Hunting With a Hawk

What It's Like When You Choose Talons Over Bullets in the Field

James Caan on a cottontail. Anyone got an orange?

I am so pleased to share that James Caan, my one-year-old red-tailed hawk, is locked in. After his summer break growing new feathers and weeks of building up his skills and fitness; I now have a bird ready to load up and take into the field like a shotgun.

Falconry is hunting. The only difference is I’m using talons instead of a gun. When most people think of a falconer, they picture a person outdoors with a hawk on their fist, but that’s just the end result of a very long process.

When I try to explain falconry to other hunters it feels like trying to convince a skeptic that building Lego play sets by hand is cool when they already own a tool that shoots already-built play sets by the trigger pull…

Because when you think about Lego you probably think of individual bricks, right? You probably aren’t thinking of a $700 replica of the Titanic made of Legos. Because the worst part of making a project like that is the returning emptiness of lost purpose that starts gnawing on your brain five minutes after finishing it. Building it was the fun part.

Falconry is like that. At least if you’re doing it right. Falconry is a daily practice, and most of it is keeping birds healthy and entertained over months of maintenance, training, record keeping, and dedication that may eventually result in a hunting partnership.

You can’t get too attached to the end result because this plastic Titanic can fly away whenever it wants. Abandonment is always a panting threat you need to be aware of, but undeterred by. You need to be stupidly dedicated to something that could end at any moment. Heartbreak is a certainty and you’ll statistically get a lot more of it than joy. Honestly, falconry is also a lot like dating.

If you are not someone who appreciates process, who discovers encouragement and dopamine in achieving small wins towards something bigger; you’re not going to have a good time hunting with birds.

But if there’s something about a hawk on your fist on a cold winter morning that makes your chest swell and eyebrows raise, here’s what a regular morning hunt is like. I’ll share the whole process, and maybe some of you will take the first steps toward your falconry journey today.

Me and my first ‘tail, Italics.

Before The Hunt

Hunting with birds is still hunting. Long before I ever took the state Falconry Exam or applied for an apprenticeship license I had taken the federally mandated Hunter’s Safety course and had a hunting license. Falconers follow all the regulations other hunters follow. The game seasons open on the same day. Bag limits are the same. Even on property I own with my own bird, I must follow the regulations that protect wildlife populations. This is part of our ethical code and fair chase.

Besides the work of becoming a legal falconer, there is all the preparation before hunting day, starting back in summer. James has been molting out his feathers all season with a monitored high-fat diet. He then started working with me in September, reacquainting ourselves from last winter and planning daily flight training.

I started managing his diet closer, by the gram, noting his demeanor and response times. By the end of October we were practically there, but still needed to seal the deal with a solid hunt. Last week we started hunting in short bursts, all hunts ending with a full crop (either because he killed something or I brought along takeout).

Now he is ready to fly beside me for longer periods of time, our eyes both on the prize. We have done all this construction to build this dating play set. Our fun is just getting started now that the last pieces are in place.

Catching Aya after a storm, hunting in powder is a whole different game!

Preparing For the Day’s Hunt

Yesterday morning, sometime between the first and second cup of coffee, I was in my kitchen dressing my bird before sunrise. I removed the leash from his ankles and replaced it with his flying gear; two strips of soft leather called jesses that let me grab ahold of him in the wild if needed but won’t get caught up in branches while he’s up.

James is hooded for all of this. With his hood on he can’t see, which means he can’t hunt, which means he’s pretty calm. I am grateful because this morning he’s just light enough to hunt for an hour or so, but not in anyway hungry enough to be weak. Flying weight is like fighting weight - you gotta know the exact numbers for violence.

I changed into hunting clothes, too. Which is to say he was prepared to hunt without any part of his body getting tangled, and I was preparing for the exact opposite. Rabbit hunting in the northeast is nothing like out west. You got to get into the thorniest, thickest, gnarliest shit to find game. I was in double-thick workwear and a camo jacket with enough rips in it to get me into CBGBs. I had on boots that protected me to the knee, extra work gloves, and my loaded hawking sling bag.

My bag has everything I need for a day out. It has everything I need to stalk, skin, and carry AND everything I need to make a hot cup of tea if James lands a rabbit. This early in the season I let my boy gorge on anything he kills. I want him to associate free flying with a guaranteed food baby.

It could take him an hour to pick so much Peter R he’s full, so I am prepared to pass the time he’s dining with a warm beverage and paperback. I always bring something waterproof to sit on, a backpacking stove and billy can, and some tea bags or hot chocolate mix. Within five minutes of my bird tearing through the skull of a lagomorph I can be a chapter deep sipping oolong while his ankle bells jingle.

Just because it’s a blood sport doesn’t mean it can’t be charming as hell.

Once he and I are geared up and the sun’s risen, we head outside to the thickets below my pond to try and hunt rabbits. And if you’ve ever left your house for a hunt, of any kind, then you already know the excitement…

Having Peter for Dinner

Playing With Sharp Objects

I keep James hooded until the exact time and place I am ready to release him. When I take off the hood, I let him take in the scene. Instead of launching him off my fist towards a high branch, I let him decide when and where he wants to hunt from. After a few minutes he leaves me for a branch in a copse of trees a few yards away. I get to work like a good little hunting dog, which is what I am.

To your bird you are simply a flushing tool. James has gotten comfortable with me and trusts me. He doesn’t fly away into the sunrise because he’s hungry and knows every single time he’s been out in the woods with me he’s eaten his fill. It makes more sense to watch what I am doing.

I use a big piece of hardwood as a hiking staff. A slab of ash thick as my wrist and a lot taller than my 5’3” frame. I look like mini lesbian Gandalf (hot).

Fashion aside, me hitting the brush with a big stick is the whole point. From James’ vantage above me, he can not only see critters directly below him, but in all directions that may take off from my ash-stick godbothering. It only takes a few minutes for him to tuck in his wings and dive onto something! A rabbit?! A grouse?! A squirrel?! This never gets old. Ever.

Sadly, it was nothing one could classify as game. It was a white-footed mouse. He lands on it and swallows it in one gulp. I am only slightly disappointed, and not because of the choice, but because it means our hunt just got shortened. A trained bird with food in his crop is still a trained bird, but way less motivated to hang around a primate now that he got his. My job as a falconer is to judge if James is satisfied and ready to call it, or if I just whet his appetite for more.

God hates a coward. We stayed out.

James looking handsome

James spent a fair amount of time walking on the ground hoping more mice would appear, but eventually flew up into the third story of a locust tree. I started walking away from him, wanting him to follow me as I thrashed about.

He did. He flew above me in the trees, watching his trained human scare out little yummy things. I was so pleased to see this. To see months of working together that lead up to this exact relationship.

This bird has eaten. He knows damn well he can fly off and hunt alone but he is choosing me. As someone who has had birds take off I didn’t deserve, his decision is both encouraging and healing, duct tape over the tear in your chaps, shiny and whole.

Do you have any idea how fucking awesome it is for a hawk to want to wear the same letter jacket as you? To have the choice to do anything he wants with food in his belly and he wants to hang out with me?! Years of high school trauma erased. I know it means getting comfortable disemboweling small mammals, but I never said I was perfect.

We hike together like this for nearly an hour. Him above, watching me and occasionally watching elsewhere. He follows me. He follows me through the woods even with a mouse in his crop because last time we did this a rabbit appeared and he nailed it and got to eat for 56-minutes straight until he was so full it looked like he swallowed a softball. So he’ll give me another 20 minutes to offer that again.

But hunting isn’t killing. Few hunt guarantees the perfect circumstances that end with a whooping chase, and when I notice James’ gaze start to wander off me and into the middle distance, I decide to show him an offer he can’t refuse.

Wrapping Up the Hunt

I am not stupid. I know even the best relationships between birds and people are thin as ice. I will be fired the moment I become useless to him. So when I start walking 30 yards or more away from him and he stops following me and watching, I know he’s somewhat done with Team Cold Antler. So I grab the most important piece of falconry gear I own: a lure.

The lure is a key piece of falconry kit. You can buy ones that cost more than an air-fryer hand stitched in leather. Mine is homemade from a rabbit hide an ex-girlfriend tanned for me here on the farm. It is rolled up in a tight ball like a loaf, exactly what a nervous rabbit looks like in the wild. On it I have tied a large quail I defrosted yesterday. This morbid combination is how I go home with a wild hawk I released because it is a promise I haven’t broken yet.

If I use a lure to call a bird in, that’s it. The hunt is done and the bird has earned the reward. If my bird returns to me from a fair distance because of a lure, I let him eat every bite.

I have watched other falconers in the field get wandering birds back with lures baited with everything from slabs of venison to live flapping pigeons—and when the bird lands on the lure they snag the jesses and take away the bait! They take it because if the bird ate a large meal, the hunt has to end and these folks wanted to try another spot or not go home yet. I don’t know how many times you can get away with this, and I never want to find out.

I don’t want to anthropomorphize into hyperbole, but wtf? He trusted you and you stole from him?! Couldn’t be me. I want a bird that would fly across the fires of Mount Doom for my lure.

Which is exactly how yesterday morning went. There wasn’t time for tea (quails get gobbled up fast) but when I called the hunt and brought the lure out, he came within moments. Once he caught it, and started digging into the food, I easily tied his leash back on his anklets while he was breaking into the ribcage. After a few minutes together on the ground, he jumped back on the fist for another treat and I hooded him while securing his gear to my glove’s snap lock (another insurance policy. You trip and fall and your hooded bird takes off…might as well be a death sentence. Take every precaution, apprentices!)

All told, from gearing up before sunrise to coming home together, it was an hour. We walked home and I returned him to the kitchen perch to remove flying gear and return his mews gear. The rest of the day he’ll digest, groom himself, bath, sharpen his beak and sleep. It sounds amazing, but my work day was just getting started. Time for one more cup of coffee before I head out to open coops and pet pigs.

The Rest of the Season

James and I will be hunting together long as I’m worth sticking around for or the season ends, whichever comes first. As long as he’s with me, we will be hunting together about twice a week.

Those hunts could last hours or minutes. Sometimes you release a bird and one song on the playlist later, they are on top of a rabbit. Sometimes you thrash bushes until your hands are bleeding from thorns and sting from cold sweat, and you come home empty. And some days you spend an hour outside on two cups of coffee feeding your roommate mice. All in all, it’s hunting; the greatest pastime ever created by reckless emotional gamblers that like to trade recipes.

But it iss my favorite pastime, and one that gets better every time I fly him. I am hoping for a season ahead of songs and stories in the woods with my boy.

I hope to add a second bird to the season as well. I have a kestrel a few weeks behind James in training (he took longer to molt) but there will be falcons and hawks in my hands this winter.

Folks, that’s how it goes. You do all this work and prayer hoping something beautiful and wild wants to come back to you. It will never be as reliable as a shotgun, but guns don’t have souls. Guns can’t choose you. And around here, I don’t do anything without stakes high enough to make things interesting.

Sky high.