Brief Falconry Demo

[BlueCoyote 0]

Last weekend i was invited by some friends to go to a "Scottish Festival, Highland Games" in Stone Mountain GA - which was a four hour drive away from my home but well worth it in the end. i dont get out much, so going on this road trip did my disposition good not to mention i had family babysit so i didnt have to chase my two boys all over the hills!

 

So! while we were there they had the Falconers Club of GA scheduled to do a demonstration for the event and that demo was one of three reasons why i went. Saturday i found everyone hanging out under a tent, letting people pose with the birds, answering questions etc. I cant remember if the man said there are only or 800 falconers in the state of Georgia alone... either way thats not many. I dont know what the numbers are for Florida. At one time i was interested enough in falconry to want to become an apprentice - but that never happened for several reasons-

 

So bla bla bla all that aside, here are the pictures of all the birds they had!

he was getting tired, obviously... his job was to make it "look" like that person was holding the hawk. and no i didnt pose for a picture.

 

this one was my favourite - and i kept thinking it was cool how the two of them matched so well lol

Anyway, Harris Hawk from Arizona. And i dont remember all the rules this man told me about having a Harris Hawk, but there were a few strict ones. we had a nice discussion about the sport and the birds. according to him there are quite a few people in Georgia that hunt with hawks and beagles... but no one hunted with ferrets that he knew of.

 

 

this one i think she said was a recently captured bird.. i may not have heard her clearly due to the crowd. but she did say at one point she couldnt allow him to catch wild game yet because he would likely catch it, land in a tree.. eat it, then fly away.

 

 

The demo was fun while it lasted, and it didnt last long. to start out with they talked about how these raptors killed their prey, then asked the crowd if we'd like to see how one catches a bunny - to my surprise more people said yes lol - turned out the "bunny" was a stuffed animal tied onto the back of a remote control toy car. it was caught in a matter of seconds and the hawk rode that little car all around the field refusing to let go meanwhile the announcer is explaining that "This is NOT Cruel to the rabbit. Nature has a way of cushioning death. the talons (or fangs of other predators) typically penetrate the prey past the point of the nerve endings" - but i dont know if that made any of the bunny huggers feel any better about it or not lol

 

The next bird up was named Winky. they were demonstrating how he would attack a piece of meat on the end of a rope that was being swung around. He made three passes before a wild redtail hawk erupted out of the trees followed by two pissed off crows.... Winky had to be grounded immediately. From what i witnessed it seemed like Winky disturbed the redtail, who in turn disturbed the crows. either way they wouldnt do anymore demonstrations because the wild hawk was still circling the field and they were afraid he might actually attack and kill one of their own hawks.

 

So here is Winky on the ground guarding his prize

 

 

so after it was all over with i wonder if that crowd of people actually learned anything. i probably know more about falconry than most people do in my region, which isnt much!

the old man living next door to us has a vendetta against hawks and has shot quite a few - and set traps just for them.. he'd rather have his Purple Martins than the hawks

but his attitude isnt uncommon i suppose.