Gunless (mostly) season
- Thread starter Toad
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Miforester
Well-known member
Very nice Toad, that has to be just awesome to have your RT as a hunting partner. What is your success rate once you flush a rabbit? If a hunt is not successful what do you feed your RT as well what is her off season diet?
Toad
Active member
Thanks! Yes, it is one of the most exciting things I have ever done. It feels very similar to watching a pup develop into a great hunter, but it's a lot wilder with much more chaos. Anything can happen once you turn the bird loose, so it's a real adrenaline rush. Not only can the quarry do any number of things to escape, but she could also just decide to fly away at any moment and end my hawking season in an instant... It's a lot of work to care for her and keep her in perfect health, so it is very rewarding when she hunts successfully.
Her success rate is tough for me to figure out at this point... I don't have enough data yet to give any kind of accurate percentage over time. We're learning the game together, so her success rate is getting higher as time passes. She's learning to post up ahead of me and let me push game to her, and she's choosing good high perches to help her build speed quickly. I recently realized her talons had gotten dull, my fault, so her percentage was terrible for a couple weeks. But we got that resolved and she blasted the rabbit on the first marginal slip she got today. If she stays healthy, I think she will be pretty deadly the rest of the season.
Watching her hunt, and when and where the rabbits bust out, I'm starting to get a pretty good idea which ones are in trouble. Many of them just flash out for an instant, and then are gone through the thickest jungle they can find. But fortunately, others are not so clever and give her just enough time to catch up to them before they reach the heavy cover. If she has a good perch, they flush reasonably close, and are in the open for more than a couple seconds, they are in big, big trouble. :cheers:
Most all of her food now comes from game she has killed. Packrat, squirrel, and rabbit is what she is now eating for the most part. I can get about a week out of a fat red squirrel or a rabbit. You wouldn't think a squirrel would be all that much food, but they are solid little balls of muscle... Almost as much food value as a rabbit for her.
Most red tails are trained with beef heart, and then fed a variety of rodents, small game, and young chicken roosters. I plan to release her this Spring, so I don't have to worry about stockpiling food. Just need to save enough rabbit and squirrel to get next season's red tail up and running until it is catching its own dinners.
Her success rate is tough for me to figure out at this point... I don't have enough data yet to give any kind of accurate percentage over time. We're learning the game together, so her success rate is getting higher as time passes. She's learning to post up ahead of me and let me push game to her, and she's choosing good high perches to help her build speed quickly. I recently realized her talons had gotten dull, my fault, so her percentage was terrible for a couple weeks. But we got that resolved and she blasted the rabbit on the first marginal slip she got today. If she stays healthy, I think she will be pretty deadly the rest of the season.
Watching her hunt, and when and where the rabbits bust out, I'm starting to get a pretty good idea which ones are in trouble. Many of them just flash out for an instant, and then are gone through the thickest jungle they can find. But fortunately, others are not so clever and give her just enough time to catch up to them before they reach the heavy cover. If she has a good perch, they flush reasonably close, and are in the open for more than a couple seconds, they are in big, big trouble. :cheers:
Most all of her food now comes from game she has killed. Packrat, squirrel, and rabbit is what she is now eating for the most part. I can get about a week out of a fat red squirrel or a rabbit. You wouldn't think a squirrel would be all that much food, but they are solid little balls of muscle... Almost as much food value as a rabbit for her.
Most red tails are trained with beef heart, and then fed a variety of rodents, small game, and young chicken roosters. I plan to release her this Spring, so I don't have to worry about stockpiling food. Just need to save enough rabbit and squirrel to get next season's red tail up and running until it is catching its own dinners.
Miforester
Well-known member
So you trap or get a new bird annually? Is that part of the apprenticeship or just personal choice?
Toad
Active member
Yes, that is correct on all counts. I will trap a new passage (juvenile) red tail next season. Trapping a passage bird is a requirement of the apprenticeship. It is legal for me to keep this bird as long as I like, but trapping and training are essential skills of falconry, so my agreement with my sponsor is that I will start from zero next season. That was one of his requirements in accepting me as his apprentice.
I thought the trapping and training were very fun. I was always on the lookout for birds, and trying to judge if they were young or old birds. It's easy if you see them from the right angle, but at a distance or from the wrong angle, it was tough for me. Then I was also looking at their color and chest pattern, and the relative darkness of their feathers. I wanted to trap a "cool" one, with really chocolate-colored wings and a striking dark pattern on the breast.
I might even wait until later next season and try to trap a Harlan's Red Tail. I saw one this year that was nearly all black. As another thread said, there are a lot to choose from... :cheers:
As long as I fly red tails, I would guess I will probably release them at the end of the season. The birds require a lot of care, and the off season is long. Plus, releasing a healthy bird to go reproduce feels like the right thing to do... In the future, if I switch to a bird that is rare or doesn't exist in KS, then I would be more likely to keep it through the summer.
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