brought over their hawks before and that had been amazing, but having my own hawk here was astounding. In a way, it was both an end and a beginning. My long journey to this point was over, but the journey of training and hunting with my own bird had only begun.
The first step was to begin what we call manning. When a hawk is taken from the wild and put into a domestic setting, they have no idea what is really a threat to them and what isn't so everything is scary to them. They have to learn that they are safe and that they can trust us--that we aren't going to eat them! There are as many ways to do this as there are falconers, but my sponsor wanted me to use an immersion type technique with her and expose her to everyday life from day one. So while I took my time to settle myself down and answer phone calls and texts from fellow falconers and eat dinner, I left the hood on her and turned on the television and allowed the dogs into the room (they've been exposed to hawks for quite some time now and know to leave them alone) and let the normal noises of the house go on while she was hooded so that she could begin to get accustomed to them. Shortly after dinner, she roused. Rousing is when the bird fluffs out its feathers and shakes and then slicks down again and is a sign of a content bird. When I saw this, I knew she was ready.
I turned the lights off and removed her hood. I had expected explosive rage. Instead, she spread her wings and lifted one foot and then put her foot down and brought her wings in and simply looked around. She remained calm throughout the evening. Though she did lose her balance and fall off a few times, I was able to use her jesses to keep her from falling and would lift her back up onto the glove and help her regain her balance. 

Learning to stand on the glove is like  learning to walk a tightrope.

During the first evening, I kept the light dim and kept things quiet. She stayed on my glove until I was ready to go to bed. When she was sufficiently settled in, I began to lightly touch her wings and her back and worked my way to the back of her head and down her legs. When she accepted me touching her everywhere else, I finally (carefully!) started on her feet. She allowed me to touch her feet and talons and pick them up without protest. As a reward, I put her hood back on and placed her in the travel box for some well-earned rest.

Day Two

In the morning, I removed her from the box and weighed her to get an idea of how much energy she was burning and then attempted to feed her. The first meal for a freshly-trapped hawk is a big deal. They have a ridge of bone over their eyes that prevents them from being able to see in front of them when they lower their head to eat which makes them vulnerable when they do so. Therefore, they generally will not eat until they're convinced that you won't eat them when they do. Lowering the head is a sign of trust. It was also one that she wasn't prepared to give just yet. 

I spent the day with her unhooded on the glove allowing her to get accustomed to her surroundings and letting her continue learning how to stand on it and how to get back up when she fell. She still was having some trouble with that so I spent a lot of time with her falling, hanging upside down looking helpless, and gently lifting her back up. A falconer friend of ours came over and he showed me how to give a little swing of her jesses to get her to fly back up herself and the process went much quicker after that. Eventually she began to learn how to begin flapping as soon as she started to fall and either prevent herself from falling or fly back up to the glove. During that time, I made my first two apprentice errors. The first was putting my bare arm too close to her feet which could lead to talons being embedded in my skin. The second was holding her jesses too tightly which was making it harder to balance. I had to learn how to judge how much slack to give her while preventing her from being able to grab out with her feet. 

Learning to stand on the bow perch.

During that day, I taught her to step from my glove to my fiancé's and back and from the glove to the perch and back. She got used to the dogs pretty quickly as well. That evening, she roused on the glove without her hood on and tucked a foot up into her feathers, showing that she was comfortable.

Day Three

I weighed her again in the morning and tried again to get her to eat. She still showed no interest in it, so after a little while, I replaced her hood and put her back in the travel box. My fiancé and I spent the morning trying to trap a hawk for him without success. However, we did get to see a bald eagle. It was up on a transmission line and we were able to get right under it only about 30 feet away. It was an amazing experience! 

Bald eagle. Look but don't touch!

When we got back home, I took Isabeau back out and when the hood came off, she gave me a look that I recognized from my friends' birds that seems to say, "Feed me, Seymour!" I took a tidbit of rat in a pair of tongs and, when she didn't react, I rubbed it against the side of her beak. She caught the piece and I held onto it. She let go and I could see in her eyes that the lightbulb had gone on, so I placed it on the glove. No sooner had I removed the tongs than she dropped her head and gulped it down! She ate! I fed her the rest of the meal and when she settled, I put the hood back on and used a toothbrush and spray bottle to clean her feet and cleaned the tips of her tail and wing feathers with water. The remainder of the day was spent with her learning to stand on the bow perch (translation:jumping off of the bow perch and running around on the floor like a chicken). 

We'll see what tomorrow holds!

Finding Isabeau

September 1st is the first day of trapping season in Alabama. Apprentices are required to trap their own birds. I had decided to trap a female red tail because that is what I was most familiar with and had wanted since I was a little girl. My fiancé decided that he wanted a male because he preferred their flying style. Males are fighter jets. Females are flying tanks. In order to increase our chances of trapping what we were looking for we split up and each went with another experienced falconer. 

6:30am, no sleep the night before, ready to go.

My group set out at 6:30 in the morning. We had already spent some time scouting the area looking for suitable birds (we're only allowed to trap birds that are under a year old and don't yet have their red tail, called passage birds). We saw many adults, called haggards, along with a slew of kestrels (which are allowed in some states but not here because they are very difficult to keep healthy due to their small size), vultures, Cooper's hawks, a broad wing, and an osprey, but very few passage red tails. The first time that I threw the trap out, I did it too hard and it landed upside down. After that, we scared several off. By 3, my fiancé came to join us as his trapping partner had had to go home and they hadn't had any more luck than we did. 

Over ten hours and hundreds of miles later, starting to lose hope.

Around 5:30 that evening, I had all but lost hope that we would trap anything that day and began to resign myself to going home empty-handed. Then our trapping partner saw a female red tail high on a pole. We saw from her tail that she was a passage bird and so I threw the trap. It landed upside down again and I was sure that was the end of it. However, to our surprise, she stayed on the pole. My partner got out and flipped the trap right side up and, amazingly, she still stayed. We drove far enough away that she couldn't see us and, after getting my fiancé to back up to where we were, she came swooping down on it! 

Straight off of the trap and thinking she's dinner.

We hurried to take her off of the trap and get her secured. It was incredibly exciting to see! When trapped, they go into a state of shock where they throw their wings out wide and basically freeze in place. It makes them fairly easy to handle, but it also means that the hardest part of our job is to convince them that we aren't about to eat them! That, however, is another post entirely. She had almost perfect feathers, razor sharp talons and beak, and had food in her crop. Her weight, however, was much lower than we expected and she was much thinner than she should have been. She was hunting and successful enough to stay alive but most likely not enough that she would have survived the winter when she would have been burning more energy to stay warm. 
We took her to my trapping partner's house to spray her down for parasites, look her over more thoroughly, check for signs of illness, and get her settled on the glove. It only took three tries before she learned how to stand up on the fist. When we were satisfied that she was healthy and good to go, I loaded her up in the traveling box (called a giant hood) and took her home.

Standing on the glove for the first time.

Unfortunately, we never did get a male to come down for my fiancé. We're not giving up, though! He's been wonderfully supportive and I can't wait until he gets to experience this for himself.

Beginnings

I had a lot of people ask me how I got into falconry. It's been a long journey, that's for sure. 
When I was five or six, my mother showed me the movie Ladyhawke. The main characters are cursed and the man is a wolf by night while the woman is a hawk by day. Her name was Isabeau. It was my favorite movie as a child and I swore that I would one day have a red tail hawk named Isabeau. 
When I was fifteen, my father dated a woman who was friends with a falconer. She took me to his house and he showed me his mews (the house for a hawk) and his birds. I was entranced! I began to do research but my parents weren't really enthused, so I had to wait. As I grew up and real life began to happen, I maintained my interest in it, but the time was never right and I finally accepted that it wasn't meant to be and moved on to other hobbies. 

Natty, adult female red tail hawk.

Then, in the late spring/early summer of 2013, I met a woman who was a falconer and she allowed me to meet her bird, Natty, and invited me hunting once the season started. I spent the entire summer sitting on her porch talking about falconry, learning about falconry, and dreaming about falconry. I was obsessed. She introduced me to the other falconers in the area and I realized that I was finally in a place where I had the means, the space, and the time to pursue my lifelong dream. Thus began the long search for a sponsor.
My friend didn't yet have the four years' experience required in order to sponsor an apprentice and so I had to find someone who was available. It took over a year. In the meantime, I spent the fall and winter traipsing through the woods with falconers and their birds, learning everything that I could, and studying for the exam. Once the season was over, my fiancé (who is also an apprentice now) and I set about preparing for our permits. We built a mews, made most of our equipment, and bought what we couldn't make. 
When the time came to take our test, we thought we were prepared. By page two, I was almost in tears! We went home convinced that we failed. Three long days later, we got the news that not only did we pass, we did it with flying colors! Our inspection came the next week and a few days later our permits arrived in the mail. Finally, my dream of 25 years was coming true!

The Basics

What is falconry?
Falconry is defined as the sport of taking game with trained raptors and the keeping and training of such birds. Commonly referred to as the sport of kings (along with horse racing), the art of falconry has been around for around 4,000 years and has changed very little since that time.
Falconry birds are not pets. They are wild animals that have been accustomed to humans and trained to hunt in tandem with us. They are illegal to own without the proper permits and can be dangerous if trained incorrectly.

How do you do it?
In a nutshell:  operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, and weight management. Raptors tend to be lazy and opportunistic hunters. They hunt when they are hungry. We use that tendency in their training and in hunting them. We reward desired behavior with food. We never, ever punish the bird. Weight management is done through regular weighing of the bird and measured amounts of food. There has to be a balance. A bird that is too heavy won't have the motivation to hunt. A bird that is too hungry won't have the energy. There is a sweet spot wherein the bird is just hungry enough to seek out food but not underweight. We never starve our birds. 

How do you become a falconer?
In order to become a falconer, one must find a sponsor, pass a written exam, have facilities to house them and equipment for them, and pass an inspection to get the required permit. All falconers begin as apprentices and remain in that status for at least two years. During that time, you are restricted to one bird at a time and can only possess specific types of raptors. In Alabama, we are allowed red tailed hawks or red shouldered hawks. Other states vary. If you're interested in becoming a falconer, contact the club in your state, the Department of Conservation for your state, or a licensed falconer if you know one. Do research and learn on your own. The Modern Apprentice is an excellent resource to get started. 
When you talk to a falconer, don't immediately ask them to sponsor you. They may not be able to or may want to ensure that you are serious and know what you're getting into before considering it. Instead, ask to go hunting with them and, if they agree, go! Don't wait for them to call you. Show initiative. Call and ask if they're hunting today or this weekend or whenever and if they would mind you tagging along. Don't get offended if they say no. Some falconers prefer to hunt alone. Some birds can only be hunted alone. Instead, ask if they know anyone who would be willing to let you go with them. In addition, don't get any preconceived ideas of how long it will take to get a sponsor. There are more would-be apprentices than there are available sponsors in many areas and it may be a year or two before someone is available and most will want you to hunt with them for a season before they will sponsor you. Even then, this person will be making a two-year commitment to you and they are under no obligation to do so. Don't just accept the first person who offers. Get opinions from others on the quality of the falconer and his or her skill, evaluate their birds, ensure that their teaching style is one that you can learn from, and it helps if you like each other as individuals as you'll be spending a lot of time together. 
It took me a year and a half of active involvement before I was able to get my permit. During that time, I hunted with everyone I could, learned about the birds, read tons of books and websites, attended events with my state club, prepared, and waited. It was difficult to be patient sometimes and I remember spending opening day of last trapping season watching others trap birds and wondering if my turn would ever come. Be patient!

Why do you do it?
For love of the animal! Falconry is conservation and the ultimate in communing with nature. Up to 80% of red tail hawks do not survive their first year. The reasons include predation, disease, collisions, electrocution, and starvation. As falconers, we can prevent most of these things. We provide the bird with safe shelter and protection from other predators while on the ground with their prey, we protect them from exposure to disease and get them veterinary treatment when they are ill, we fly them in areas where the risk of collision with vehicles and aircraft are minimized and out of areas where they could be electrocuted. We also help in teaching them to hunt successfully so that when they are released back into the wild, they are able to provide for themselves efficiently. 
When we hunt with a raptor, we assist them in finding game but don't give them an unfair advantage over the prey. We also ensure that the prey once caught is dispatched cleanly and as painlessly as possible rather than having to struggle against the bird. We are part of the hunt, but we are simply helping them do what they do in the wild.
The feeling when a bird flies free and chooses to return to the falconer is one of the most amazing experiences!