david901
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Posts posted by david901
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Well tonight the big girl was 2lb 11 1/4oz.and headed out later for abit lamping and ended up bagging to the night again.
Hi Sean
Can I ask, did Andy get the parent hawks to yours from a guy, called John, up in Inverness-shire, Scotland?
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if i do go for a p/r nextyear i'll be hooding it
Hi mate
After all the work you've put into the imprints, I would be sticking with them.
That female is only going to get better and I bet she will bag a hare for you soon
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If you end it now Sean, I'm quite sure you would regret it. The season has still a long way to go.
The weather will hopefully settle and give us those great frosty mornings that make it a pleasure to go out in.
Fingers crossed.
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as promised, just a quick un, youtube quality is crap, my facebook one is better
Fcukinhell mate.......that's painfully close! :-(
I know iknow, I keep bloody watching it lol
Bullet, I feel your pain. That was SO close mate.
The bright side is she is binding to them and is holding them.
I reckon if you get a close enough slip at them, she will hold it long enough til you get there.
thanks, i'll just keep trying, I can only go this place every other week so she can have a rest from them, we must of put up over 15 hares in total, some got up half a field away, there were also a fair few covey of English partridge,
I think the ideal situation with hares is to fly at 3/4 grown ones to get the birds confidence and footing correct. Then progress onto more difficult quarry as the season progresses.
Unfortunately in the real world, this just doesn't happen.
I'm sure you will get one soon mate.
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Well that's the male lost his other deck feather.
I don't want the follicles to grow over and block up, so I'm considering putting his weight up to encourage the feathers to come down.
The rain is non-stop here for the next few days so I have upped his weight an ounce or 2 and will consider it.
Its a real shame as he has got his fitness up and has taken crows, Jackdaws, Magpie and one female pheasant recently.
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as promised, just a quick un, youtube quality is crap, my facebook one is better
Fcukinhell mate.......that's painfully close! :-(
I know iknow, I keep bloody watching it lol
Bullet, I feel your pain. That was SO close mate.
The bright side is she is binding to them and is holding them.
I reckon if you get a close enough slip at them, she will hold it long enough til you get there.
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thats a good price for a male
They are very good prices for both. Bloke I know paid £1200 for his
Unfortunately mate the price of Goshawks has dropped significantly due to the amount now getting bred.
There are still people who have untouched eyasses in their aviaries due to not getting bought.
Good luck with the sale. I'm nearly tempted with the female.....Hmmm.
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thanks I hope so tooI hope you have a safe and successful days hawking mate.
well today we walked around most ponds but nothing on them, went to a spot that holds the odd hare, and yep one gets up, birds powers up field after it, connects and has a ride on its back, a bit of a tussle and the hare breaks free(damn)
still I was buzzing that she is still 100% committed on them
I was told by a regular Hare hawker that a decent female Harris has more success than a Goshawk because of the difference in footing. Harris hawks tending to keep hold of their first grip & the Gos tending to try & change grip, thus letting go so many.
Having seen a few Harris hawks being dragged all over fields & slammed up & down into the ground by hares, while falconer franticly runs behind, I think I'd prefer the Gos style, maybe less productive, but perhaps safer?
I think its fair to say anybody doing hares with a gos or harris will lose more than they catch, It would be probably different if you had access to plenty of them, but I don't, hence my two hour trip planned for the weekend, I want to try and get out there every other weekend if I can, I only have 3 good flights on them and call it a day, no point burning the bird out
Hi Bullet
Can you get hold of a hare carcase.
Do the usual - drag it about, give her a real tussle on it and then give her a bumper crop up.
It may just keep her totally motivated, though she does seem absolutely committed right now.
I heard about a Czech gos that only flew at 2lb or so that used to take loads of them. That was the only quarry she was flown at and she was started off early in season before they grew into huge monsters...LOL.
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I hope you have a safe and successful days hawking mate.
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I have had a few days without a catch with the little male gos lately,mainly due to flying in near gale force winds, but also the dog bumped some quarry out of range.
I could see that his confidence was starting to drop. So it was good he got a catch today.
First picture shows some of the crows overhead that would mob him if I wasn't there.
The next shows him plucking his prize.
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Thanks for sharing Bullet.
These days happen more often than a lot of falconers let on.
Sometimes it just doesn't happen, no matter how hard we try.
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Here's my 2 cents worth on imprints - I've only flown one - this one for 6 years.
I found that to begin with, I had to have her weight down to a certain range in order to motivate her.
Once she was fit and confident her weight can go up considerably higher, depending on how you fly them.
The first few years I only ever killed once, fed her up and then called it a day.
She knew only too well that a catch meant getting a full crop which was a good motivation for her.
I have flown her at 2lb 3 or 4, right up to 2lb 8 or 9. At the higher weights, she was more selective, but still killed regularly.
Her usual flying weight was from 2lb 5 to 2lb 6.
The good thing I like with my imprint is that weight was not an issue when flying her.
With the 2 parent reared Gosses I have flown - both males, weight was fairly critical and only had a range of an ounce or so.
I'm not talking about putting their weight up gradually as they muscle up, I'm talking about everyday hawking weights.
The thing is, all birds are individuals and their temperaments are all different. The same with how much motivation they require will vary from bird to bird.
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I never thought of leg-mounting with the gos,
I was always worried it would interfere with their footing ability.
I use the tail and leg with the gos as I always used one on the tail.until my mate lost his gos for 9 days with just tranny on the tail and failed and couldn't find it.now I use one on The tail and leg incase one tranny fails.
That's a wise policy Sean.
Like you said, you never know when one is going to fail.
Your friend did well getting his gos back after 9 days.
I know that if my German gos was out for that long and catching his own game, there is no way I would get him back unless I was fortunate enough to trap him.
I'm not sure about my female imprint. I like to think she would come down to a lure or carcase, but you never know. Once they've had a few kills on their own they soon revert back to wild hawks. Over the years I've heard of a few guys who have lost imprint hawks that have never been seen again.
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Are you on 173? I've still got the merlin mini from falconry electronics here if you want it.........as 173 is of absolutely no use to me out here.....
If you used some kind of micro transmitter double cable tied through the eyelet or through a small hole punched through the corner of the anklet, then it can't interfere mate, no more than a bell would........;-)I never thought of leg-mounting with the gos,
I was always worried it would interfere with their footing ability.
That said....some folk maintain the transmitter being that close to the floor on a kill isn't a good thing? It's one of the pro's to the backpack apparently......
I can't say I noticed a difference in signal tbh......but then unfortunately I didn't have many long track downs on pheasant kills...haha
Thanks for the advice mate.
That's the good thing about forums, you can share and gain information and see other's experiences and what works or doesn't work for them.
I've only got normal sized transmitters as I'm too tight to buy any of the newer stuff.
Not sure what order it's in though, but you could always get it checked by FE.........pm your address if you want & I'll send it out......
That is a very generous offer mate.
Unfortunately I am on 216.
Thanks though, its much appreciated but you should keep it as you never know what will crop up.
You may be able to swap it with someone for something useful to you.
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good stuff
Cheers mate.its only took me to get her entered in her second season and lets hope there be more.as I got my first hare in the second season and first pheasant and now a grey back.
Well done Sean.
They just get better and better every year if you put the work in, like you have.
The good thing about a female on crows is they pulverise them.
My female has taken a few and she doesn't get anywhere near the hassle as the male does.
Sometimes a crowd will come in and mob the hell out of your bird.
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If you used some kind of micro transmitter double cable tied through the eyelet or through a small hole punched through the corner of the anklet, then it can't interfere mate, no more than a bell would........;-)I never thought of leg-mounting with the gos,
I was always worried it would interfere with their footing ability.
That said....some folk maintain the transmitter being that close to the floor on a kill isn't a good thing? It's one of the pro's to the backpack apparently......
I can't say I noticed a difference in signal tbh......but then unfortunately I didn't have many long track downs on pheasant kills...haha
Thanks for the advice mate.
That's the good thing about forums, you can share and gain information and see other's experiences and what works or doesn't work for them.
I've only got normal sized transmitters as I'm too tight to buy any of the newer stuff.
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Hi Bullet,
Well done on the rabbit and getting more land to hawk over - you can't have too much...LOL
I have found that with all the rain we have had, the ducks are using any splashes that are formed.
They don't seem to use the usual ponds for the timebeing.
Once a bit of cold dry weather comes in, I am hoping they will be back to their normal feeding places.
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I never thought of leg-mounting with the gos,
I was always worried it would interfere with their footing ability.
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Hi Bullet
I use a Falconry Electronics transmitter.
Its a decent transmitter that has served me well over the years.
I have never used a backpack with a gos though I helped my mate put one on his Gyr/saker that seemed to work out well for him.
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Loads of high winds and rain which has curtailed a lot of hawking.
It means when its dry, even though its very windy we go out.Today he had a good chase at a woodpigeon, he saw them flying about a wood, so he flew up higher than the trees and came storming in.I hoped he had connected, but no luck.I had a slip at an out of position crow. It was too far away and into the wind, so he didn't get on terms with it.I tried further down the farm but got nothing up so I thought I'd call him down to a full lure.He came down straight away and it was only then I noticed his deck feather with the telemetry was hanging off.At first I thought the feather had broken off, but it soon became clear that it was pulled out. He must have caught it in a branch.Usually I use a plectrum type fitting, but this year I used a brass tail mount that is glued/crimped on.I considered that this may have been a contributing factor, but on reflection it meant that only one feather was lost instead of two if I had been using the plectrum type mount. -
Hi Sean
Thanks for sharing.
Having looked at lamping in your videos, I must admit its not for me.
My bottle would crash at the thought of any obstacles
But fair play to you mate, it looks a good way to get her out on these dark nights.
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The weather has been terrible here as it is everywhere else.
I got the male out a couple of times in the high winds and rain.
Had a few good flights, one was at a group of 3 magpies that got up about 150 yards away.
He chased them right out of sight and I had to track him down, but unfortunately no prize.
He chased a few pheasants - all cockbirds.
One chase, again went out of sight, I tracked him down sitting on the ground in some long grass.
I don't know if he grabbed the pheasant in the air and lost it or it bailed and he followed it into the cover.
I was hoping to get a crack at duck with him again soon, but with all the rain, the duck could be lying anywhere, especially in any flooded fields.
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Its been raining non-stop here for the last few days.
Yesterday was a "fast" day for the hawks, so I wanted to get him out hawking today.
I waited ages to see if it would stop raining, but it didn't, so as the dog needed out anyway,
I thought I'd take him up to a local farm to check if there was any pigeons in the sheds.
The sheds were surprisingly empty, but there was 2 crows out in a field
yards away.I got the hawk out and got him ready for flying out of sight of the 2 crows.
I figure with the rain, he could have one decent flight before getting soaked, so I showed him the crows and released him.
He closed the gap fairly quickly and got on terms with a crow.
The flight was a good exiting one but the crow out-flew him, so fair play to it. He ended up in a tree and so I called him back.
He flew to a tree nearby me, but wasn't ready to come down yet.
I let the dog run about and a short time later he pushed out a Jackdaw hiding near to one of the sheds.
It was obvious the way it was flying that it was water-logged and was flying poorly.
The hawk needed no invitation and came down straight away and nailed it.
The first flight at the crow was a cracker and the second one at the Jackdaw allowed the hawk to get rewarded.
Not bad for a rainy day.
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The best thing for it is a good Avian vet mate.
They will be able to assess the damage and the chances of it healing, whether it requires pinning, or taped up etc.
My Northern Goshawk
in Falconry
Posted
Sorry Sean
I meant did Andy buy the breeding pair from a guy called John from Inverness-shire?