Hey all,

Rarely do I post, but today I saw something worth posting. I hunt ducks with guns as well, but prefer to do it with falcons. Today I went duck hawking with some friends and we had an amazing morning. We flew three falcons once each and caught three ducks. This is very difficult to do. The final duck was a banded gadwall. To give you some perspective, the most successful duck hawkers in the country will kill maybe fifty birds in a season and most far fewer, so bands are even more rarely acquired in falconry than in gun hunting.

The first photo is an immature white gyrfalcon that just caught a wigeon. The second photo is a mature gyrfalcon-peregrine falcon hybrid that caught another wigeon. The third photo shows an immature peregrine falcon with the banded gadwall it caught minutes earlier.

A bit of trivia for those interested. White gyrfalcons only come from Greenland and were and are some of the most highly prized raptors in the sport. During the crusades, an Arab sheikh once ransomed a captured Danish prince for the price of six white gyrfalcons, as the Danes controlled Greenland.

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Corey Roelke

nice

Interesting and great catch

Sweet. Those birds look awesome

I like to shoot them in the face but that's cool too!

where are you doing this at? I have always wanted to go see falcons work.

That is wicked kewl!

Sweet.

Im not sure I get this sport but it looks like you enjoy it. We all like different things at least we share the same interest in the outdoors. Cool looking birds though!

Pretty cool right there

Really cool there.

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

Awesome! Do the falcons grab em off the water or in flight?

I went with a buddy of mine that flies a redtail hawk and watched it catch a jackrabbit and a cotton tail. It was pretty sweet to watch

I was gu an ask this the other day but forgot. That's cool that's for sharing!! I have

Very interesting!

nice thanks for sharing

Gill_97 - We were doing this southwest of Fort Worth near Godley and Granbury, but there are falconers all over the state. Where are you located? PM me if you are serious about seeing it. This season is almost over but we could set you up next season or at an official Texas Hawking Association event.

P & Y - Duck hawking works as follows in an ideal situation. You see some ducks on a pond. The smaller the better as ducks will always try to get back or stay on the water when a falcon is overhead. You get out of view of the ducks and release the falcon. It flies above the pond. The higher the better. Some birds go over 1000 feet high. It sometimes takes them five to ten minutes to climb this high. When the falcon is at the right height over the pond, you flush the ducks. If everything goes right, the ducks try to leave, the falcon stoops (dives), and hits a duck. Sometimes the impact with the falcon kills them and sometimes the falcon grabs them and binds to them. If they just get knocked down the falcon will come land on them. When it goes wrong, the ducks make it back to the water before the falcon gets there or flush when the falcon is out of position and they get away. They will always try to flush when the falcon is out of position because they can beat a falcon in level flight any day of the week without the momentum from the stoop. When it goes right, it's one of the most amazing things you'll ever see.

CR

So how do yall train these birds? that is awesome.

That sounds awesome!

Do we send congrats to you or the bird for the band? I am interested to know several things about how this works.

Do the falcons get the ducks off the water, out of the air, or both?

When you send out a falcon how long do they fly around and how far from you will they go?

How do you get them to come back to you?

I guess they don't operate under the "if it flies it dies" system? They know what a duck is and they just go after ducks or do you get a cardinal or blue jay back on occasion?

Do they eat the ducks? The falcon in the second picture looks like he would rip your face off if you tried to take that duck away.

You answered several of my questions while I was typing but I am still curious to know if he would rip your face off if you tried to take the duck away.

BUhunter903 - The congrats don't go to me, as it wasn't my bird! It was my friend's. Congrats go to both the bird and the falconer. By training them to stay near you and by providing them with fruitful opportunities to kill your chosen quarry, they learn how to do it better and typically avoid other quarry. The bird that killed the banded gadwall did stoop on a dove, but did not catch it, while it was mounting up to fly on the ducks on the nearby pond.

As falconers we are lucky to have a "let it lay" law. Meaning if your bird catches nongame or game out of season, you are legally allowed to let your bird eat it at the spot of the kill, but you must leave the quarry and may not possess it.

Some falconers catch enough game that they eat some of it, but most people use it as high quality food for the birds and save the rest for the offseason where they aren't killing game.

We train our birds so that they won't attack, but that's not really in their behavioral repetoire. With wild trapped birds, they just want to get away and you train them that their best opportunity to catch something is with you aiding them by participating in the hunt. I have zero fear of 99.9% of falconry birds. Robbing the birds of a kill is a bad idea as it teaches them not to cooperate, but swapping a kill for another piece of food is fine and that's why that gadwall is in mountable condition, as he swapped the duck for a big piece of quail.

We train them to come back to a "lure" that we swing, which looks like a bird for falcons or a mammal if you're flying something like a red tailed hawk. It's garnished with some meat as a reward for coming back and allowing themselves to be picked up and hooded.

Hope this answers your questions.

CR

That's is freaking awesome