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!