Last Flight

Last Sunday way my Hybrid's last flight.   He came down and hammered a Gadwall, as hard a hit as I've seen.  I wasn't really expecting much since the last duck he caught had nearly knocked  him out.  But I guess he had a hard hitting streak in him and the second duck in a row fell from the sky stone cold dead.  After the expected wing over to land on the duck, he started plucking as normal.  I traded him off on the lure and jumped him back up to the glove.  Something was wrong.  This bird normally eats very quickly, but this time he was barely picking at the glove.  Not long after getting home he regurgitated all of the food that he had eaten and wouldn't eat again.  I rushed him off to the vet and when we got there we found that he had a prolapsed cloaca and initially thought that he had a bacteria infection, but his condition continued to worsen even after giving antibiotics and he died just a couple of hours later.  The necropsy showed that he had ruptured his pancreas resulting from the impact with the duck.  This inflamed and twisted his lower intestines and ultimately caused his death.  So he died from being a hard hitting game hawk.  In the end this falcon had a winning record against the ducks, its too bad his last flight ended in a tie....

Hybrid and last Duck