The past 4 days we've knocked ducks to the ground but hadn't finished the job until today. My good friend and great falconer Raul is in town visiting for our annual hawking before Thanksgiving and we will be heading out to the NAFA meet tomorrow where he will be doing a talk on falconry with Aplomado Falcons. We've had a pretty good time with hawking the past couple of days. Yesterday we went out with local falconer, Scott, and knocked down a Widgeon with a beautiful nice tight stoop, but must have slightly missed the "button" because that duck got his facilities back and scrambled back into the air leaving my hybrid tearing up a cow patty.
With light fading fast we got Scott's Gyr x Peregrine, Bullseye, in the air over a pond holding a single Gadwall. After taking a nice pitch and long stoop the duck was pummeled to the ground but did make it back to the pond on the wing over. After remounting the duck was reflushed and in the bag just as the sun set.
This morning Tulsa was right on weight so we went out to give it another try with my apprentice Daniel in tow. Again my falcon was climbing well and for the first time shifted his mount over the pond instead of over me. At 700' or so we flushed a group of Gadwalls off the pond and the bird quickly put one on the ground. As he pulled up for the wing over the duck made a break for it and was knocked down again but not out and it slipped the final three feet to safety of the water.
Tulsa quickly remounted to a decent pitch and I guess he was tired of not finishing off ducks because this time he really put it on a drake Gadwall that had no chance of getting back to the water. Lucky for Daniel he was standing not 20 feet from where the final impact was made and he got a front row seat for the action.
I gave the falcon a full crop of warm duck and off to
home to finish packing to head to Woodward tomorrow.
Raul and I
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