Early next morning take her on the fist, and carry her in a place where no one can pass behind you. Then take her to some quiet, private spot, and place a live chicken or pigeon in her feet, and get her to seize it. Then cut the chicken’s throat and give her a little to eat. Try and induce her to step on to your fist, either from the ground or from her perch.
During these few days that you are giving her live birds, feed her while close to a hound,[321] so that she may get accustomed to the presence of such dogs. Tie a long cord to the leash, and placing her on an assistant’s fist induce her to fly a few paces to your fist. Do not give her live pigeons and chickens every day or she will learn to come to your fist only for the “pelt,”[322] and that is an error. Call her rather to plain meat so that, should you in the field not happen to have a live bird about you, she will, the moment you raise your fist, come readily to a meat-lure. There is no harm if you kill in her feet a live bird, say every eight or ten days.
When she is thoroughly trained to the lure, i.e., when she will without a “creance”[323] come with eagerness to your fist, starting without hesitation from any spot where you may place her, cast her on the ground and play with her so as to teach her to run round and round you, so that when, in the field, she puts a quarry into a bush[324] she may run round the bush just as you have taught her to run round you, so that by this means the chukor she has “put in” may not trick her by making off from the far edge of the bush. The object of this instruction on the ground is to teach her to run round the bush and block the quarry after she has “put it in,” and then to rise and take up a commanding position on a tree[325] to watch the bush from thence, so that the partridge escape her not.
The more familiar you make your hawk, and the keener you make her on the lure,[326] the better. Now, if you have trained[327] your hawk in less than forty days, you have hurried her training, and “Hurry is of the Devil, but Deliberation is from God.”[328] Be not overhasty or you will spoil her. Such and such a falconer is sure to vaunt his skill, boasting that he has trained and flown his hawk in fifteen days. He has erred and blundered: he is not a lover of a hawk but a lover of the pot;[329] he is one who would not sacrifice one partridge for a hundred goshawks. As for you, your hawk must not be trained[330] in less than forty days.[331]
When your hawk is trained, that is when she is perfect at the lure and accustomed to hounds, horses, and mounted men, go, the day before you intend flying her at wild quarry, into the open country and lure her from a distance with a chicken two or three months old. As soon as she comes, let her take it, and feed her up on it for the day, giving her feathers and bones, that she may throw up her casting[332] early the following morning.
Although it is the custom of many Ostringers[333] to give to a goshawk, the day before she is to be flown, washed meat—that is meat cut small, cast into luke-warm water and given with a lot of water—still in my opinion the practice is wrong; for if a hawk be alternately given washed meat one day and flown the next, and habituated to this custom, the custom becomes second nature to her. Now suppose your friends and acquaintances, together with their falconers, some fifty persons in all, have settled to go for a ten days’ hawking trip to a certain spot where there is an abundance of chukor and other quarry, and have invited you to join them, you ought, during these short ten days, to hawk every day. However, your hawk will only give you five days’ sport, for you have habituated her to fly on alternate days, after she has been “set;”[334] she certainly will not now fly every day. Do not therefore teach her this custom. Give her the day before you go hawking, not washed meat but a chicken as I have said, for a chicken’s flesh has little nourishment and will “set” her as though she had been given washed meat. By giving her a chicken you will not accustom her to washed meat; and when on that ten days’ outing you will not have to stay at home and twiddle your thumbs.[335] Another objection to washed meat is that your hawk gradually loses condition.
To resume. After luring your hawk from a distance and killing the chicken under her and feeding her upon it, set her on the edge of some water: she will perhaps drink and bathe,[336] and oil,[336] and preen her feathers, and so be in fettle for to-morrow’s flight. One hour before sunset take her on the fist.
(My son, never, never, go up to a new hawk without meat in your hand.[337] Always approach a new, sitting hawk very, very slowly, and sit down to one side of her. Do not look at the hawk’s eyes, for a man’s eyes and face have a terrifying effect on hawks, especially when the gazer’s head is crowned with a Turcoman cap. Take meat in your hand and get her to jump from the perch to your fist, and let her eat one or two beakfuls: then carry her away. Falconer, listen: should you ever require to go to your hawk in the dark to take her on the fist, having no light with you, talk to yourself in a low tone the while; for she will recognize your voice and not be scared).
In short take her on your fist an hour before sunset, and carry her till an hour after dark. If you ride about with her on a quiet horse, so much the better. After that set her down to rest for the night.
(There should be a light in your hawk’s room all night that she may feel secure. It is a mistake to keep a goshawk in the dark, for goshawks are ever fearful.)