The Art and Practice of Hawking

by E. B. Michell

What remedy there is for the hawk which carries out of pure caprice it is not easy to say. In the first place, she must be habituated to take some of her food on the ground—tirings anyhow, which hitherto have perhaps been taken on the block or the perch. Let them be fastened down by a peg or a weight, sometimes on damp ground, sometimes even in prickly stubbles, so that the over-dainty hawk may learn that eating on the ground is not so bad after all. Then she ought to be flown sharp-set, so that, being in a hurry for her food, she should be glad enough to pluck it quickly and on the first place where she alights. Give this sort of hawk as large a quantity of flying as ever you can. Fly her, if you have the choice, at the most difficult quarry, and in the most difficult places. Never mind so much if she succeeds or not. It is better to lose a few rooks or partridges than to lose your hawk. Fly her, therefore, as often and as hard as you can. Never mind whether her score or her average is bad. It is better to make a poor score than to think your hawk is a good one when she isn’t. A good deal of the restlessness which makes a hawk flit about with her quarry is due to her being short of exercise. If, therefore, you can make your hawk fly more, either at the lure or in the field, than she has a mind to, she is much less likely to go fooling about before attending to the business of feeding herself. Of course it is very difficult to do this, as twenty or thirty miles more or less is a mere exercise canter for a peregrine. But many trained hawks get a great deal less than this in a whole day.

There is a device which I should like to see tried with a carrying hawk, but it requires some patience and good temper. Get some stuffed birds of the proper kind, at which you mean to fly your hawk; use them, unweighted, as lures, and when the hawk has taken them and come down, let go the string and approach her cautiously with food in hand as if you were making in to her after killing a real bird. If she bolts, let her go and make what she can of the stuffed bird. About twenty minutes after you will have her back, furious, but perhaps less ready to bolt away from the food in your hand—a sadder, but possibly a wiser, hawk.

When a hawk, being carried on the fist bareheaded, ready to be thrown off at quarry, keeps jumping off in a tiresome way at nothing, ten to one she is not quite ready to fly. Better put on her hood and let her wait for an hour or so, and go on with another hawk, if you have one to fly, and, if not, light a pipe. Hurry no man’s hawks, not even your own.

It would be rather a misnomer to call soaring a vice. This, which is one of the most beautiful accomplishments of the wild falcon, is the natural mode of taking daily exercise. To see it in perfection, look at a wild peregrine or a wild hobby—you have there what enthusiasts describe as the poetry of motion. All hawks, eagles and vultures soar by nature. It is their way of stretching their wings, and of taking the air where it is cool and fresh. Kestrels do a sort of humble soaring in search of their food, and hobbies actually feed themselves, like swifts, on the wing. To say, therefore, that a trained hawk which adopts this orthodox method of keeping herself fit is thereby committing a fault, is rather hard upon her. Nevertheless it is a very vexatious habit, when over-indulged in, and, speaking from a practical point of view, is not to be too much encouraged. Hobbies, when flown in the middle of the day, even sharp-set, will stay up constantly for a quarter of an hour and even more, taking little apparent notice of the swung lure, or at the most striking at it without catching hold, or at least coming down with it to the ground. To do them justice, they seldom go far away, but often look as if they meant to do so, which, indeed, they occasionally do, especially at migrating times. But a peregrine which has taken to the soar often seems so engrossed in the pleasant occupation as to forget all about mundane affairs, and, sailing along in ever-widening circles, drifts farther and farther down-wind, until the falconer, if unmounted, can keep her in view no longer. Then, when she is beginning to tire of her amusement, and to remember that she has, after all, a crop to fill, she will very likely wing her way back to where she last saw the falconer wistfully swinging her despised lure. But what if an unlucky pigeon then heaves in sight? or if some unsuspecting yokel puts up a partridge or a rook? There is nothing to prevent her from having a shot at it: and, if she kills, good-bye to my lady for that day. If you find her, it will be more by good luck than anything else.

Hawks will go soaring because they are short of exercise, because they feel hot from insufficient bathing, or because, not being particularly hungry, they prefer a few minutes’ free roaming about to immediately dining. Consequently a hawk which has shown herself fond of the practice and slow at coming to the dead lure, should be offered a bath whenever she is at all likely to take it—once a day, in very hot weather. She should have lots of flying and stooping to the lure, for, as she is fond of the upper air, there is the less chance of her hanging about round the falconer and spoiling her pitch. Finally, she should be a bit keen after her food before she is put on the wing. Soaring and waiting on are analogous things, or rather they are the same with a difference. The best game-hawks, which wait on mountains high, are soaring as they do so; that is, the movement of the wings is the same, but the difference is that the waiter-on is, as it were, anchored to a fixed point below—the man or the dog, whereas the soarer is merely floating about like a yacht which has no particular destination.

The vice of raking away differs only from that of soaring away by the fact that it may be done at any height. Half-trained hawks, before they have done any real work in the field, are very apt to wait on in the wrong place. They know as much as that they are expected to keep within sight of the falconer, but not that they ought to be directly overhead; and, through laziness, or because they prefer stooping at the lure up-wind, they allow themselves to drift away to lee. Hardly have they come up level with the man than they at once fall back on the wind, lowering their pitch, if pitch it can be called, so that for all useful purposes their attendance is a mere sham, and they might as well be on the falconer’s glove. Repeating this idiotic performance in the field, they are some hundreds of yards to leeward, and at a low elevation, when the grouse or partridge get up, and a stern-chase ensues, in which the quarry, going up-wind, gets the best of it. For this annoying vice there is no direct remedy. Experience may be expected to teach the young hawk better. One plan is to let loose pigeons, while the hawk is so waiting on, so that, after missing some, by reason of raking and low flying, and perhaps catching others when flying properly, she may understand at last how success is to be had.

Checking is a crime to which we are not now so much exposed as were the old falconers. Bird life is not so abundant now, at least in England, that a hawk is confronted often with an embarras de richesses, and leaves her legitimate quarry for a stray bird of a different species. Eyesses, indeed, if kept to one quarry, will often hardly be induced to pursue any other. Passage hawks are more ready to check at birds which cross their path. It would be rather too much to expect a haggard falcon, which in her time has struck down birds of fifty different kinds, to discriminate very nicely between a plump partridge and a fat wood-pigeon when Providence threw either within reach of an easy stoop. It is when a passage hawk has been flown at rooks in the spring, and afterwards at game in the game season, that there is the chief danger of checking. As long as the sable quarry is alone attempted the risk is not great. The hawk is flown out of the hood at quarry actually in sight. It is only when that quarry has saved itself that the temptation to check occurs, and at that moment there are, or ought to be, lures waving near at hand. But encourage the rook-hawk to become a game-hawk, and the case is altogether changed. She has to go up alone, with nothing particular in view, and wait aloft till the falconer springs her quarry. Moreover, she knows now that rooks are not the only lawful game. She is at full liberty to go at grouse; and, if grouse, why not wood-pigeons and house-pigeons, gulls, or curlew? Why not anything which is desirable, and which "tempts her roving eyes"?

The besetting sin of the checking peregrine is the chase of pigeons, wild and tame. Often, it must be admitted, this sin is the outcome of the falconer’s own action. Has he not himself used a pigeon as a live lure? Has he not, when teaching his pupil to wait on, let loose a pigeon with the express intention that she should fly it? If he has never had occasion to do so in training his passage hawk he has been exceptionally lucky. As regards pigeons, it is generally pretty easy to break peregrines of checking at them as soon as they have once begun to fly at game. To achieve this feat get a good number of very good pigeons—say a dozen, the faster the better; make the hawk wait on at a short distance—say 600 yards—from some covert in which the pigeon, if he can get as far, will be safe from pursuit; then, while the hawk is waiting on that side of you which is farthest from the covert, let go one of the pigeons. The hawk will start, but the pigeon, if a good one, will manage to make the covert; the hawk will throw up, and, if all is well, come down to your dead lure. Repeat this performance, always making as sure as you can that the pigeon will save himself, until your pupil has got sick of the whole business, and at last refuses to go for such disappointing quarry. If you can put in, between whiles, an easy flight at a grouse or partridge, and reward the hawk well upon it, the contrast will be all the more striking, and she will begin to have a settled conviction that game-hawking is capital fun, whereas pigeon-hawking is a fraud. It is obvious that a somewhat similar trick may be used with regard to other birds besides pigeons—flying the hawk in impossible places at those which you don’t want her to pursue, and in easy places at those which you do.

Some hawks, which ought to know better, from laziness or want of condition, will not remain on the wing, but go off, after a few turns in the air, to a tree or to the ground, and there sit waiting for the lure, or till the spirit moves them to stir. This is disheartening conduct, quite unworthy of a ladylike or gentlemanly hawk, and disgraceful in a falcon-gentle. Yet so it is that many of these high-born dames, and not a few tiercels also of noble birth, are so lost to a sense of their own dignity that they give way to this degrading weakness, and demean themselves to the level of a base-born short-wing. What is to be done with them? Various devices have been tried with varying success. In the first place, as the hawk behaves in an ignoble manner, she cannot complain if you treat her in ignoble wise. You may therefore ride at her as she sits on the ground, and force her to get up, or you may throw clods at her, and drive her out of her tree; but the surest plan—only it requires time and patience—is to let her cure herself. Light a pipe and sit down in a comfortable place, if such there be, and leave the sinner alone until the spirit does move her to stir. At some time or other, varying from five minutes to five hours, she will want the lure badly enough. Then let her come for it. Keep her waiting on or stooping at the lure till she has had a good dose of it, and if she goes off to perch again, wait again till she will work for her living. Show her, in fact, that in coming to the lure she is conferring no great favour on you, as she seemed to imagine, but rather that the boot is on the other leg. Next time it is more than probable that she will work a little rather than go fasting, when she might have a good meal at once. If you have time and patience to read her a few such lessons she may gradually be brought to exhibit some activity. But give her a dose as well. For liver has probably something to do with the matter, as well as mere laziness.

A hawk which is hood-shy is a plague to you and to herself. Very few hawks exhibit this vice except through the trainer’s fault. But trainers are not all good hooders; and a few bungling and unsuccessful attempts at hooding will make even the best-natured hawk hate the very sight of the hood. If, therefore, the beginner is not clever at the art, let him practise on a kestrel. Or, if he will have one of the better hawks, let him get a skilful hand to break her to the hood. To hood a hawk which is already broken is a comparatively easy matter; but it is the nature of a hawk, as of any other creature, to dislike being blindfolded, and the wonder is that hawks can be made to submit to it as readily as they do. Occasionally a hawk has such a rooted objection to the proceeding that the cleverest man never succeeds in quite overcoming it. Vesta, already mentioned, was hood-shy, though in good hands; but even then the objection felt by the sufferer can only by a perversion of terms be rightly called a vice. Hood-shyness, even in a pronounced form, has often been cured, and, as has already been said, a hood-shy hawk cannot be considered fully trained. Whenever the hawk is difficult to hood, she should be handled constantly, and the trainer should almost always have a hood in his right hand. The actual condition of being hooded is not disagreeable to many hawks—it is the indignity and discomfort involved in the process of putting on the apparatus that give rise to the trouble. The smaller the hawk, the more difficult she is to hood; and the mischief is not only that the hawk’s feathers are in danger whenever she is hooded against her will, but also that her temper is ruffled, and the relations between her and her trainer become strained.