The Buzzsaw

I just lucked into an affordable copy of the out of print North American Falconry and Hunting Hawks. It is "the" book on falconry and is in it's 8th edition. The promised re-printing of the 9th edition is looking less and less likely, so I jumped on this one once it fell in my price range.

I received the book today in the mail and I eagerly flipped to the section on Cooper's Hawks. What I found there was not encouraging. Let me put down the summary here, word for word, case for case as it is found in the book.

"Of all the birds in falconry, none requires consistent success as much as the Cooper's. NONE! The phrase 'a little success here and there' gives entirely the wrong impression of what these birds demand of the falconer. They need daily hunting with consistent success."

The book further recommends that you get and train a hunting dog to point quail a full year before you acquire a bird and recommends that you have at least 10 good quail sites that you can rotate so you can have success every time. The book says " Here is one for the experienced falconer living in the right area who wants to explore one of the pinnacle experiences that falconry has to offer." Sounds exciting, but I am neither that experienced falconer nor am I living in the right area. Quail are in decline here as they are in many other places and finding a good "consistent" quail hunting place is nearly impossible for me unless I could afford to belong to one of the expensive hunt clubs around here. Hunting every day is also impossible for me. I think I may be getting in over my head with this bird.

My sponsor is out of town until at least next week. I need to call him and discuss my options with him. He has flown these birds before so if he says I can do it, I might be able to, but he tends to be over-optimistic about accipiters sometimes.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I certainly don't want a buzzsaw of a bird that I have to fly with a catchers mask over my face to protect me when we don't actually find quarry and the bird gets mad at me. EESH! Good thing I hung on to those gerbils, I might just trap a red-tail afterall.