The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

The giving of bagged quarry is not a thing to be encouraged or continued for any length of time. Bagged game never fly well, seldom passably even; and they demoralise a hawk. Bagged house-pigeons fly admirably; but then they are not the quarry you want your hawk to pursue. On the contrary, you are particularly anxious that as your hawk is waiting on for a covey to be put up she shall not start off in pursuit of a chance pigeon. Be very stingy, therefore, with your bagged pigeons; and if you give any at all, leave off directly your hawk has begun to mount at all decently.

Eyesses of all kinds are often given to raking away, i.e. wandering away from the falconer to inordinate distances, when they ought to be waiting on nearly over his head. And these aberrations are generally in a down-wind direction. It is fortunate, therefore, that in game-hawking the quarry is usually put up by walking down-wind. Otherwise many young hawks would have little chance of coming up with them. For it is a curious thing that, as compared with game birds, the speed of a peregrine is greater when going down-wind, whereas in rook-hawking she gains more rapidly when both are flying up-wind. On the troublesome habit of raking away, some observations will be found in the chapter on “Vices.” Practice is usually the best remedy. A hawk generally has gumption enough to see that by constantly waiting on down-wind she puts herself at a great disadvantage for killing her bird if it goes up-wind; and when she has come to understand that the bird is going to be put up by you, and not accidentally, she will begin to place herself willingly in such a position over you as to be ready for the stoop when the birds are flushed. “Why-loe!”—a cry with a rather Chinese sound about it—was the shout used for calling in a raking hawk. Of course, while flying her at the lure you may do something towards habituating your eyess to keep up-wind, by rewarding her when she stoops from there, and not from the other side. So also, in actual flying, keep still, and let the game lie, while she is wide; and move on when she is in her proper place. If she can get a kill or two from a pitch over the falconer’s head it will be better for her than any number of kills made when she was waiting on wide.

The glory of a falconer who goes in for game-hawking is “a falcon towering in her pride of place”; and her “place” is some hundreds of yards above her master’s head. A high pitch is the beauty of a game-hawk. It is what enables her to kill, and to kill well. The best game-hawks go up until they look quite small in the sky. A thousand feet is often attained. When a peregrine is as high as this, it matters comparatively little whereabouts the game gets up. She can come down upon them nearly as easily at an angle of 70° or 80°, as at an angle of 90°. Sometimes even more easily. The time occupied in coming down is a mere nothing compared with the time which would be occupied in flying along the level to the same spot. When once, therefore, you see your hawk at a good pitch, use every effort to get up the game. When she sees the men running she will very likely be all the more ready to keep in a good place. After a week or two’s practice she will know well enough what the whole show means, and will play her part in it con amore.

If your hawk will not mount properly, but potters about in a useless way at a mean height, you may try other plans. You may call her off half a mile or so from the lee side of an open moor, and, as she comes across it up-wind, let beaters from each side try to drive grouse inwards towards her line of flight. If you can once enable her to take a grouse there are hopes of her yet. You may even fly her from the fist at a grouse if you can get near enough to one to make it at all likely that she will catch it. I have seen this done with a backward young falcon, which would not wait on. There ensued a stern chase all along the ground for at least half a mile, both birds flying at almost exactly the same pace. The sight was ridiculous enough; but in the end the falcon managed to catch the grouse, and was allowed to take her pleasure on it. The success, small as it was, saved the hawk at anyrate from being disgusted with grouse-hawking, as she would otherwise very soon have been. It is wonderful what good is done to a young hawk by catching a difficult quarry by her own unaided efforts. The encouragement she derives from it is occasionally so great that she seems suddenly to develop her latent powers beyond all expectation.

You must not, however, expect that every young falcon will be a good grouse-hawk. Indeed, you must not expect many to be so. The quarry is a difficult one, and until you have trained a good many partridge-hawks you are not likely to make one for grouse. In partridge-hawking no very great speed is wanted, if only the hawk will mount well and throw up well. Partridges can be flushed much nearer, as a rule, to the hawk than grouse. Although they are fast, especially up-wind, they are not as fast as grouse, nor as wild. Nor perhaps, I may add, as perverse in getting up at the place and time you like least, though both are clever enough at choosing their time for making off. In an enclosed country, if you do not kill your partridge at the first shot, he will often put in at the next hedge, and there you may mark him and get him out. But on an open moor the grouse generally go so far before putting in that you cannot mark the place near enough to get them out quickly. Thus out of a hundred eyess peregrines, probably more than 70 per cent. will, in good hands, fly partridges very fairly, whereas out of a hundred eyess falcons—leaving tiercels out of the account—you will not find anything like fifty which are really good at the bigger quarry. Of tiercels it would be rash to say that even 1 per cent. would fly well at grouse. Of the falcons which fail some appear to be too lazy, and others too slow. A good deal depends on the first few flights. If a hawk has good luck on two or three occasions when she is first taken out, and a young grouse gets up well within reach, the young hawk will take heart, and, feeling assured that she can take the quarry, will try hard and will improve. Choose, therefore, for a hawk that is of doubtful courage the flights which seem likely to be the easiest. Remember that an immense deal depends upon the conditions under which you call upon your hawk to make her first flight at a grouse.

There are still some places where you can shoot grouse over dogs. If it be your good fortune to have access with your hawks to a moor where this can be done, you are in luck. As soon as there is a steady point (you are, of course, on open ground), unhood and throw off your hawk, which has already learnt to wait on. As long as she is moving upwards, making each circle a little higher than the last, stand still and let her go on, or, if the point is far off, walk steadily towards it. The grouse will have seen the hawk, and be in no hurry to move while she is mounting; but presently they will be aware also of your approach. Then there will be a small debate in their minds—or rather in that of their papa—whether it is best to keep still and eventually be shot at, or to start off at once and at once be stooped at. The nearer you approach, and the farther the hawk rakes away, the more does the decision incline towards making a bolt of it; but papa grouse is not going to make a fool of himself by bolting at the moment which you would prefer. Your programme, of course, is to wait till your falcon is heading in towards the dog, and then rush in upon the hesitating assembly. Unfortunately, this plan does not fit in with the views of the worthies in question. They have also been waiting till the hawk’s head was turned away, and now, as she is near the outer part of her circle which is farthest from the quarry, up they get, and off they go, whizzing along the top of the heather.

At this stage of the proceedings the modern falconer does, for once, find the use of his voice. He shouts loudly to call the hawk’s attention and to cheer her on. “Hey, gar, gar, gar!” or “Hoo, ha, ha!” are old-fashioned cries for encouraging a falcon to stoop from her pitch, and are still often used. There can be no doubt that a shout of some kind, or a blast on the horn, if you prefer it, has an inspiriting effect on hawks, and that not only when they start for their first descent, but at each successive stoop. I almost fancy that I have actually seen them cheer up as they heard a loud “Bravo” come from the field far beneath after a brilliant stoop or a masterly throw-up! It is with grouse and black-game, more than with any other quarry, that you see at once when they get up the immense advantage of a high pitch. When the falcon is some hundreds of feet high she commands a wide area below. At the height of a quarter of a mile it matters little whether the range of her circling flight takes her a hundred yards to one side or the other. She can come down with equal ease upon any one spot in an area of thirty acres.

No one knows how the speed and force of a falcon’s stoop are gained. All we can say is that it is the fastest movement made by any living thing in the world. It is not flying, and it is not falling, but a combination of the two, with some other impulse which we do not understand. Mere weight must be at least a most important element, for a heavy hawk seems always to come down quicker as well as far more forcibly than one of the same species which is lighter. But weight is only one factor in the agglomeration of influences which make the stoop of the peregrine and the ger so swift. It must be seen to be believed in. There is no conceivable way of measuring its speed, but it is such that the momentum of it alone carries the hawk with half-closed wings right past a grouse at his best pace, making that pace appear absolutely slow by comparison. The descent from above is often made so that the hawk is at the end of it a few feet or yards behind the grouse, and nearly on a level with him. Hence the course of the pursuer bends forwards horizontally, but with such deviation from the straight line as is necessary to correspond with the flight of the pursued. It is so regulated that it may pass through that part of the air where the quarry is expected to be. Of course the expectation may be falsified. The hawk may suppose that the grouse will swerve to the right, whereas he may swerve to the left. But, just as a fine fencer will divine by some subtle skill whether his adversary is going to parry in carte or tierce, or to make a single or double disengagement, so the good game-hawk judges from some slight movement or attitude where the grouse intends to be at the moment when she rushes past. This power is not so surprising in a haggard, but some eyesses seem to be instinctively gifted with a share of it. Others acquire it rapidly both in stooping at the lure and in their actual flights. But with eyesses it is rather the exception to be really good footers, whereas with haggards and many red passage hawks it is almost the rule.

Passage peregrines are, of course, much more likely to succeed with grouse and black-game than eyesses. Out of a dozen falcons skilfully taken in hand, and kept specially for game-hawking, it would not be unreasonable to expect that eight or nine would take their quarry well. By rights a passager which is intended to be flown principally at game should be captured in the spring. There is no use in keeping her all the while idle from November to the next August. If taken in April she would be well fit for flying on the twelfth of August. There would, it is true, be some trouble about the moult, but this might often be deferred till very much later than it can be with eyesses. According to modern practice, which is to catch no wild peregrines in spring, the passager has almost always been more or less flown at rooks in the early part of the year. She has accordingly to unlearn a good deal that she learnt then, and be introduced to the much more risky and artificial accomplishment of waiting on. That she should take kindly to this habit is not a thing to be anticipated. It would be going rather too far to expect her to moon about overhead humbly waiting till the falconer below pleases to throw out for her a morsel of cold and uninviting food. You will generally find it best to employ with her rather different tactics from those which served for the eyesses. Thus you may call her off to the lure from the other side of a wide moorside, and, as she comes across the heather, contrive that there shall get up out of it a very fast pigeon. On the first occasion it is ten to one that she will start at this from the very moderate height at which she was flying towards you; but whether she takes the pigeon or not, she will know very well that she ought, for her own advantage, to have been higher when he got up; and the next time you call her off at a similar place and in a similar way, the odds are that she comes to you higher in the air. A third trial will probably find her higher still, and you may let her make a circle or two before starting the pigeon. When she has once flown a grouse in a somewhat similar way the effect will be still more marked. Do not now dream of lowering her pitch by ever letting her stoop to the lure. Indeed, after the passager is once made to the dead lure, it need scarcely be used at all, except to call the hawk back after unsuccessful flights.

For the first twelve months you must still be mistrustful of your passager. Some of the old writers advise not to try her at waiting on until she is intermewed. But when once she can be trusted she will do better than almost any eyess. To begin with, she can kill from a much lower pitch than the latter. She is swifter on the wing; she is a better footer; and she knows much better how to play her cards. And one of the best cards of a game-hawk is a high pitch. Why should she not play it? Has she not already done so to perfection long before you had the honour of her acquaintance? How often, in far northern lands, has she from above the highest mountains come down like a thunderbolt upon the fast-flying ptarmigan or shifty rock-pigeon? Does she not know that it is this altitude which gives power and success? When she has begun killing grouse she will soon enter into the spirit of the thing. Every bird—and a hawk not least—knows that what has happened once or twice may happen again. She was thrown off; she saw no lure, no rook. (For we took care, did we not, that none was in sight?) After a while you put up a grouse for her. And now, on another occasion, to the same beginning will there not be the same end? She will almost certainly think it well to be prepared for such a contingency; and the only way to be prepared is to get up a bit, and to remain pretty near the falconer. As soon as her pains have been rewarded she is “made.” The mischief of it is that you cannot, with grouse, make sure of giving her these fair trials just when you wish. Grouse are such “contrairy” birds, that you cannot always find them when you have the best right to expect that you will. You must, however, do your best; and I, for one, verily believe that the hawk knows when you are doing your best. Otherwise, what is the moral of that pretty story, so well told by “Peregrine,” of the falcon which, finding the pointer rather slow in putting up the covey, made a stoop at him by way of a gentle hint, and then got up to her pitch again?