Game-Hawking
Partridges, pheasants, and other game birds may be killed with several kinds of hawks. In ancient times it seems that the former were taken in England with the jerkin, or male ger, and occasionally with the gerfalcon,—though this was mostly reserved for much bigger quarry,—with the peregrine falcon and tiercel, the lanner and lanneret, the barbary falcon and tiercel, the male goshawk, the female sparrow-hawk, and sometimes even the tiny merlin and almost equally diminutive hobby. In our times most of these varieties have been almost disused for the flight at game birds, for various reasons, the chief of which is that peregrines are found to be more useful at it than the other sorts. It is true that goshawks have been flown quite lately both at partridges and pheasants, and with some success; and it will be seen in treating of the sparrow-hawk that she has also done some execution amongst the denizens of the swedes and stubbles. Even merlins have been found occasionally to take a young partridge in September. But goshawks and sparrow-hawks are seldom speedy enough to catch many full-grown partridges, unless they can be approached nearer than is usually the case nowadays. Probably not more than one merlin in fifty could be induced to fly partridges with any zest; and not one in a hundred could hold a full-grown one on the ground without great difficulty and risk to the tail feathers. And, as merlins will not wait on, the flight with them at partridges, if it were to be accomplished, would lack the chief attraction of game-hawking, and not be much worth seeing. The lanner and the barbary, as well as the ger-tiercel, would still certainly show good sport with game; so would the two kinds of shaheen, and very possibly the saker. But the supply of these hawks is extremely limited; and the climate of England does not suit them so well as the peregrine. Moreover, the mode of training and flying them does not materially differ from that of the commoner and hardier bird. It may be assumed, therefore, for the purposes of the chapter, that game-hawking means, what falconers generally understand by it, the flight with peregrines at grouse, black-game, or partridges. Pheasants, snipe, hares, and woodcocks will be dealt with in another chapter.
Grouse and black-game hawking differ in no important particular from partridge-hawking; and, generally speaking, what is to be said about the latter may be said with equal truth of the other two. It should be mentioned, however, that falcons, from their superior strength, are much to be preferred for the flight at the bigger quarry. Although there have been cases where tiercels have done well at grouse, these are exceptional. Usually they are averse to tackling so heavy a quarry, and, of course, still more reluctant to take the field against blackcock. They are, however, perfectly equal to the flight at partridges. Some falconers have even professed to prefer them for this flight to their sisters. This, however, was not the view taken in the classic age of falconry; and if a fair comparison is made the falcon will be found to be at least as good for the stubble-fields, while vastly superior on the moors. Here again the method of training and working, whether the one sex or the other is used, is identically the same.
In game-hawking, the eyess is much more on even terms with the passager than in the flight out of the hood at rooks and larger quarry. In fact, some of the very best and deadliest grouse-hawks in modern times have come from the nest to the falconer’s hands. The records of the Old Hawking Club show a quite exceptionally brilliant score made by one of their eyesses, Parachute, who took no less than fifty-seven grouse in one season, heading the list of that year’s performances on the Club moor. In the same year, 1882, Vesta, an eyess of her first season, killed as many as forty-three grouse. Yet it must not be inferred from this that every nestling is as likely to kill grouse or partridges as well as a passage hawk. It is rarely that the latter does not fly at least creditably, when trained, whereas with eyesses the general rule is rather the other way. A really first-rate performer is amongst eyesses the exception, however well they have been hacked and trained. On the other hand, the making of the eyess to this flight is beset by few of the difficulties which trouble him who would train a wild-caught hawk to it. It has been said already that a passage hawk, waiting on at any height, must naturally be more apt to check at passing birds than an eyess. The latter has been, or ought to have been, reserved, from her youth up, for the one flight for which she was specially destined by her owner; whereas the other, from her youth up, until captured, has been accustomed to fly at whatever happened to be most ready to hand. There is, too, generally a special reason why the passage hawk should be apt, when expected to wait on for game, to check at any rook which may be in sight. As a rule she has come into the trainer’s hands in the late autumn, has been deliberately entered by him at rooks in early spring, and has flown them with his entire approbation for some weeks. No wonder, then, that if on the twelfth of August a rook comes past she should think it her duty to go for him.
Let us, however, speak of the eyess first, and we can see afterwards what modifications are to be made in the case of the older hawk. When your pupil will come well to the lure do not keep her long, if at all, at work in stooping at it. On the contrary, let the interval between the time when she is thrown off and the time when she is invited to come down on the lure be as long as possible. Keep her on the wing as long as you dare. But you must not at first go too far in this direction. If you wear out her patience she may go to perch, either on the ground or perhaps in a tree half a mile away. Take her down, therefore, if you can, before she is too much tired. But if you should make a mistake, and the inapt pupil goes to perch, do not hurry after her, unless there is any special reason for doing so. Stay where you are if she is well in sight; or, if not, move to a spot where she can easily see you, and do not have the air of pursuing her. Make her understand that, in this case, it is she who must come to you, and not you to her. When she finds after a long sojourn in the tree or on the ground, that after all, she has either to trouble herself to come or else go without her food, she will be less likely to be troublesome next time. She will think to herself, “What was the use of all that delay? I might as well have kept on the wing and had my dinner sooner.” Such reflections are very salutary. You do not want to be beat by your pupil, but your pupil to be beat by you, and to learn that your way of doing things is the best both for her and for you. She will learn it, too, if you go the right way to work and persevere. With an eyess you have the whip hand. She cannot easily feed herself without you; and she knows it. For weeks she has been indebted to you, directly or indirectly, for her daily rations. Even in her wildest days at the end of hack, when she would let no one come near her, she was often watching you with eager eyes as you put out her meat on the hack board, and since that, have you not always either given her her food on the lure, or at all events taken her to a place where she could fly and kill a quarry which you had put up for her?
Have patience with her, therefore, and induce her by slow degrees to go up higher and higher. You must use all imaginable devices to accomplish this main object. Try to make her understand that the higher she goes the more chance there is of your producing the lure. Thus, suppose she has made three or four circles without going more than forty feet high, and in the next goes to fifty or sixty feet, bring out the lure and let her have it. Here is another device. Two men go out, each having a lure. One stands on higher ground than the other. Then call off the hawk alternately, each man showing his lure in turn, and hiding it as the hawk comes up. But let the man on the upper ground never indulge her with any success. When she is gratified let it be when she comes from above. She is not unlikely to associate the idea of success with that of toiling upwards and then coming more swiftly down. This is, moreover, a view of the matter to which the minds of all hawks are naturally prone. The flesh is weak, particularly in eyesses, but the spirit knows that the proper way to earn a living is to mount and then stoop down.
It is not good to defer needlessly the moment when you give your hawk a flight. Flights at quarry, even if it is bagged quarry only, almost always improve the mounting of a hawk. Why? Because first nature and then experience teaches her that from a height she has more chance of catching a live bird. It is not a bad plan, if your hawk mounts badly, to start for her (from a place of concealment, of course) a fast house-pigeon at a distance of five or six hundred yards up-wind from a thick covert. She will have plenty of time to make a stoop or two in the open. But she will almost certainly fail, and the pigeon will get off easily into shelter. Then if your hawk comes back to you at a good height, give her a much worse pigeon, which she will have a good chance of taking. If she comes back low, take her down to the lure, and save the second pigeon. The next day you may take out two pigeons—a good and a bad. If your hawk mounts better give the bad pigeon; and if not, give her again the one which she will not be able to catch. These are not infallible methods; but they may succeed, and they are worth trying, when a hawk is averse to mounting naturally. In the lone hours of darkness, when her hood is on, such a hawk may fight her battles over again, and inquire seriously of herself what was the cause of her ill-success. And, reflecting on the experiences of hack, she may very likely conclude that she could have done better if she had started in pursuit from higher in the air.
The old falconers had a device which is not often adopted now, but which seems to have been effectual, at least, in some cases. They “seeled” (see [Chap. V.]) the bagged quarry,—usually a duck or a pigeon,—and the effect was that, when so blindfolded and let loose, it flew upwards, like a towering partridge, avoiding the risk of striking against obstacles which it could not see. The hawk flown at such quarry was naturally induced to keep high when waiting on. The objection to any such flight is that the quarry has not a fair chance of shifting from the stoop when it comes.