The day comes—all too soon—when the falconer dares to keep the hack hawks out no longer. The decree goes out for one to be taken up. If this one has been hacked to the fist the proceeding is simple enough. As she stands complacently breakfasting on the fist, the jesses are grasped in the fingers of the left hand. A couple of snips with a sharp pair of strong nail-scissors make a slit in the two jesses. And through these a spring swivel is deftly slipped. Attached to the swivel is a leash, the end of which is wound round the little finger, while the button of it is grasped in the palm of the left hand. As the hawk proceeds with her meal she is taken quietly to a darkened room, where a rufter hood is slipped on her head. Five minutes' carrying, and she is placed on a mound of turf, food and all, while the leash, unwound from the little finger, is fastened to a peg strongly planted in the ground. If the hawk has been hacked to the lure or to the board, the process is a little more complicated, but presents no real difficulty. A bow-net must then be used. This instrument is more fully described in the next chapter. It consists of a hoop of metal on which a light net is stitched. The ends are fixed down; and the hoop is so set that a pull on a long string will bring the rim up and over any object which may be near it on the near side. The object, of course, in this case will be the lure, or the piece of food with which the hack board is garnished. When the hawk is feeding, the string is pulled. The net swings over, encompassing both meat and hawk. Up runs the falconer, to secure the captive, who is made fast, hooded, and taken home.
Even if a hawk has begun to prey for herself, she can still often be captured with a live lure, that is, a live bird attached to a light cord. Once find the hawk, and let the live lure fly, and she is pretty sure to take it. Then she may be snared in one of the ways described in the chapter on Lost Hawks.
A hack hawk, once taken up, is treated in very much the same way as a wild-caught hawk. The process of reclamation begins at once. And this process will be found described at length in the succeeding chapter.
Passage Hawks
All big hawks captured after they have begun to prey for themselves are now commonly called passage hawks, although the name, strictly speaking, may not be at all correct. Wild-caught is a more inclusive term; and it is often used in the case of sparrow-hawks, merlins, and hobbies, when casually caught by bird-catchers or gamekeepers, and not killed in the process. We have seen that passage hawk means properly a hawk caught during the period of her first migration southwards. It is, however, of course, possible to capture her either in early autumn before the migration has commenced—in which case a peregrine is more properly called a slight falcon or slight tiercel—or late in the winter, when she has become a lantiner, or in the spring migration, when she is travelling north. But if she has begun to moult before she comes into man’s possession, she is correctly described as a haggard. If gamekeepers were a little more alive to their own interests they would often catch sparrow-hawks, and sometimes merlins and peregrines, alive, and dispose of them at a very remunerative price, instead of killing them, often in a most barbarous way, by means of pole-traps and other snares, which destroy or cripple them after hours of torture, and render them almost valueless. But for generations past no systematic attempts have been made in this country to snare wild hawks in an uninjured condition; and if a falconer should be able to obtain any hawk so taken he may consider himself exceptionally lucky. Several such hawks have indeed been caught in England, and, getting rather accidentally into good hands, have turned out very excellent performers. Occasionally a sparrow-hawk or merlin is saved alive out of the nets of a bird-catcher; and these, if heard of before their plumage is ruined, are prizes for which many a falconer will gladly give something like their weight in silver.
But, as a rule, the full-grown hawks which come into the market are captives which have been taken on the autumnal passage by the professional hawk-catchers of Valkenswaard, in North Brabant. The sons of Adrian Möllen, formerly falconer to the famous Loo Club, still carry on this business of snaring peregrines on the great open heath, which for many centuries has been resorted to for a like purpose, and which, of course, takes its name from its renown as a place over which the migrants must often pass. Anyone who wants a wild-caught peregrine should write beforehand to one of these gentlemen, who will probably not fail to send him what he requires. They go out every year, in the months of October and November, and lie in wait daily in their cunningly-constructed huts until they have secured as many captives as have been ordered in various places. A dozen or more are annually required for England, and sometimes a few for France. The variety most in demand is the red falcon, that is to say, the female peregrine in the nestling plumage, not yet moulted. But blue falcons are also sometimes wanted, and of late years there has been some considerable demand for tiercels, both red and blue. Merlins, sparrow-hawks, and an occasional goshawk may be taken, and, still more rarely, a ger. The price for a falcon is four to five pounds, and of a tiercel from three to four. But a special apparatus is required for catching the smaller hawks, which will not usually come to the same lure as a peregrine. If the captured hawk has to be kept for any length of time in the captor’s hands before being fetched or sent away, an extra charge is made for her maintenance.