Caught a hawk today

[Mesophilic]

I'll preface by saying my buddy already has a sponsor,  a mentor, all necessary legal paperwork, and living accommodations.

A friend texted me late last night and asked if I wanted to help him catch a hawk this morning.  Sounded like a great idea.  So we went out to a meddow on the edge of the forest and put down a couple of traps.  Watched this fellow for about an hour and a half as rain and fog came and went.  Chased off a couple of coyotes interested in the trap, too.  Then the hawk couldnt resist no more.

My buddy will keep him for a year or two, do some hawking and whatnot, then release him back to the wild.  My understanding is the mortality rate of young, non breeding age hawks is pretty high.  This process will teach him and get him back to the wild with experience and  higher survivability skill set.

This was a great experience and the bird is simply magnificent.  I got to hold him all the way down the mountain.  I was surprised at how calm he was once we got the hood on him.

[Stoner]

Great experience. My neighbor is a falconer with a redtail and a peregrine. John

[Pappy]

Beautiful bird.
 Pappy

[Deerhunter21]

Yea! thats awesome! give me 6 years and a job and i can finally start making my falconry dream come true! Nebraska has so many hawks, sometimes i just sit and watch as the hawks fly above, they're magnificent creatures.

[sleek]

Considering my last name, Hawkins I need to do two things. O e, build a genuine Hawkins rifle, and two, learn the art of falconry, and according to family lore, it used to be called hawking  where our last name came from.

[DC]

When I was doing this umty ump years ago I found the mortality rate for captured hawks was rather high too. Apparently if they are hungry enough to go into a trap, they are quite often sick already. I lost quite a few. Of course the medical knowledge was pretty much nonexistent in those days. What kind of hawk is it?

[Lefty38-55]

Great story and a beautiful bird!

But you got the rifle wrong ... as the ‘Hawken’ rifle was a muzzle-loading rifle built by the Hawken brothers that was used on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains of the US during the early frontier days. It has become synonymous with the ‘plains rifle’, the buffalo gun (pre-cartridge gun like the 45-70 Sharps), and/or as the fur trapper's rifle.

[Deerhunter21]

Dc it looks like a coopers hawk but might be a redtail hawk.

[DC]

Not a Coopers, that's what I caught mostly. And Sharpshinned. The bright white breast is puzzling me.

[Mesophilic]

It's a red tailed hawk. 

[JW_Halverson]

Yup, start with a very young bird with little to no real world experience, pop a hood on him so he has no idea what is going on around him, along with a level of stress so overwhelming he simply shuts down....yup, bird sure looks calm.

And you take advantage of that confusion and ignorance to teach the bird you are the source of everything good and wonderful (food, more food, and yet more food), pretty soon you are about the coolest thing this bird has ever met!  In fact, you are so cool it's just not worth the effort getting scared when you walk into the room. So very cool the risk of flying towards a predator 75X bigger than you is outweighed by the reward of food....and later flying time! 

When they show that level of trust with you, it's pretty amazing. Some falconers forget what the early days are like and get that ridiculous mindset of "just a redtail". I hope your buddy never catches that disease because it will steal almost all of his joy and poison what little is left.

Nine plus years I have been working with raptors and I still get dust and stuff in my eyes when our new redtail starts to chirrup and peep at me when I walk around the corner. Heck, I'm getting something in my eyes thinking about our 30 yr old redtail that used to hate me, then loved me, hated me again and sunk talons in my face, then tolerated me and now hates me all over again.

[sleek]

Yup, start with a very young bird with little to no real world experience, pop a hood on him so he has no idea what is going on around him, along with a level of stress so overwhelming he simply shuts down....yup, bird sure looks calm.

And you take advantage of that confusion and ignorance to teach the bird you are the source of everything good and wonderful (food, more food, and yet more food), pretty soon you are about the coolest thing this bird has ever met!  In fact, you are so cool it's just not worth the effort getting scared when you walk into the room. So very cool the risk of flying towards a predator 75X bigger than you is outweighed by the reward of food....and later flying time! 

When they show that level of trust with you, it's pretty amazing. Some falconers forget what the early days are like and get that ridiculous mindset of "just a redtail". I hope your buddy never catches that disease because it will steal almost all of his joy and poison what little is left.

Nine plus years I have been working with raptors and I still get dust and stuff in my eyes when our new redtail starts to chirrup and peep at me when I walk around the corner. Heck, I'm getting something in my eyes thinking about our 30 yr old redtail that used to hate me, then loved me, hated me again and sunk talons in my face, then tolerated me and now hates me all over again.

Is this the burd your konked on the head with a caribiner?

[JW_Halverson]

No, sleek. That bird is in Florida with a friend.  10 years later and that crow/raven hybrid still gets mad as heck when he sees a carabiner.  Even if someone has one on a keyring he gets upset!