Falconers
hunt
from the skies
Ancient sport
fosters mutual dependence, traditions
By TRAVIS
PURSER
Express Staff Writer
When it
comes to hunting with falcons, there’s a reason they call it hunting,
not catching.
Jeff
King, a Hailey veterinarian, feeds his gyrfalcon fresh grouse. Two
radio transmitters, used for tracking, hang from the gyr’s breast. Express
photo by Willy Cook
But, well,
if you’re just out to gather meat, you’re probably missing the point
of this ancient sport. Go buy a shotgun.
Today’s
falconers are like fly-fishermen, who spend years perfecting and relishing
their technique. Falconers, according to available evidence, rarely take
home any game.
The
pleasure comes less from a kill than from the hunt, the enjoyment of being
outdoors and working in a close bond with a fierce, agile and historically
esteemed predator that can rip across the sky like a jet fighter.
Here’s how it
works:
Jeff King
stood in a reedy, open field near Silver Creek early on a Sunday morning a
couple weekends ago, wearing knee-high galoshes, a radio-tracking device
that looked like a cop’s radar gun strapped to his thigh, various
pouches of accouterments and—on his gloved left fist—a big gray and
white arctic gyrfalcon.
The gyr
itself was dressed to kill. It wore a tasseled leather hood and slender,
decorative-looking transmitter antennas clipped to its chest feathers.
King
removed the hood, unleashed the bird’s leather leg tongs, and watched it
leap up and work its way into the clear, blue yonder, silent, except for
the diminishing sound of its flapping wings.
A dozen
other falconers, and their curious friends, stood gawking at the sky like
mute worshipers waiting for their god to return.
Soon, the
bird was miles away over gun-hunter territory and visible only through
binoculars. Hundreds of ducks scattered as the falcon repeatedly stooped
down on them with its deadly talons and beak.
Shotguns
boomed, a bad sign, and King began whirling a small canvas pouch on a
10-foot rope over his head. Who knew that some falcons find such canvas
pouches to be irresistible? The bird came racing back, panting, wild-eyed,
but meatless.
Do these
birds have personal names?
"Yeah,
and some of them are printable," said King, a Hailey veterinarian.
Sky fishing
"When
she was stooping, I heard the guns go off, and I was like, ‘Oh, great,’
" King said in his SUV on the drive to Picabo, where the falconers
had agreed to regroup.
A falcon is
not like a shotgun or a fishing rod that can be hung on a wall and
forgotten. Training of both bird and person is an everyday commitment.
Becoming a master falconer requires two years of apprenticeship, written
tests, field tests, a federal license and three more journeyman years. A
good bird may have been trained for a year or more. So losing one to a
stray, or even an intentional, shotgun blast is to be avoided.
Charles
Woody’s gyrfalcon-prairie falcon cross, Maddy, wears a hood to keep
her calm while traveling with Woody. Express photo by Willy Cook
Birds of
prey can live to be 25 years old, but their high-velocity lives usually
mean they die an accidental death before then. Shotguns are one danger.
They also fly into fences at high speeds, get electrocuted on power poles,
get run over by cars and get eaten by larger birds of prey. All of which
happens in the wild and in captivity.
Falconers
cross breed their birds, raising hybrids that can sell for thousands of
dollars. But often, they catch their raptors in the wild.
Craig
Shanholtzer, a woodworker and master falconer from Carey, kept at hand a
pigeon in a leather jacket. The back of the jacket was covered with tiny
nylon nooses. And the entire setup—bird, nooses, jacket—was attached
to a long cord.
Throughout
the day, as the caravan of falconers cruised around the desert landscape,
Shanholtzer occasionally parked his truck, wandered into the sagebrush,
and, like some sky fisherman, launched the hapless pigeon into the air.
Always, there was a falcon, sitting on a pole, or circling overhead, but
it never took the bait. If it had, its talons may have caught in the tiny
nooses, and Shanholtzer would have had a new bird to train.
"Interestingly
enough, I’m a vegetarian," the tall and lean Shanholtzer said. He
just enjoys flying birds.
Three hots and a
cot
What can
you hunt with a raptor? Ducks. Rabbits. Grouse. Chukars. Almost any game
that weighs less than about eight pounds.
Toward
afternoon, with still no kills, conversations turned to recipes. Grouse
are great with crushed garlic, rosemary, a little on the rare side.
"It’s wonderful," said Charles Woody, a touch longingly
perhaps, on the drive over to the third or fourth slip of the day.
Meanwhile, he passed around apricot beer and a loaf of bread fortified
with whole olives. It was a good substitute.
This pod of
ducks sat in the reeds of a spring-fed pool encircled by high, volcanic
walls. They were teals, mostly, which were said to be so afraid of falcons
that they wouldn’t fly if one was in the air. They would stay down on
the water, where the falcon couldn’t kill, and where a person could
simply walk over and pick up one of the petrified birds.
Nevertheless,
Woody released his gyrfalcon-prairie falcon hybrid, named Maddy, and she
flapped up, circling, the brass bell attached to her leg tinkling, and
soon skied out on a thermal.
The group
waited. Rod Rinker, whispering to avoid scaring the teals, crouched on the
40-foot-high volcanic lip of the pool and enthusiastically explained his
attraction to the sport. Others cited style, or 4,000-year-old tradition,
or said that gun hunting was too anticlimactic. But Rinker had just passed
his apprenticeship test and was looking forward to trapping a red-tailed
hawk or a kestrel, the only two raptors journeymen are allowed to keep.
For Rinker, in his early 40s, falconry was a natural progression after a
lifetime of hunting. "I’m the hunter," he said simply.
Below,
somebody ran through the reeds shouting, "Yah! Yah! Yah!," and
the teals flapped up into the air. A moment too late, Maddy dropped out of
the sky like an M-shaped bullet, whizzing past Rinker at 80, 90 miles per
hour and landed back at Woody’s feet.
Still no
kill.
Public relations
"You
can go out day after day by yourself and your bird will do amazing things—high
kill ratios, knocking sh-- out of the sky. And you come out on a field
meet and your bird will just go out and perch," Shanholtzer lamented.
He and King
are both dedicated members of the Idaho Falconers Association, which has
about 100 members. The group sometimes—as on this day—invites the
public out to watch. It’s a way of promoting a good public image.
"There
are people who have individual vendettas against falconry,"
acknowledged King. "Their main argument is that we take a free, wild
bird and subjugate it to our whims. And it’s true. But here’s my view.
What is the difference between taking a falcon, caring for it, loving it,
training it and keeping it in good health, and somebody going out and
shooting a duck?"
Falconers
also point out that their birds could choose to simply fly away.
"Our
job with these birds is to conduct ourselves in such a manner as to show
the bird that it’s to its advantage to hunt with us. If it hunts with
us, and it hunts in a certain manner, we will get it an opportunity,"
said Shanholtzer. "And then, once it kills something, we’ll get it
in a safe place to eat it. We give it a conducive situation to stay with
us. You know, three hots and a cot. Some birds just identify that as a
good deal."
Falconers
are constantly weighing their birds. They must know when the bird is a
little lean and hungry, or it might not have an incentive to come back to
the falconer, who has the food.
King said
most wild raptors die in their first year, so falconers are improving the
chance of survival of the raptors they trap.
"Fortunately,
in Idaho, we still largely have a Department of Fish and Game and a
commission that’s made up of people who are hunters and biologists, so
they understand that falconry is a minimal impact on the resource—in
fact, not measurable," he said.
He appeared
to be correct.
Later in
the afternoon, a few vehicles split off from the group, perhaps to try
their luck alone without so many distractions. King, Woody, and several
others headed south of Picabo in search of grouse. But Tara, the
12-year-old bird dog with metal plates in her legs inserted after a car
accident, found only dirt and sagebrush. A falconer tossed a few pigeons
in the air for his raptor to train with.
On the way
back, through the B-Bar-B ranch, where owner Katie Breckenridge forbids
hunting, dozens of fat chukars ran across the road. They seemed to know
where it was safe. Katie stood by her truck.
"You’ve
trained those chukars well," Woody shouted.
She
laughed.