Over the weekend I took the opportunity to fulfill a promise I had made to a young man who had contacted me last year wanting to see and experience falconry. His girlfriend, Ellie, is the daughter of one of my fellow classmates from Respiratory school. I combined this opportunity with catching up with a friend of mine who has access to some pretty good hunting. This friend also brought along a couple of his nephews. It was a bright, not too cold, although fairly windy day. I had lots of brush beaters, and for their part, they all got to see some pretty good hawking.
Below is Deniska, who is holding Kali.
Another title for this post would be: "How I used a GoPro incorrectly, and instead of taking high image videos, instead took a gazillion useless .JPG photos, mostly of the ground the GoPro wearer was looking at so he wouldn't fall."
Seriously, Rich usually is my GoPro operator, but he was at work on this weekend day. He gave me a quick lesson on how to use it, but I was surprised when we downloaded the data that it had gone into photo taking mode. We were literally perusing through hundreds of photos. Most did not catch any of the several exciting slips on this hunting outing. I did isolate one of our slips. Wyvern tagged this bunny in some thick brush. Just as I arrived to help her, bunny got traction and kicked her off, to escape. Here is a .GIF that I made of the action. Later, we would flush bunny again, and I could see it was injured, with blood on its neck, but it was a very, very lucky bunny and escaped us again.
Our team for the day worked the brush hard, and at the end, when we had pretty much given up, we came across one last really thick brush pile on a slight hillside. Oh, it looked SOOOOO good. I had the kids go jump on it, and sure enough, a bunny popped out, and this time Wyvern caught it. She then proceeded to play "Don't Catch Me", as I slid down the hill after her, and she kept hop-scotching away with her prize. At the bottom of the hill I made one last dive for her, and grabbed her bunny, which is just as well, as she then let it go, and proceeded to pout for awhile and would not come to me to get her food reward. I made my way back to the car, and there she joined me and allowed me to leash her in while she dined on the most choice parts of the bunny.
We moved to another location that Brandon had permission to hunt, but I decided it did not look as promising, nor did we have enough time as Brandon had some family obligations. We parted after some pictures, and then went to an old abandoned farm owned by Ellie's family.
This location did look pretty good, as old abandoned farms tend to. Kali was flown, and again, there was a really pretty stoop on a bunny which I so wish the GoPro had caught (it didn't). We would work around the yard and off to a corner where I was about to call it a day. Deniska had flushed a bunny in that corner but we did not see where it had gotten off to. As I came up out of the ditch we were in, looking for Kali, who I expected to still be in the trees, I heard a strange squeak (not a typical bunny cry), and following that and the bells I then heard, we found Kali on her prize.
It was a good day for all. My guests got to see some good flying and catching, and both birds scored a hot meal, plus more food for the freezer.
